Bearcat Wrap-up Podcast

Dr. Lee Smith
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things that Mena Public School staff members need or want to know presented in a discussion format. bearcatwrap.substack.com

  1. 44m ago

    Week 11: Staying on Trajectory

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another busy and productive week at Mena Public Schools! Although we had just four instructional days this week, there was certainly no shortage of activity across our district. Along with the important work happening in our classrooms, we had the opportunity to host the 4A North Regional Volleyball Tournament at the Union Bank Center. Events like this require tremendous coordination, flexibility, and teamwork, and I appreciate everyone who helped make the week successful. This week’s Morphology Matters root is a fitting one for this point in the year. Next week, our students will study ject, meaning to throw or send, and our high school students will meet it in the word trajectory. A trajectory is the path something follows after it has been sent in a direction. Our first nine weeks set our direction. The second nine weeks will decide whether we stay on course toward our three performance targets: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and improvement in behavior and school climate. Our Focus for the Second Nine Weeks The second nine weeks is a long stretch of instruction, but it is also interrupted by Thanksgiving, colder weather, and the days leading into Christmas Break. Those are the times when attendance slips, routines loosen, and learning time is easiest to lose. Here is where I would ask every classroom to aim its effort. Academic growth. Our state report card told us exactly where our next gains are. The students who started the year farthest behind are growing, but not fast enough in reading and science. That is the gap between a B district and an A district. Please keep those students in front of you by name. Give them more chances to read, write, and explain their thinking every day, in every content area, not only in English and science classes. Use the weekly Morphology Matters root in your lessons, because word knowledge helps a struggling reader in every subject. As we discussed last week, much of that work is often best done on paper, with a pencil, and in conversation with a teacher. If you filed a Merit Pay intent form, this is the quarter to put that plan into practice, week after week, so the growth can show up in the data this spring. Attendance. We finished the first quarter above our goal, but slightly behind last year, and the colder months are usually when attendance falls. Our biggest concern is still kindergarten, followed by second grade, sixth grade, and twelfth grade. Please keep calling families early when you notice a pattern, especially around Mondays, Fridays, and the days next to a holiday. A friendly call before Thanksgiving week can save several days of instruction. When a student’s attendance improves or if you have any other good news, call home about that, too. Behavior and school climate. The first quarter proved that focused effort works. Bus incidents dropped by 42 percent because we set clear expectations and followed through every day. The second quarter is our chance to bring that same approach into our classrooms, where class disruption and insubordination rose and where incidents of physical harm and vaping are our most serious concerns. Keep routines consistent, supervise hallways and transitions closely, and stay connected to the students who are struggling most. Next week, our schools will recognize Red Ribbon Week, providing another opportunity to reinforce the importance of healthy choices, positive relationships, and personal responsibility. While the activities and dress-up days make the week fun for students, the message behind them is important throughout the entire school year. Staying on trajectory does not require a new plan. It requires us to keep doing the right things with the same energy in December that we had in August. A New Opportunity on Two Wheels I am excited to share that we are working to start a mountain bike team for our students through the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). Our students will be part of a county-wide team alongside students from Ouachita River Schools and Cossatot River Schools, and we are grateful to the Mena/Polk County Chamber of Commerce for supporting this effort. The Arkansas Interscholastic Cycling League serves students in grades 6 through 12 and is built on the idea that every student can ride, regardless of experience or ability. Mountain biking fits our district well. It gets students outdoors in some of the best riding country in Arkansas; it builds fitness and confidence, and it is a sport students can continue for the rest of their lives. It also gives students who may not play a traditional sport a team to belong to, and belonging is one of the strongest reasons students come to school. A team like this depends on caring adults. In the coming days, I will forward an email from our NICA support specialist to gauge interest in volunteering and coaching. You do not need to be an expert rider to help. NICA provides coach training and licensing, which includes a background check and training in safety and youth development, and there are roles for adults at every comfort level. Please read the email when it arrives and respond if you are interested. The other districts will be offering the same opportunity, so this has a potentially promising effect toward creating a biking culture in our area to support the trails, increase collegiality with our neighboring districts, and increase healthy habits impact in the community. NICA will also host a professional development session this spring for teachers who are interested in supporting the team. More details will come as plans take shape. If you have ever thought about combining your love of the outdoors with your work with students, this is a great opportunity. Closing Celebrations Next week, October 26-30, Mena Public Schools will celebrate Red Ribbon Week! Our counselors have organized activities and daily themes to encourage students to make healthy choices and understand the importance of living drug-free. We especially appreciate the Project Prevent Team at Mena Middle School for helping plan this year’s activities, supported by a $1,000 Red Ribbon Week grant from the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association. Thank you to everyone who has worked to make this an engaging and meaningful week for our students. Thank you to every staff member and volunteer who helped organize and run the 4A North Regional Volleyball Tournament at the Union Bank Center this week. Hosting a regional tournament is a three-day commitment that touches nearly every part of our district, from setup and admissions to concessions, custodial work, and hospitality for visiting teams and fans. The tournament was a big success, and that success came from careful planning and steady effort from start to finish. Our visitors saw Mena at its best. The tournament also marked the end of a strong Ladycat volleyball season, which came to a close Monday night. This group gave us a lot to celebrate, including a runner-up finish at the Paris Tournament, a night when all four Ladycat teams won at Ozark, a Senior Night sweep of Waldron, and a sweep at Dardanelle. Our junior Ladycats also finished as runner-up at the 4A-2 District Tournament last Saturday. Thank you to our players, coaches, and families for a season of hard work, and a special thank-you to our senior Ladycat, whose leadership, dedication, and example helped guide her teammates throughout the season. We appreciate the lasting impact she has made on our volleyball program! Tonight is Senior Night at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium as the Bearcats host Dover. Parents of our seniors should meet on the track at 6:20 p.m., and the Senior Night recognition begins at 6:30 p.m. We will also celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1996 Mena Bearcat Conference Championship Team, and every member of that team receives free admission. Kickoff is at 7:00 p.m., so please come out and fill the stands. Our students also spent time this week exploring what comes next. Mena High School seniors attended the College Fair at the University of Arkansas Rich Mountain, where they explored postsecondary options and talked with college representatives. Our Mena High School FCCLA officers attended the Chapter Officer Leadership Academy at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville on Monday, building skills in chapter planning, public speaking, parliamentary procedure, and networking, along with a campus tour. Last week, members of our Educators Rising chapter attended the Fall Leadership Conference in Little Rock, where students who hope to become teachers took part in leadership and team-building sessions. We are always glad to see future educators coming from our own classrooms. At Holly Harshman Elementary, Mrs. Johnson’s classroom received a $500 grant from Economics Arkansas to support hands-on learning in financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and money management. The students now run the Rise & Shine Coffee Cart, selling coffee and other drinks to teachers and staff each week. Thank you to the staff members who brainstormed the idea. Projects like this give students real-world experience while they build confidence, communication skills, independence, responsibility, and teamwork, and they make for some very happy mornings at Holly Harshman. Great things are brewing. October is National Principals Month, and we are grateful to our building principals for their leadership, dedication, and care for our students and staff. From encouraging students to supporting teachers, they make a difference every day. Nominations for the Mena Public Schools Hall of Honor close on November 30. If you know someone whose achievements, service, and character have brought lasting honor to our schools and community, please nominate them. This week in Mena Morphology Matters, our students studied port, meaning to carry. Next week’s root is ject, meaning to throw or send. Our youngest students will meet it

