Richland 02 reports early gains after new math, literacy rollouts

Richland 02 officials on April 29 told the district’s academics committee they have completed year-one rollouts of new math and literacy programs and are seeing preliminary positive signals.

"We began this summer with training for our school administrators as well as our teachers and we rolled right on into our school year with PD ongoing throughout the school year," said Mr. Newton, the district’s executive director who led the elementary update, describing the Eureka Squared math implementation. He told the committee that calibration walkthroughs with Great Minds and formative assessment data show student achievement "is right there or even above in some areas" compared with prior standards.

The committee heard that the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) was implemented as a district-level, Richland 02 initiative in K–3 classrooms after the district wrote a proposal and allocated funds to support the intervention. "We wrote a proposal to our district for some funds to pay for that and we were able to get it," Mr. Newton said.

Dr. Davis summarized secondary work, saying nearly all schools participated in a national math AI pilot this year to support faithful curriculum implementation and to provide teachers with targeted strategies. "All the classrooms that we visited, they were implementing the curriculum with integrity," he said, and added benchmarks show more students scoring in the proficient range on the district exams.

Committee members pressed for details on vendor feedback and public access to resources. Trustee Porter asked whether Great Minds’ feedback was positive; Mr. Newton said the vendor’s input covered student discourse and engagement and overall was "very positive," while advising the district to work on lesson pacing so teachers do not try to master every spiral in a single lesson.

Officials also acknowledged a parent-facing counselor and family resources site is posted internally and must be moved to a publicly accessible page. "The resources are there. We just have to put them out for parents to be able to see," Dr. Davis said.

Why it matters: the district is changing curricula across grade levels for math and ELA, and early benchmarks and classroom walkthroughs are the first available indicators of implementation quality. The committee directed staff to continue professional development, make family resources more accessible, and present an academics dashboard at the May meeting to provide clearer public-facing narrative alongside numbers.

The committee will revisit coaching support, rollout outcomes and the dashboard at the May 22 meeting.