by Vi Burgess, editor-in-chief

On Tuesday, November 15, the College Station ISD Board of Trustees held their monthly meeting in the CSISD Boardroom. Following the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence led by students from Creek View Elementary and Spring Creek Elementary, trustee Quinn Williams announced that the Grant Patrol, which gives out grants from the CSISD Education Foundation, had given out 52 grants totaling $141,000 in the past week.

Superintendent Clark Ealy next announced that his focus during the coming months will be partially on the new accountability ratings that will be implemented in the 2017-2018 school year, which will rate the schools on a scale of A-F. CSISD is hosting a public meeting with John Tanner, a test designer, over these new accountability rankings and the STAAR test on Tuesday, December 6 at 6:30 p.m. at the CSISD Transportation Center.

Director of Assessment Becky Burghardt presented a slideshow about the effects of Credit by Examination (CBE) for acceleration in CSISD; the presentation focused mainly on the group of about 100 children each year who take a CBE to skip 5th Grade Math and sequentially end up taking Calculus their junior and possibly their senior years of high school. This jump in the number of CBEs taken since 2014 has resulted in a jump in costs to the district to order and proctor tests.

The board passed several motions relating to the purchase of a property and construction of a new office, computers for the CTE programs at Consol and CSHS, repurposing of old storage facilities and approving an agreement with the City of College Station regarding the School Resource Officers’ contracts for the remainder of the 2016-2017 school year. Following these motions, the meeting was adjourned.