LEESBURG - Leesburg Elementary School has so greatly improved academically over the past three years that even state officials are nominating the school for awards.In February, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Suellen Reed recommended Leesburg for the Eighth Annual National School Change Awards. In her letter of recommendation for the award, Reed wrote that Leesburg "has made significant progress in the last three years on the Indiana Statewide Test of Academic Progress.
"Teachers, students, parents, administrators and community members have all worked hard to bring about improvement in the school. This kind of improvement must be continued in order for our students to be well-prepared for success in the future."
After being recommended for the award, Leesburg School then had to apply for the award, according to Principal Marv Marino. Marino, 10 teachers, parent volunteer Denise Schue and computer lab coordinator Patti Hanson then put together a portfolio of information with the application.
"I was excited," said Marino. "I thought we did a very good job."
The portfolio contains many pages of information on Leesburg School and how it has changed to become a better school. Specific questions supplied by the application process are answered, such as: How meaningful is the change? Is it substantial rather than superficial? How deep and broad is the change? How is the change focused?
Demographic information on the school also is supplied as part of the process. Leesburg has 569 students enrolled, with 50 percent of them qualifying for free or reduced lunch prices. Seventy-four percent are caucasian, 2 percent African-American, 24 percent Hispanic, 1 percent Asian and 2 percent other.
"When we were writing this," said Marino, "it was a really fun celebration."
Over the years, he said, Leesburg has turned its test scores around from being one of the lowest in the Warsaw School Corp.
On May 2, Marino received notice from Lew Smith, National School Change Award director, that Leesburg was selected as one of 26 finalists in the award process. This year, the competition for the award was especially stiff, Smith wrote, since a "record-breaking 127 strong nominations" were received from all across the United States. Each of those 127 schools first had to be nominated.
Though Leesburg was not one of the six 2007 winners, Smith wrote that becoming a finalist is a great honor. Leesburg's tremendous improvement and status as an award finalist will be recognized at the national awards ceremony on July 16 in New York City.
Kindergarten teacher Marcia Tinkel, sixth-grade teacher Kelly Meeks and fifth-grade teacher Rod Teeple were three of the teachers involved in putting the application together. Thursday afternoon, with Marino, they talked about the application, award and the school.
"The one thing I think came across is that it's getting better every year," said Tinkel. "Everyone is working on the same page. That's the only way a school can be effective."
Meeks said, "It's getting closer to perfection. Everything is being looked at." The application process taught her a lot about the school, and she can't believe everything that Leesburg School has accomplished.
Tinkel said it got the teachers and staff to look at what the next steps for the school are. "It's given us focus," she said.
And even now, at the end of the process, Meeks said, they're still coming up with new ideas.
"We're only going to get better," she said.
One of the changes Tinkel said they see is that everyone has higher expectations for their kids. Previously, a teacher might have been resigned to the fact that some students may never get something. That isn't so anymore.
Data, Marino said, shows that not only are Leesburg students passing ISTEP, but also more students are passing Pass-Plus on the ISTEP. "We're trying to focus on the gains for all students," he said.
Teeple said, "This is the first time I've seen us being able to look at the intermediate kids and what we can do for them, give them some remediation."
Marino said that the more you know about each student, the more teachers can help them. The school does a lot of tracking of students to do just that.
With the Warsaw Schools building project, Leesburg is slated to receive a new building in the next couple of years. But as Meeks pointed out, Leesburg is achieving their success in the old school.
"A new building is going to be a gift for all our hard work," she said.
