Fresh Takes on Freshmen On Track

On January 19th, I had the opportunity to speak to Jason Spang, Principal of Peotone High School. Peotone recently finished the 2021-2022 school year with 96.5% of their Freshmen ending the year on track for a four year graduation. Peotone High School is one that does a lot with the resources they have available in order to make sure all of their students are successful. One part of that system includes them adopting a 20 minute advisory period in the middle of the day titled "Blue Devil Support" or "BDS".  Every teacher in the building has a roster of up to 14 students and special education teachers have a roster comprised of students on their caseload. During this time, students are expected to check in with their BDS teacher and are then encouraged to seek support from teachers in courses they are struggling in.  As an additional study time for Freshmen in need of extra support, Peotone offers an elective course called " Freshmen Transition " that is a

On January 9th, I had the opportunity to visit with Morgan Gallagher, the Chief of Schools at RPS 205, to discuss the work they are doing to keep Freshmen on track. In addition to a dedicated staff, the efforts outlined below has them at a 3% increase over where they were this time of year last year. Rockford utilizes a Freshmen Academy  model in order to ease the transition from middle school to high school and has been creative over the years on ways to onboard students to make sure they start off their first year of high school with the skills they need to be successful. Most recently, they developed a program called reFRESH  that provides 8th graders with the opportunity to take some summer classes before Freshmen year. In the reFRESH program, students are given extra instruction in math and English in order to close any skill gaps and to give them a jump start on their coursework. Students in this program are invited in by staff  that utilizes data collected throughout 8th grade.