  2. Oct 16

    Week 10: People Before Programs

    Happy Friday! Thank you for a strong start to the second quarter as we work toward our performance targets. Last week, we took an honest look at our first-quarter attendance and behavior numbers, and this week our work turned toward the people behind those numbers. Our elementary teachers spent time face to face with families, our classrooms continue with expectations, and our buildings began the second quarter with a clear sense of where to focus. This week, I want to share something our district leadership team has been reading and thinking about together. It concerns one of the most common tools in every classroom, and it asks us to be thoughtful about how and when we use it. Screens, Learning, and Purpose This fall, the district leadership team is reading The Digital Delusion by neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath. The book argues that the heavy use of laptops, tablets, and classroom software is weakening the way children learn and develop. Several of its concerns are worth sharing with every member of our staff. * Engagement is not the same as learning. Fast, flashy digital tools can hold a student’s attention without building lasting understanding. A student who is busy on a screen is not always a student who is learning. * Devices invite drift. According to the research the book reviews, students using classroom devices can be off task for as much as 38 minutes of every hour. * Paper and pencil still matter. Students understand what they read better on paper than on a screen, and handwritten notes produce better recall than typed notes. * More screen time tracks with lower scores. On international assessments, students who use computers more than six hours a day score far below students who do not use them at all, a gap of roughly two letter grades. The book is not a call to get rid of technology. Learning to type, building a spreadsheet, or practicing a skill that truly belongs on a computer are good uses of a screen. The question is whether a device is the best tool for the learning in front of us or simply the most convenient one. We began reducing screen time as a district before we ever opened this book. Bell to Bell, No Cell took personal phones out of the school day. We have been doing this for more than two years now, and we have encouraged everyone to reduce screen time for students and increase the amount of handwriting they do. The reading confirms that we are on the right path, but it also reminds us that this work is decided in each classroom, not in a policy. Please monitor how much time students spend on devices. Use devices on purpose, when they are the best tool for the task, and do not let them become the default for every learning activity. Reading from a printed page, writing by hand, working a problem on paper, and talking through an idea with a classmate and a teacher remain some of the most powerful learning experiences we can offer. A Different View Than a Decade Ago This is a real change in thinking for our profession. In 2008, it was widely predicted that half of all high school courses would be delivered online by 2019, and a decade ago many educators believed that prediction was on track. Online learning was expected to become the primary way students learned, and many of us assumed more technology would naturally mean more learning. The results did not support that belief. Even before the pandemic, a national study found that students in full-time online schools gained the equivalent of 180 fewer days of learning in math and 72 fewer days in reading each year than similar students in traditional schools. The pandemic made the cost impossible to ignore. A study of more than two million students in 49 states found that students who spent more of the 2020–2021 school year in remote instruction grew far less than students in earlier years, and the losses were steepest in high-poverty communities. Where schools returned to in-person learning sooner, the losses were smaller. Recovery from those years is still part of our work today. The lesson is not that technology is bad. The lesson is that learning is a human activity. It grows through relationships, focus, conversation, and effort. When we put people before programs, our devices become what they should be: tools that serve our teachers and students rather than replace them. I say all of this as someone who once held the opposite view. When I was in the classroom, I was a technology enthusiast and an early adopter. I was often the first to try a new tool, and I believed, as many educators did, that online learning would one day be the most common way students learned. My enthusiasm cooled well before I opened this book, however, because I have watched the results from online and screen-heavy learning across our state and nation, and I have experienced online learning firsthand as a student myself. Those experiences taught me that a course delivered through a screen is not the same as learning alongside a teacher and classmates who know you. I still believe in the right tools used for the right purposes, but I no longer believe that technology can take the place of a great teacher. Roster Verification Is Now Open On a related note about using technology, the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education has opened the 2027 Roster Verification System (RVS). RVS connects each teacher to the students he or she taught, so each teacher’s state growth score reflects the growth of those students on the spring state assessments. Accurate rosters matter because state growth scores are one route to eligibility under our Merit Pay Pathway, and state growth scores for last year are expected on November 5. What to do now: Log in to LEA Insights with your APSCN ID and password, and select Master Schedule, then Roster Verification System. Review your roster, your potential contributor list, and your course assignments. If you need help with your password, contact the district Active Directory Manager, Nathan Stone. How corrections work: Corrections are not made inside RVS. If something is wrong, let your building principal know so it can be corrected in eSchool or eFinance. RVS updates each night with the previous day’s changes, so you can confirm the correction the next day. Key dates: * October 12, 2026, through April 25, 2027: Review rosters and request corrections. * April 26 through June 1, 2027: Teachers verify their rosters, principals approve all rosters in their buildings, and the superintendent approves all schools in the district. The state’s Roster Verification webpage includes short videos and slide decks for teachers of record and potential contributors, along with the verifiable and excluded course lists, contributor job codes, and a list of frequently asked questions. Please take a few minutes this month to check your roster while your schedule is fresh, rather than waiting for the spring window. Closing Celebrations Thank you to our elementary teachers and staff at Louise Durham Elementary and Holly Harshman Elementary for yesterday’s parent-teacher conferences. Conferences work best as one more step in a conversation that is already happening, and the calls, messages, and progress updates you have shared with families since August made this week’s meetings more productive and more personal. Thank you to every member of our staff, in every building, for the effort you put into keeping families informed. When families and teachers work as partners, students are the ones who benefit most. Thank you to our child nutrition staff, especially the ladies at Holly Harshman, who celebrated National School Lunch Week with this year’s Cafeteria Circus theme. The National School Lunch Program has supported students for 80 years, and our cafeteria teams on each campus show every day that a healthy meal is part of a successful school day. We were happy to host Fields of Faith on Wednesday evening. Thank you to everyone who organized the event, and a special thank-you to those who moved it to the Union Bank Center at the last minute when rain threatened. Their quick work made sure the evening could go on for our students. Our student musicians had a strong week. The beginning choir opened its season Tuesday night with Disney Movie Magic in the Mena High School Performing Arts Center. Congratulations also to our Mena Middle School choir students who auditioned for All-Region. Eight of them earned places in All-Region choirs, and two more were named alternates. It was another strong week for our Bearcats and Ladycats. Volleyball swept Waldron at home on Tuesday, and then on Thursday the seventh-grade, junior, and senior Ladycats all won at Dardanelle without dropping a set. The junior Ladycats host the 4A-2 District Tournament at the Union Bank Center on Saturday and open against Dardanelle at 10:30 a.m. Although school is closed on Monday, our high school campus will be busy as Mena begins hosting the 4A North Regional Tournament. Please come out and support our Ladycats and welcome our visiting teams. Our seventh-grade Bearcats also beat Pottsville in football last night. Mena Esports kept rolling, too, with a 31–1 Rocket League win and several Fortnite victories. The Senior Bearcats are on the road to take on Pottsville tonight at 7 pm. We hope you can make the trip to cheer them on to another victory. This week in Mena Morphology Matters, our students studied log, meaning word, reason, or study. Next week begins the second-quarter theme of Movement and Action with the root port, meaning to carry. Our youngest students will meet it through carry and transport, our third through fifth graders in transport, our middle school students in portable, and our high school students in importation, with import, export, report, porter, and portfolio available across every grade band. The Bearcat Word Detective Challenge asks students to find another word that contains port. It is a fitting root for a week when we asked

