Apollo Transformation

The Sunnyside Unified School District has engaged in a strategic secondary school improvement initiative under the leadership of the superintendent and the Governing Board. The superintendent and his Cabinet developed a strategy with aligned tactics that featured an intense focus on student and teacher needs at Apollo Middle School, which was identified by Arizona LEARNS as Underperforming for two consecutive years and as a result required major school reform. As part of that reform, the Governing Board decided in spring 2007 to reconstitute the staff of the school and hire a new principal and administrative team. As the first step of the reform effort, the new principal was allowed to hire new staff. The second step was the creation of a districtwide transformation team that was given the charge of creating a new school improvement process.

The initiative engaged central office, site-based staff, students, parents and community members in creative development in nine areas associated with best-practice research for school transformation.

Nine strands for school transformation:

• Facilities
• Governance 
• Master schedule
• Parent engagement
• Personalization and relationships
• Professional development
• Safe and orderly
• Staffing
• Teaching and learning

The first strand that was addressed was the need for facilities improvement. SUSD facilities staff made significant improvements to the physical plant at Apollo, including cleaning and painting of the buildings’ exterior, renovating the library, and installing badly needed new furniture and equipment. Additional improvements were made to the technology infrastructure. The work brought immediate gains and made a positive impact on the school’s community that will be sustainable in years to come.

To further assist Apollo in its transformation process, Great Schools Workshop, Inc.(GSW) staff were brought in as consultants. GSW instructional coaches with highly developed classroom instructional methodology skills were deployed at the school to work directly with the staff. GSW provided more than 600 hours of professional development to more than 60 staff members over the course of four months. The resulting professional learning has informed systemic improvement initiatives targeting secondary student achievement.

As the new teachers at Apollo developed relationships with the veteran teachers, central office staff continued to work to create conditions that would preserve and expand the momentum. Central office administrators were all committed to assisting Apollo in its transformation efforts. The assistance included refining the master schedule, implementing effective attendance procedures, giving Apollo priority for hiring of staff, and outreach to parents. A new master schedule and refined attendance procedures immediately raised the level of organizational efficiency and provided opportunities for teacher teams to engage in common planning time for ongoing, job-embedded professional development. Under
the principal’s leadership, Apollo’s first semester resulted in significant improvement in positive school culture and climate for the benefit of students and staff. Community and parent support for this change has remained positive and optimistic. However, the ultimate measure of Apollo’s transformation will be achievement on the AIMs tests.

Next Steps at Apollo: Ongoing AIMS Preparation
Apollo’s countdown to the AIMS began in January 2008. As the testing cycle began, teachers engaged in focused study of student academic performance results and thoughtful re-teaching and new teaching. The first step was Apollo’s faculty analysis of student performance results from the two benchmarks already given in language arts, writing and math at Apollo. As the benchmarks assess student mastery of different standards/strands on the two tests, Apollo teachers and coaches were able to study how the school did in each grade and standard. Teachers identified which of these were most heavily weighted on the AIMS and which standards had not yet been adequately taught. Using this information, a scope and sequence was put together to determine which standards for each grade level needed to be taught and retaught. Also, teachers, working in content and mixed-content teams, identified which instructional strategies trained via GSW’s Teacher Institutes Program needed to be used to help students achieve higher levels of mastery. Finally, content area teacher teams collaborated under the guidance of GSW facilitators and Apollo’s instructional coaches for refined lesson planning and classroom-based interventions. These practices should now be considered part of the ongoing regimen for teachers and staff at Apollo Middle School. We greatly anticipate that Apollo will see significant improvement in its AIMS scores and subsequently move from the status of Underperforming.