OHMS keeping parents involved

OAK HILL — Assessing student achievement was just one of the areas of focus as Oak Hill Middle School staff and administrators welcomed parents and their children to school for an after-hours event on Sept. 13.

The Tuesday parent involvement event featured teachers sitting down with parents and students and exploring achievement goals for the 2022-23 school year.

Oak Hill Middle School Principal Cynthia Hedrick said the evening actually served a four-fold purpose.

"We are surveying our community, our parents, trying to find out what they need from us," Hedrick said. "What kind of (educational) topics do they want to know about."

"We're also handing out the last year's GSA (general summative assessment) score reports, but we don't want to just hand them out," she added. "We've created a worksheet so that they can look at and understand their data, and then also set goals. I think that's important."

Going further, "We also want our parents to understand the depth of knowledge, the types of questions that we're asking, the Lexiles (students' reading abilities), the Quantiles (readiness for math instruction), how all that plays in what we do on a daily basis in the classroom. That's important, because education is evolving, it's changing."

Finally, parents and teachers discussed expectations for student behavior.

Such parent involvement activities are crucial to the success of the educational delivery model within the school system, Hedrick said.

While noting that she's a proponent of school athletic events, Hedrick said, "It's important that we get the input, and that we get parents here for more than just sporting events."

Email: skeenan@register-herald.com or follow on Twitter @gb_scribe