  3. Oct 9

    Week 9: Checking Our Progress

    Happy Friday! Thank you for all that you have done this week as we come close to the end of the first quarter. Nine weeks ago, we set out with three performance targets: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and improvement in behavior and school climate. A full quarter is long enough to show patterns, so this week I want to look closely at two of those targets and compare where we are with the same weeks last year. Like any good Level-Up check-in, this one comes with real progress and real work still to do. Both deserve our attention. Attendance Through the First Quarter Through the first quarter, our district attendance rate is 94.7 percent, above our 93.5 percent goal. At the same point last year, we were at 94.9 percent, so we are running just a little behind last year’s pace. There is a lot to celebrate. Holly Harshman Elementary improved in every grade, and our fifth graders are now above 95 percent, a full point higher than last year. Our first, seventh, and ninth graders are also ahead of last year, and our tenth graders have the highest attendance rate in the district. Every grade but one is above our goal. That one grade is kindergarten, and it is our biggest concern. Kindergarten attendance has dropped from 94.8 percent last year to 91.5 percent. Second grade has dipped as well, and together they pulled Louise Durham Elementary down about 1.4 points overall. Mena Middle School and Mena High School are each slightly behind last year. Within those buildings, we are watching sixth grade, the first year at the middle school, and twelfth grade, which is down almost a full point and has the lowest rate at the high school. Kindergarten is when families build school habits, and those habits tend to last. A five-year-old cannot get himself to school. When a kindergarten student starts missing days, the most helpful thing we can do is reach the family early, with a friendly call rather than a warning letter. The first quarter is usually our strongest stretch of the year. Last year, attendance slipped through the colder months before we finished above our goal, and starting a little behind leaves us less room to spare. If you notice a pattern, such as a student who keeps missing Mondays, call the family now to determine what the barriers to attendance may be, and we will try to help. Behavior Through the First Quarter Through the first quarter, we recorded 342 discipline actions, compared with 358 for the same weeks last year. That is a decrease of about 4.5 percent. It is movement in the right direction, but our goal is a 10 percent reduction, which means about 20 fewer actions than we have now. The total also hides two very different stories. The first story is real improvement. Bus incidents dropped from 144 to 84, a 42 percent decrease and the biggest gain in the report. Thank you to our drivers, our transportation staff, and every administrator who has worked on bus behavior. Disorderly conduct dropped by more than 40 percent, from 88 to 50. Tardy-related actions fell from 15 to 2, and fights went down from 8 to 5. Parent conferences nearly tripled, bringing more families into the solution, and out-of-school suspensions stayed low, which means we are still keeping students in school whenever we can. Phone-related incidents also held level in the second year of the Bell to Bell, No Cell Act. The second story is a concern. Outside of buses and disorderly conduct, discipline actions rose from 126 to 208, an increase of about 65 percent, and much of that growth happened in classrooms. Class disruption more than doubled, and insubordination quadrupled. Incidents of physical harm to another student rose from 2 to 25, the most serious change in the report, and vaping incidents rose from 3 to 17. In-school suspension climbed about 7 percent. That keeps students in the building, but it still keeps them out of class. Some of this may reflect more consistent reporting, and accurate records are a good thing because they help us respond. Our building principals are looking closely at the physical harm reports to understand what is behind them. Whatever the cause, every student deserves a classroom and a playground where they feel safe and can learn. What the Numbers Ask of Us The bus numbers prove that focused effort works. Last year, buses were our biggest discipline challenge. This year, clear expectations and steady follow-through made a real difference, and we can bring that same approach into our classrooms. Here are three places to start this week. First, reteach classroom expectations as if it were the first week of school. After nine weeks, routines start to slip, and a short reset now prevents a lot of problems later. Second, invest in relationships with the students who are struggling most. They usually need a trusted adult more than a harsher consequence. Third, keep thinking “45 minutes out” with families. Call home about attendance and behavior early, before small problems become referrals, and call about the good news, too. Parent Square is also a very valuable communication tool we can use to share concerns and report information to families. In fact, next week we will add automatic attendance alerts to Parent Square. This will notify families of their students’ absences on a daily basis and offer a two-way sharing of excuse notes with the offices. A full quarter of data gives us a clear starting point. Leveling-Up means using what we learn and what to do to make the second quarter better than the first. Blue & You Mini Grants for Student Health If you have an idea that could help with some of these needs, there is money available. The Blue & You Foundation for a Healthier Arkansas offers mini grants of $1,000 to $5,000 for health initiatives in public schools. The current window is open now and closes November 30, 2026, with awards announced in December. The School Health Initiatives category includes calming rooms, food pantry supplies, hygiene products, school supplies, financial literacy, and preventative programs. Several of these fit our first-quarter numbers. A calming room gives a struggling student a place to reset before a problem becomes a referral, and hygiene products and pantry supplies remove some of the quiet reasons students stay home. Each application covers one category; the foundation does not award partial amounts, and projects must be in place within six months. The grant cannot pay for salaries, conferences, athletic teams, or tobacco-related projects. The Mini Grant Submission Guidelines have the full details. If you have a project in mind, please talk with your building principal first so we can coordinate applications across the district. Closing Celebrations Congratulations to one of our Louise Durham Elementary teachers, Robin Castor, who was nominated for the 2026–2027 SHAPE Arkansas Teacher of the Year. That honor recognizes excellence in health and physical education. Our youngest readers are off to a great start. Through the 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten program, fifteen of our preschool students have already read at least 100 books with their families this year, and preschool classes have begun regular visits to the Louise Durham Library. Habits like these, built at home before kindergarten even begins, carry into strong attendance and strong reading later on. Thank you to the Mena Fire Department for visiting Louise Durham Elementary to teach fire safety ahead of Fire Prevention Week. Thank you also to the Arkansas Sheriffs Association for their Red Ribbon Week donation. Those partnerships connect what students learn in our classrooms to real careers in public service right here at home. It was a busy week for our Bearcats and Ladycats. Bearcat Golf finished fifth at the 4A State Golf Championship, and one of our Bearcats placed third individually to earn All-State honors and a spot in the Overall Tournament on October 22. On Saturday, the senior volleyball Ladycats finished as runner-up at the Paris Tournament, and the junior Ladycats placed third in their pool at the River Valley Tournament in Greenwood before falling to Rogers in the silver bracket. The senior Ladycats went on to beat Clarksville Tuesday, 3–1, and led a clean sweep at Ozark on Thursday as all four Ladycat teams won. Please come out this Tuesday as the Ladycats host Waldron for Senior Night at the Union Bank Center. Our football Bearcats travel to Lamar tonight for a 7:00 p.m. kickoff after our seventh-grade and junior Bearcats beat Lamar last night. Mena Esports added two more wins and has a team ranked 68th in a league of more than 200. Finally, in honor of National Coaches Day, thank you to every coach who gives our student-athletes their time and leadership. We celebrate our student singers as four Mena High School choir students earned places in the All-Region Choir and will take part in the All-Region clinic and concert in November. Nominations are still open for the Mena Public Schools Hall of Honor, which recognizes people whose achievements, service, and character have brought lasting honor to our schools and community. If you know someone who belongs there, please nominate them. This week in Mena Morphology Matters, our students studied sign, meaning mark. Next week’s root is log, meaning word, reason, or study. Our youngest students will meet it through think and logic, our third through fifth graders in logic, our middle school students in dialogue, and our high school students in logical, with biology, geology, and psychology available across every grade band. The Bearcat Word Detective Challenge asks students why logical thinking is important. It is a fitting root as we close the quarter. Studying our own numbers and reasoning carefully about what they mean is how we decide where to go next. It was a good week of taking stock at Mena Public Schools. At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community i

