Sterling schools relish return to Commendable status

STERLING — At 9 a.m. Thursday morning, Superintendent Tad Everett issued the first of what were to be several messages released throughout the day with the good news:

The Illinois State Board of Education lifted the Targeted status Sterling Public Schools had operated under for the past two years.

[ Illinois' high school graduation rate highest in at least a decade. ]

[ State identifies Sauk Valley's Exemplary, Targeted schools in latest report card. ]

The Illinois Report Card data, which went out on Thursday morning, showed all six of the district’s schools were now rated Commendable.

“This is a total team effort from our students, staff, teachers and aides, administrators, our board,” said Everett. “I’m just so happy for them because there’s been a lot of work.”

Everett’s first announcement was part of his daily superintendent’s notes to staff. An email for parents went out at 9:30 a.m. Communications to the community from the district web page and through its social media were planned for later in the day.

“We have more work to do.” Everett said, noting that the improvements the district implemented are still ongoing. “But we’ll take a moment and relish this.”

Two years ago the district’s elementary schools at Lincoln and Washington and its middle school Challand were labeled as Targeted because achievement lagged for students in special education and those with individual education plans, commonly called IEPs.

Looking back, Everett said receiving the news of the district’s shortcomings was bad-tasting medicine.

“It was a gut punch — and we needed it,” he said.

Working with Regional Office of Education 47, the district went through an assessment and developed an action plan that included additional resources for the professional development of its teaching staff.

“The board committed finances to this,” Everett said.

The district added math and reading interventionists, it beefed up administration, added to the teaching ranks especially in the area of special education, ditched outdated curriculum, implemented new methods and practices for teachers across the board and expanded staff to include social workers. Where it could, it addressed class size.

[ Sterling kindergarten teacher shifts over to becoming a reading interventionist. ]

“By adding additional teachers, we’ve added additional aides for support and all that, again to provide support for our struggling learners,” Everett said.

The improvements are ongoing. At Wednesday’s board of education meeting, curriculum director Matt Birdsley provided the results of a survey given to teachers evaluating the effectiveness of the professional learning communities — or PLCs — that were implemented at the start of the school year.

The answers to 10 questions about the process were largely favorable, he said. Some teachers reported wanting a greater say in setting the priorities for those meetings in which they discuss student assessments and collaborate on action plans for the classrooms based on that data. Others say the weekly hour-long meetings aren’t enough to tackle everything that needs doing.

“I’d rather there be too much to do than not enough,” Birdsley said.

There have been bumps along the way to Commendable status. The biggest — once in-person learning resumed in 2021-22 — was the strain COVID-19 mitigations were having on the teachers and staff while it was simultaneously making these changes. By October of last year, everyone was out of steam.

Eventually, the district and the school’s two unions reached a memorandum of understanding that addressed working conditions while trying to stay on its progressive track.

If anything was evident on Wednesday evening, it was that Everett was bursting to inform the board the results of the Illinois Report Card.

Instead of spilling the beans, he had the building principals stand for special recognition and offered effusive praise for recent efforts.

Later in the meeting he told the board he had wished he could share Illinois Report Card results, but that they were embargoed for 9 a.m.

But they would hear from him in the morning, he promised. And when they did, it was good news.