  4. Oct 2

    Week 8: Making Every Mark Count

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another good week. Coming off homecoming and a professional development day, our buildings settled right back into the work, and that steady return to routine is what keeps us moving toward our three performance targets: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and improvement in behavior and school climate. This week’s Wrap-up is about two kinds of careful counting. The first is our budget for 2026–2027, which the board approved at our last meeting. The second is our local Value-Added Measure (VAM) reports, which will reach teachers who do not receive a state score next week. Both ask the same question: are we using what we have, whether dollars or data, in the way that does the most good for students? Leveling-Up means answering that question with a plan, not a guess. A Careful Budget for a Leaner Year At our last meeting, the school board approved the district’s budget for 2026–2027. I want you to understand the main points of that plan, because it shapes the decisions we make in every building this year. The short version is that we expect less money this year and have planned for it. Our operating fund is projected to bring in about $18.15 million, roughly $1 million less than we received last year. Most of that drop comes from lower state aid, which is tied directly to enrollment. When we serve fewer students, the state sends us fewer dollars, and our enrollment has declined. We also expect less from investment earnings. Local property taxes are expected to rise a little, which helps, but not enough to cover the gap. We did not respond with cuts across the board. Combined teacher salary and operating spending is budgeted at about $17.4 million, down only about 1.3 percent from last year, which is primarily due to us not having to pay for health insurance. The state used to send us that money on a per-pupil basis, and we would just send it back to the Employee Benefits Division. Now, the department will pay EBD directly. The reductions we are making are spread across student support services, facilities, career education, and administration, including central office and building administration. At the same time, the budget puts more money where students need it. Special education rises by about $241,000 to cover therapy services for our students. Federal law also requires us to meet maintenance of effort, which means we must keep up our spending on special education from one year to the next. Transportation rises by about $116,000 so we can buy new buses we badly need. Twenty-three of our buses are more than ten years old. Regular classroom instruction is nearly level with last year, and the budget for classroom supplies and materials actually goes up. Protecting what happens in the classroom was the priority, and the budget shows it. We will soon be sending out specific budgets to those who manage them so each department is aware of its amount. The outlook is steady. Our local revenue has grown over the past several years, and as long as that continues, we will be in good shape. Still, good shape depends on good habits, so I am asking each of you to help. Plan your purchases ahead of time, share resources across classrooms and buildings when you can, and bring essential student and classroom needs to your supervisor early rather than at the last minute. A need we know about in October is much easier to meet than one we hear about in April. None of this changes our goals. Our students are still counting on growth in the classroom, steady attendance, and a positive school climate, and this budget is built to support all three. Spending carefully now is part of Leveling-Up, because it protects the programs and people our students depend on for the years ahead. How Our Local VAM Scores Are Built The state released student growth scores on September 17th, and those scores are what make our local calculations possible. Using them, local Value-Added Measure (VAM) reports will be ready next week for teachers who do not receive a state VAM score. Teachers in tested courses will receive their state VAM scores on November 5th. Before the local reports reach you, I want to repeat the process that I explained back in August as to how they were built. This week, I have been organizing our local VAM reports and updating a district spreadsheet that tracks teacher results from year to year. The process matches the students on each teacher’s roster with their available ATLAS growth scores using student ID numbers. It then applies our highly mobile student exclusions and calculates each local VAM score using the district’s established formula. Two safeguards matter here. Missing growth data are not counted as zero, so a student without a score does not lower your result. Any case that needs clarification stays pending until it has been reviewed. AI has helped with the time-consuming parts of this work: matching records, organizing calculations, and preparing reports for principal–teacher discussions. It has also helped with one of the most important decisions in the process, which is deciding which ATLAS test fits each course. Many of our courses are not tested directly, so for each one, AI compares the course content and standards with what each ATLAS test measures in ELA, mathematics, and science, then recommends the closest match. A course built around measurement and calculation may line up best with mathematics, while one built around reading and writing may line up best with ELA. I review every recommendation before it is used, so the final decision is still made by a person who knows our courses. Each report includes supporting audit information, so your results can be checked rather than simply accepted. The tracking spreadsheet keeps historical scores and will calculate a three-year average once three complete years of data are available. Over time, that average will tell us more than any single year can. Student privacy is a priority throughout this process. Source files that contained student names have been modified to only use state ID numbers. Any future data submissions should contain student ID numbers only, so you will have to look at rosters to know which students are and are not included. These reports are meant to help us look at growth over time, ask useful questions, and find ways to support both teachers and students. When you sit down with your principal to go over your report, that is the conversation I hope you will have. More Time for Merit Pay Intent Forms Once you have your local results, you should have time to look at them before you commit to a plan for the year. I am extending the Merit Pay Intent Declaration Form deadline by one week. Completed forms are now due to your building principal by 4:00 p.m. on Friday, October 9, 2026. That extra week is time to make your plan stronger, not just time to finish it. The strongest intent forms show frequent, embedded instruction tied to English Language Arts, mathematics, science, Algebra I, Geometry, or Biology. A single enrichment activity tied loosely to those areas does not count. Embedded means the skills show up again and again in the regular work of your class. A strong plan shows students doing that work week after week, so the growth can be measured. The best place to start is a conversation with the core content teachers in your building. Ask them which standards their students struggle with most and which ones fit naturally into your content. For example, a welding or mechanics class can teach measurement, ratios, and the geometry of a project. A physical education class can collect data and graph it. Music can use fractions and patterns. An art class can teach proportion and scale. Social Studies and history can focus on close reading and document analysis. A business or FACS course can have students read technical writing closely and write to explain what they did. When your plan uses the same standards and vocabulary the core teacher is using, students practice the same skills in two places, and that is what speeds up their growth. Then narrow your focus to the students who need it most. Our students still scoring at Levels 1 and 2 on ATLAS are where the most growth is possible, and they are the students our report card points us toward. Name those students or groups on your form. Plan for how you will reach them often. Then keep the evidence in the Educator Effectiveness System as you go, so you are not trying to rebuild it at the end of the year. Filing the form still declares intent and does not guarantee merit pay. A clear, focused plan built with your core teachers gives your work its best chance to show up in the data. Closing Celebrations Homecoming ended the right way. In front of a packed Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium, our Bearcats opened conference play with a 38–31 win over Waldron, and the crowd that showed up for the 1976 State Championship Team and our Homecoming Court got a game worth remembering. Tonight, the Bearcats are back at home against an unbeaten Booneville team with a 7:00 p.m. kickoff. Please come out and fill the stands again. Last week, the University of Arkansas Office for Education Policy recognized our schools for high student growth. This week, it released a second set of awards called Beating the Odds. These awards recognize high-growth schools where at least two-thirds of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Mena Middle School ranked fifth in the state for math growth among those schools and first in the Southwest region in both math and ELA growth. Louise Durham Elementary and Holly Harshman Elementary tied for second in the Southwest region for ELA growth. Growth like this does not come from easy circumstances. It comes from teachers who expect every student to learn and then make sure it happens. Our Bearcat Golf team, fresh off its 4A Conference Championship and a Ladycat finishing in the state’s top 10, heads to t

  5. Sep 25

    Week 7: Forty-Five Minutes Out

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another strong week. Last week our report card showed what focused instruction can do, and it showed that an A is only 11.69 points away. This week I want to talk about something underneath every one of those numbers: how we communicate with families. None of our three performance targets- academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and improved behavior and school climate- move very far without families who trust us and hear from us before they have reason to worry. Forty-Five Minutes Out Early in my teaching career, I often took students many miles from home for agricultural/FFA education contests and activities. Parents were placing a great deal of trust in a young teacher, and there were no cell phones. The planning had to happen before we left the parking lot. When did the contest start, and how long would it run? How much money would I and the students need and what had to be paid ahead of time? How long to load students and equipment? Where would we eat, and would we need fuel? What about weather or a contest that ran long? How many hours was the drive home? Once I had worked it all out, I gave parents a written plan and an approximate return time. That estimate mattered. Families used it to decide whether their child could go, to arrange rides, and to know when to be waiting in the parking lot. Most of all, it told them someone had thought through the details before asking for their trust. When cell phones came along, I added one more practice. When we were about 45 minutes from home, I had the students call their parents. It was convenient for me, but the larger reason was that it released the responsibility to the students. When someone is waiting on you, you let them know where you are and when you will be there. Good communication is part of the planning. Before any event, deadline, or change, ask what families will need to know, what they will need to arrange, and when they need to hear from us to have time to respond. So whatever the task, whether it is a field trip, a schedule change, or a student who is starting to slip, I am asking all of us to think "45 minutes out." Look ahead, anticipate what the people depending on us will need, and let them know before they ever have to wonder. No Surprises That foresight matters most when a student is struggling. Parent/Teacher Conferences should never be the first time a family hears that we are concerned. No parent should leave a conference thinking, “I wish I had known.” Please send progress home frequently. A short update should tell families how their child is doing, what needs attention, what support we are already providing, and what they can do next. Include the good news too. A family that hears about growth every week is ready to hear a concern when one comes. Whenever possible, let students help explain their own progress, the same way my students made the call home. This also connects to our report card: the last 11.69 points live in the growth of our lowest-quartile students, and those are the families who most need to hear from us early and often. What ParentSquare Is Telling Us We now have a tool built for this work, and the early numbers from ParentSquare show that many of you are already using it. Since August: * 99.7 percent of our families are reachable. Only five family records need attention. * Staff and families have exchanged 596 direct messages across 304 conversations, and 81 parents have started messages of their own. * Staff have published 64 posts, and 172 parents have responded with 109 appreciations and 19 comments. * 45 teachers have posted or messaged families, and several have each sent dozens of direct messages. Thank you to every teacher who has been using ParentSquare to keep families informed. Our elementary campuses are leading the way. Now for the room to grow: about four out of five staff users have not yet published a post, and far fewer posts have come from our middle school and high school. Secondary teachers see more families, which is exactly why this tool saves time. If you have not used it much yet, start this week with one class post and one direct message to a family you have not heard from lately. Also encourage parents to download the app. Only 23 percent have it, and those who do get our messages as notifications instead of waiting in an inbox. If you would like to see the full ParentSquare data dashboard with the most recent numbers, you may view it here. When to Pick Up the Phone Written messages carry our words without our voice, and tone is the first thing lost. In studies by Justin Kruger and Nicholas Epley, email senders expected readers to catch their intended tone about 89 percent of the time, but readers got it right only about 63 percent of the time. By voice, accuracy rose to about 73 percent. Kristin Byron’s research found that readers often take work emails as more negative than intended, so a note meant as concerned can land as critical. And although most of us expect phone calls to feel awkward, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley found that calls built a stronger connection than email and were no more awkward. Use written messages for reminders, updates, and routine progress. Pick up the phone when you are sharing a concern for the first time, when the topic is sensitive, when a parent is upset, when a thread keeps going back and forth, or when you want a family to hear good news in your voice. Follow an important call with a short written summary. After all, the call home at 45 minutes out was a phone call. Families appreciated hearing their child’s voice. They will appreciate hearing yours too. Natural State Ornament Project The Arkansas Department of Education has invited each school building to submit one student-designed ornament for the holiday tree at the Arkansas State Capitol through the Natural State Ornament Project. The theme is Symbols of Our State, such as the state bird, flower, tree, mammal, insect, or flag. * Designs must be hand-drawn, painted, or colored by a student. No AI-generated or computer-created artwork will be accepted. * Students must use the official ornament template, and the selected design must be scanned as a JPEG. * Each building chooses its own design in October. The entry form in the link must be submitted by October 24th. Submissions are due to the Department on November 13th, the display opens November 16th, and ornaments return in January. If your students take part, let their families know now. A parent whose child’s design might hang in the State Capitol will want to hear about it early. Closing Celebrations What a week it has been. Homecoming week filled our buildings with festivities, school colors, and the kind of energy you can only get when an entire community pulls in the same direction. If anyone doubted it, this morning’s pep rally settled the question. It was loud, it was proud, and it was a preview of what we expect tonight: a big and excited crowd at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium as our Bearcats open conference play against Waldron. Homecoming is one of the few nights each year when current students, alumni, families, and neighbors all fill the same stands for the same reason. That shared joy is not a small thing. It is the kind of unity that carries into our classrooms next week and reminds all of us that these are our kids, and this is our school. Please note that the Homecoming Ceremony has moved to 6:15 p.m., ahead of the 7:00 p.m. kickoff, so we can recognize our Homecoming Court and honor the 1976 State Championship Football Team. Fifty years later, that team is still part of what it means to be a Bearcat, and I hope you will be in your seat early to welcome them home. The academic news this week was just as worth cheering. The Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas recognized all four of our schools in its annual Outstanding Educational Performance Awards for high student growth on ATLAS. Louise Durham Elementary and Holly Harshman Elementary each earned High ELA Growth in the Southwest region. Mena Middle School earned High Math Growth statewide, along with High Overall Growth, High Math Growth, and High ELA Growth in the Southwest region. Mena High School earned High Math Growth in the Southwest region, finishing in the top five in the region. Last week I wrote that reading growth is where our last points live. It is encouraging to see that our elementary campuses are already being recognized for exactly that. Our athletes had a full week as well. Bearcat Golf hosted the 4A Conference Tournament at Glenwood Country Club and came away as 4A Conference Champions, taking the top two individual spots, while our Ladycats finished fourth. The Bearcats advance to the 4A State Tournament in Harrison on October 5 and 6, and one of our Ladycats qualified individually for the Girls State Tournament at Sage Meadows on September 28 and 29. Thank you to the golf families, volunteers, local supporters, and Glenwood Country Club for making that tournament possible. On the volleyball court, all three Ladycat teams beat Ozark on Tuesday, and our junior Ladycats followed with a 2–1 win over Hackett yesterday. In junior high football, our seventh graders beat Waldron 18–8, and our junior Bearcats won 32–0. In our tennis match at DeQueen, the Ladycats won both of their matches and the Bearcats split theirs. A reminder that Monday, September 28, is a Teacher Professional Development Day, with no school for students. This week in Mena Morphology Matters, our students studied phon, meaning sound. Next week’s root is lingua, meaning language or tongue. Our youngest students will meet it through speak and language, our third through fifth graders in language, our middle school students in linguistics, and our high school students in multilingual, with bilingual and linguist available across every grade band. The Bearcat Word Detective Challenge asks students how life would be diff

  6. Sep 18

    Week 6: Twelve Points Away

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another week of good, hard work. Six weeks in, our routines are holding, our classrooms are settled, and the instruction we are seeing is purposeful and paced. A particular thank-you goes to everyone who gave time beyond the school day this week. Our elementary staff has been hosting grade-level parent meetings, and our middle school and high school staff held parent-teacher conferences, which meant late afternoons and evenings on top of a full teaching load. Those conversations are where families stop being an audience and start being partners. Every one of you who stayed made this district stronger this week than it was last week, and we do not take that for granted. That work connects directly to our three performance targets: continued academic growth, daily attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. Parent meetings and conferences move all three at once. A family that understands what their child is expected to learn is a family that gets that child to school, backs you up on expectations, and asks better questions at home. There is no target on our list that gets easier without them. The state released the 2026 school and district report cards yesterday, and I want to give them to you straight before anyone hears a version of them somewhere else. This report card is the first hard evidence of what our academic growth target actually produced last year, and it is good news. It is also specific about where our work is not finished, which is exactly what a useful measure should do. What the Report Card Says Mena School District earned a B for the second year in a row, with an index score of 520.31 out of 900. Two years ago that number was 451.02. Last year it was 485.00. This year it is 520.31. That is 69 points of movement in two years, and it puts us above 85 percent of the 251 rated districts in Arkansas. Last year we were above 69 percent. The state median district scored 466.00, so we are sitting 54 points above the middle of the state. Three of our four indicators improved for the third consecutive year. Achievement climbed from 110.69 to 122.51 to 146.16 out of 300 possible points, which is the largest single jump on the report card. Behind that number, the percentage of our students scoring at levels 3 and 4 rose in every subject: English Language Arts from 35.40 to 43.96 percent, mathematics from 42.74 to 49.80 percent, and science from 44.37 to 52.40 percent. Overall Growth rose again to 165.75, with 62.79 percent of our students meeting their individual math growth targets, a rate that ranks above 95 percent of comparable districts. Success-Ready Graduate rose from 130.77 to 142.30 to 155.03 out of 200, carried by a four-year cohort graduation rate that moved from 85.71 percent to 97.54 percent and by 58.91 percent of our graduates finishing with Merit or Distinction. The building-level results are the part I am most proud to share. Mena Middle School moved from a C to a B, from 441.82 to 503.71, a gain of nearly 62 points. Mena High School also moved from a C to a B, from 405.63 to 471.91, a gain of more than 66 points, with 61.48 percent of graduates earning Merit or Distinction. Our elementaries held their B grade to give us Bs across the board. Two schools moved up a full letter grade in the same year. That does not happen by accident, and it does not happen without great teaching and support. It is also worth saying plainly that the gains were not limited to one group of students. Every reported student group in our district improved its index score over last year. Our economically disadvantaged students, who made up 68.1 percent of our enrollment, improved from 459.68 to 500.89 and earned a B of their own, ranking above 87 percent of comparable districts. When a district’s gains show up across the board rather than in one corner, it usually means the instruction changed rather than the roster. There is more data about our school and other schools available in the AR Data Hub. Mena Middle School Is an Arkansas Gem School Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva notified us this week that Mena Middle School has earned a 2026 Arkansas Gem School designation for Growth by Content Area in Mathematics. That designation goes to schools ranking in the top 10 percent statewide within their grade span for growth in a single subject. Out of every middle school in Arkansas, our math growth is in the top tier. The numbers behind it are worth seeing. At Mena Middle School, 74.06 percent of students met their math growth target. Middle school math achievement reached 61.78 percent scoring at levels 3 and 4, against a state middle school median of 44.50 percent. And among the students who started the year farthest behind their peers, 74.00 percent met their math growth target, up from 61.63 percent the year before. Our lowest-performing math students grew faster than three-quarters of the state. Mena Middle School will receive a recognition item from the Department and a designation marker on My School Info. To our middle school math teachers, interventionists, and the leadership that protected the time to do this work: this is a state-level recognition earned entirely by results. Congratulations. When you share this one, please use #ArkansasGemSchool and tag the Arkansas Department of Education so the state can help us celebrate it. Where the Last Twelve Points Live Now the honest part, and it is the reason I titled this Wrap-up the way I did. An A in Arkansas requires an index score of 532.00. We scored 520.31. We are 11.69 points from an A. After two years of climbing, we are closer to the top rating than most districts in this state will ever get, and we are close enough that the gap is no longer abstract. It has an address. Three of our four indicators went up. One went down. Growth of the Lowest Quartile fell from 55.69 to 53.37 out of 100 possible points, and it is the only place on our entire report card that moved backward. That indicator asks one question: are the students who are farthest behind their peers growing? Ours are growing, but not fast enough, and not evenly. Districtwide, 61.37 percent of our lowest-quartile students met their math growth target, which ranks above 86 percent of comparable districts and is genuinely strong. But only 47.48 percent met their ELA target, ranking above just 42 percent of districts, and only 51.25 percent met their science target, ranking above just 37 percent. That indicator is worth 100 points, and we earned 53.37 of them. There are 46.63 points sitting in it. We need 11.69. I want everyone to sit with that arithmetic for a minute, because it means the difference between a B district and an A district is not a mystery, a formula change, or a better group of students. It is reading and science instruction for the students who are furthest behind, and it is available to us this year. The pattern holds in every building, which tells me it is a system issue rather than a building issue. Lowest-quartile ELA growth was 50.00 percent at our elementary, 46.53 percent at the middle school, and 44.90 percent at the high school. Science was 47.42 percent at the middle school. And our elementary index declined this year, from 511.28 to 458.54, driven almost entirely by growth and lowest-quartile growth rather than achievement. Our elementary science achievement was actually our strongest achievement figure in the district at 55.19 percent. The gap there is growth, not content knowledge. So here is the ask. Every one of you knows which of your students are in that bottom quartile. Look at them by name, and look hardest at reading. Our math results prove we already know how to move students who start behind. We have done it at scale in one subject and earned a state designation for it. Now we do the same thing in literacy and science. We went from a C to a B in two years. Eleven points is the shortest distance we have ever had to cover. Closing Celebrations There is no football game tonight. Our Bearcats are on a bye, so enjoy a rare open Friday evening, and we will be back at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium next Friday, September 25, for Homecoming and our conference opener against Waldron. The rest of our programs stayed busy this week. Our tennis teams had an outstanding Tuesday against Malvern, where our Bearcats swept all four matches. On the volleyball court, our junior Ladycats brought home a second-place finish from the Paris Tournament on Saturday. One more piece of good news, and it lands squarely alongside our report card. The Arkansas Department of Education has selected Chelsea Johnson, our eighth-grade math and Algebra I teacher at Mena Middle School, for the Arkansas Excellence in Teaching Fellowship. Now in its second year, this nine-month paid fellowship recognizes teachers who earn merit pay and elevates public understanding of what great teaching looks like. Congratulations, Mrs. Johnson. That is a well-earned recognition, and it reflects on the whole department that works alongside you. In Mena Morphology Matters, next week's root is phon, meaning sound. Our youngest students will meet it in sound (telephone), our third through fifth graders in telephone, our middle school students in microphone, and our high school students in symphony, with phonics, phonograph, and headphones available across every grade band. The Bearcat Word Detective Challenge asks students what would happen if people could not hear sound. We could not have picked a better root for the week this Wrap-up describes if we tried. Phonics sits right there in the middle of the word family, and phonics is exactly where the work on our lowest quartile begins. Before a student can grow in reading, that student has to be able to hear the sounds inside a word and match them to print. Our report card says reading growth for our students who are furthest behind is the last ground we have to cover. Next week our whole

  7. Sep 11

    Week 5: Putting It on the Record

    Before anything else, today marked twenty-five years since September 11, 2001. Patriot Day is not among the state's required instructional observances, so how the day was handled belonged to each of you, and I am grateful for the care you gave it. Every student in our buildings was born after that morning, which means the adults in our schools are the ones who remember it firsthand. A moment of silence, an honest answer to a student's question, or a word of thanks to a first responder or veteran in our community was enough. Our standards ask our students to know what happened. Our work is helping them understand why it still matters. Happy Friday! Five weeks in, the short week felt like we were moving from starting school to running with purpose and intent. Thank you for the work that got us here. Routines are settled enough now that instruction, not logistics, is what fills the day, and that shift is what makes the rest of the year possible. We are still working toward the same three targets: continued academic growth, daily attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. Attendance is the one I want on your mind this month, because September sets the pattern for the year. Every conversation with a family about getting a student here on time is a conversation about all three targets at once. Two items in this Wrap-up deserve your attention, and both come down to the same idea. Good work that is not documented is difficult to recognize, and requirements that are not planned for become last-minute scrambles. Leveling-Up means putting things on the record before the deadline arrives rather than after. Mena’s Merit Pay Pathway State growth scores will be released on September 17, and once they arrive, we will calculate local VAM scores using the process I presented to you before school started. Teachers who receive a state three-year growth average are automatically eligible for merit-pay consideration and do not need to do anything. Contracts for that group were already formed using the adopted index scale applied directly to the state growth measure. That is the straightforward half of the system. The other half is the reason we built a district pathway. A merit pay model should not reward only the teachers who happen to receive a state-generated score. Many of you influence student growth every day without teaching a directly tested course, and if merit pay were tied only to state VAM, opportunity would be uneven before the conversation ever began. Our District VAM and Educator Impact pathway exists to close that gap. It is equal opportunity, not lower standards, and I want to be honest that it is not the easier route. It asks for documentation, artifacts, and principal approval that the state pathway does not require. If you do not receive a state VAM score and you want to be considered, complete the Merit Pay Intent Declaration Form, sit down with your building principal to discuss it, and put your intent on record for the remainder of this school year. The form is linked in this Wrap-up so you can pull it up and get started today, and completed forms are due to your building principal by 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 1, 2026. The form asks you to name one growth focus area in English Language Arts, mathematics, or science, explain how your course, program, intervention, or instructional role connects to growth in that area, identify the student outcomes and strategies you intend to use, name the students or groups through which your impact will be documented, and mark the evidence you will maintain in the Educator Effectiveness System. Your principal then reviews and signs it. Filing the form declares intent and begins the evidence process. It does not guarantee merit pay, because final eligibility still depends on growth data, documentation, and administrative review. What Our Social Studies Teachers Need on the Calendar Arkansas released its 2026-2027 social studies instructional observances last week, and two of them arrive within days. Constitution Day falls on Thursday, September 17, and federal law requires every district to hold an educational program on the United States Constitution that day, commemorating the signing in 1787. Celebrate Freedom Week follows September 21 through 25, when state law directs every social studies class to include instruction on the freedoms we enjoy and the sacrifices that secured them. The state resources for both are organized as general K-12 materials, so our elementary teachers have something usable as well. Suggested topics are named in the law, but curriculum decisions belong to us, so feel free to build something that fits your students and our academic targets rather than pull a generic lesson off a shelf. The newest requirement deserves the most attention. Beginning this year, districts must ensure instruction addresses the Founding Fathers and how their religious and moral beliefs shaped our founding documents, including the Declaration’s assertion of unalienable rights, the founders’ commitments to ordered liberty and the free exercise of religion, their influence on separation of powers and the Bill of Rights, and the connection between their beliefs and the freedoms Americans hold today. This is an embedding requirement rather than a separate unit, so the work is a review of our existing grades 6-12 curricula to confirm those concepts sit intentionally in the right courses. Two other items are required later. Holocaust Education Week falls January 25 through 29, 2027, with grade-band resources releasing December 1, and an Arkansas Veterans unit for our Arkansas History courses releases October 1. The Arkansas Celebrates America250 dashboard also remains open with standards-aligned lessons and enrichment projects. In the year our nation marks 250 years, our students should be able to explain what happened, why it mattered, and where Arkansas stood in it. Closing Celebrations Our senior high Bearcats host Central Arkansas Christian tonight at Bob Carver Bearcat Stadium with a seven o’clock kickoff, and after the first two weeks of the season being on the road, our players have earned a full home crowd. Please come out and be loud. Our conference opener against Waldron follows on September 25 at home. It was a busy week across the rest of our programs. Our golf teams traveled to Mystic Creek to face Magnolia and El Dorado on their home course, with Fountain Lake and Camden Fairview also in the field, and our Bearcats came away with a second-place individual finish on a round of 74 while our Ladycats were led by a fifth-place finish overall. Our cross country runners competed at the Tom Stuthard Stampede in Acorn on Tuesday, where our junior boys placed fourth as a team behind a tenth-place individual finish, and our junior girls, senior girls, and senior boys were each led by strong efforts of their own. That team returns to Acorn on Tuesday, September 22. Our volleyball teams opened the week the hard way, falling at Lakeside on Tuesday at the senior, junior, and seventh grade levels, and then answered it Thursday with victories at Waldron. That is the part worth recognizing. A rough Tuesday is not what defines a team. Coming back two days later and winning on the road is, and our Ladycats and their coaches deserve credit for how quickly they turned the week around. Our fine arts students are another reason to celebrate. Our band has been at every football game this season, in the stands and on the field, and the great atmosphere at the games belongs to our band students and directors as much as anyone. In theatre, auditions for The Lightning Thief drew a record turnout, and the props that are being built speak to the creativity and dedication of our students. Just as impressive, the fair art on display last week was very creative and appealing to parents and fair patrons. To our fine arts staff, thank you for building programs students want to be a part of and bringing out the best of their talents. In Mena Morphology Matters, our Week 5 root is graph, meaning “to write.” Our youngest students will meet it in autograph, our middle school students in paragraph, and our high school students in epigraph, with biography, graphic, and telegraph available across every grade band. It is a fitting root for a week built around documentation. A biography is a life written down, an autograph is a name written by the person who owns it, and an epigraph is a short writing at the beginning of a book, chapter, or building. Everything worth remembering eventually has to be written down, which is exactly the point of both the merit pay form and a well-planned unit. It was a good week of post-Labor Day work at Mena Public Schools. At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident. Keep Leveling-Up, and have a great weekend! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com

  8. Sep 4

    Week 4: The Story Our Numbers Tell

    Happy Friday! Thank you for another strong week of work. Four weeks in, the routines are holding, the hallways feel settled, and the instruction we are seeing in classrooms is purposeful. That is not a small thing in early September, and it is the direct result of the preparation each of you put in before the first bell ever rang. Every fall, our district compiles its Annual Report to the Public, a required accounting of our finances, student performance, personnel, and programs. We are in the final stages of building the 2026-2027 report right now, and I want you to see it before the community does. This report is full of robust data from last year and this current school year. Too often, a document like this becomes a compliance exercise filed away in a cabinet. Ours tells a story, and the story is a good one. This matters for our three performance targets, too. We are working toward continued academic growth, daily attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. The Annual Report is the evidence base underneath those targets. Leveling-Up is not only about what we intend to do this year. It is also about recognizing the ground we have already gained, because you cannot build confidently on a foundation you do not know you have. Careful Stewardship of Every Dollar Mena Public Schools spent $15,264 per student last year. The Arkansas average was $16,557. That means we educated our students on $1,293 less per child than the typical district in this state, and we did it while our academic indicators moved in the right direction. We want to be clear about what that number represents, because spending below the state average can be read two different ways. It does not mean we cut corners on students. It means we run a disciplined operation and push the savings back toward the classroom. Of that per-pupil total, $5,827 went to maintenance and operations, $4,852 to teacher salaries, $1,968 to debt, $1,084 to federal grants, $633 to transportation, $613 to academics, and $287 to student extracurricular activities. Our total state and local revenue for 2025-2026 came to $19,814,344, built primarily on $7,576,627 in local tax revenue and $8,385,659 in state foundation aid, with $900,483 arriving through the LEARNS teacher minimum salary funding and $593,978 in Enhanced Student Achievement dollars. Our community funds these schools generously, and we owe them careful management in return. You can see where that discipline goes. Last year alone the district re-paved the parking lots at Mena Middle School and Mena High School, resurfaced the track, upgraded our campus and bus communications system, purchased a new bus with a wheelchair lift, added safety features on every campus, adopted a new K-5 literacy curriculum, replaced teacher and student computers, installed new cafeteria equipment and new lighting controls in the Performing Arts Center, replaced carpet and baseboards, added ceiling-mounted side goals at UBC, added academic support staff, and built the bus loop awning at Louise Durham Elementary. None of that is glamorous. All of it matters to the person standing in front of students every day. Our Enhanced Student Achievement funds, which are tied to the number of students qualifying for free and reduced meals, went toward dyslexia instruction, school security, concurrent credit tuition, and transportation, communications, and logistics. With 62.3 percent of our students on free or reduced meal plans last year, those are the exact places where a rural district either supports its students or does not. State rules require us to spend 85 percent of that allocation each year, and we do more than that. Competitive grants have also made a significant impact across our district. Over the last two fiscal years, Mena Public Schools secured $167,800 through the Stronger Connections Grant, $167,800 through the State School Safety Grant, $178,500 for High Impact Tutoring, $31,148.25 for CTE Modernization, and $31,470 through the Phone Free Schools Grant. Federal programs have provided an additional $1.2 million for district personnel salaries and benefits, supporting certified staff and instructional aides who work directly with students. These funds also provided $12,089 for staff professional development, $34,751 for parental involvement programs, $73,786 for technology resources and internet safety programming, and $83,967 for classroom instructional supports and resources. Together, these investments allow us to add people, strengthen instruction, support families, improve safety, and provide opportunities for students beyond what local resources alone could provide. What the Enrollment Numbers Actually Say Our current enrollment stands at 1,653 students, supported by 147 certified and 89 classified staff members. Enrollment in rural Arkansas has been a difficult conversation for a decade, and I would rather we have it honestly than avoid it.Here is what the opening weeks of this year actually show. Ninety students withdrew. One hundred four registered. That is a net gain of fourteen students. The single largest reason families left was relocation outside Polk County, at thirty-nine students, and relocation was also our single largest source of new students, at forty-nine. We lost twenty-one students to homeschooling and gained seventeen back. We lost twenty-one to Acorn and Oden and gained sixteen from the same direction. Twelve of our new registrations are international exchange students, which is a genuine bright spot for our classrooms and our community. That is churn, not exodus. Families move in nearly as often as they move out, and school choice is flowing toward Mena at roughly the rate it flows away. Any longer-term decline in our enrollment trend is better explained by demographics, with larger graduating classes replaced by smaller kindergarten cohorts, than by families leaving unhappy. I say this because you will hear the other version in town, and you deserve the actual data. One related note deserves your attention. When families ask about full-time virtual options, please encourage them to look closely at the outcomes on My School Info. Arkansas’s largest virtual schools posted state report card grades of D and C last year, with elementary reading proficiency at 22 percent against a state average near 40 percent, and national graduation rates for full-time virtual schools run far below the national average. Online learning genuinely fits some students, and we offer options for those it fits. It is hardest on our youngest learners and on students who need relationship-based instruction to build foundational skills. Families should choose with their eyes open. Evidence That Our Targets Are Moving We set our performance targets a few weeks ago. The Annual Report gives us the baseline those benchmarks sit on top of, and several lines are genuinely encouraging. Attendance finished last year at 93.75 percent. That cleared our 93.5 percent target, landed above the state average of 93.35 percent, and rose sharply from 92.34 percent the year before. That is the first meaningful climb since the pandemic, and it happened because we invested in helping families overcome barriers and because you kept telling students that showing up matters. Discipline referrals fell 12.89 percent district-wide against a target of 10 percent. Our workforce stability index has run above the state average consistently, and in the most recent years that gap has widened considerably in our favor. Stable adults in front of students is not a soft outcome. It is one of the most reliable predictors we have of both achievement and climate. Our external position has improved as well. Mena Public Schools now ranks 45th of 251 Arkansas districts on SchoolDigger, a climb of twenty-eight spots, and we lead every district in the DeQueen-Mena Educational Cooperative area. Rankings are not a finish line, but they do tell us the work is registering outside our county line. Reading the New Accountability Baseline This year’s ATLAS results are a districtwide win, and they belong to you. Proficiency climbed in all three tested subjects. ELA rose to 50 percent, a gain of 10 points. Math rose to 54 percent, a gain of 8 points. Science rose to 52 percent, a gain of 8 points. Mena students now outperform the Arkansas state average in most tested grades and subjects. Our strongest gains showed up in early literacy and secondary math, with standouts such as 8th Grade Math sitting a full 32 points above the state and 1st Grade ELA 19 points above. These numbers are not luck, and they are not a single-year bounce. They are broad, they are consistent across grade bands, and they line up directly with the instructional work we have been doing. Focusing on Tier I instruction, improving our intervention systems, and the shift toward stronger foundational reading are all showing up in the results. In other words, this is proof that what we have been doing is working. At the same time, we are being honest with ourselves. We still have areas below the state average, and those are exactly where we are focusing our energy this year. Celebrating the growth and naming the gaps are how we increase our collective efficacy. Doing both is what keeps our momentum real. Last year proved the approach works, so this is no time to coast on it. Let us keep the pace and Level Up. Staying locked in on the Academic Learning Descriptors (ALD) and moving every student toward Levels 3 and 4 for their grade is how we protect these gains and extend them. We do not rest on last year’s laurels. We build on them. Preparing Students for What Comes Next Our seniors are leaving prepared, and the readiness data is the part of this report we most enjoy sharing. The Class of 2026 earned 64 Diplomas of Merit and Distinction out of roughly 112 seniors. Seventy-eight students completed a career pathway, finishing 103 pathways in total, led by Agri

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things that Mena Public School staff members need or want to know presented in a discussion format. bearcatwrap.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. Lee Smith
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    146
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dr. Lee Smith
  • Show Website
    Bearcat Wrap-up Podcast