Starting with the next school year, the Title I position will be reduced at Winnemucca Grammar School and become a district-wide position, said Superintendent Dr. Dave Jensen.
Winnemucca Grammar School is one of a handful of Title I eligible schools that would benefit from the extra support of a Title I position; the other schools are McDermitt Combined, Sonoma Heights and three of the district’s rural schools, said Jensen. Title I is intended to serve the low income and at risk student population, explained Jensen, and eligibility is based on free and reduced lunch (FRL) rates.
“All of our Title I schools we’ve identified as school-wide programs,” explained Jensen. “So the danger that we saw in the current system we have is we were utilizing the Title I teacher in a pull out modality. In a Title I school-wide school, the intent is to serve all of the kids so we had to re-look at how we were utilizing that service to benefit all students and all teachers.”
The way the funding mechanism works for Title I, said Jensen, is it’s based on district-wide free and reduced lunch numbers, not the number of schools that are being served.
“So as more schools come on the pot of funds only gets stretched thinner.” explained Jensen, “So we had to reevaluate how do we use those funds, first to ensure we are compliant with federal requirements and statutes, and second, to have an impact across all Title I schools.”
The decision to reduce the position at Winnemucca Grammar School, Jensen assures, “had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of instruction of that Title I teacher. She’s phenomenal. If I could clone her and put one of her in every one of my elementary schools, I would in a heartbeat. We just had to look and make sure we were in full compliance with federal Title I statutes and to ensure that the utilization of our funds had a bigger bang for our buck.”
Jensen recognized that the grammar Title I teacher certainly had a school-wide benefit. School board member Nicole Bengochea said that the Title I teacher served roughly 60 students at WGS and nearly 75 percent of those students are currently back to their reading level or above, while the remaining five percent are expected to reach their reading level by the end of the year.
“There is no question in our mind at all that the current Title I teacher at the grammar school has been outstanding for the school,” said Jensen. “In fact, my desire would be that we could create a position like that in every school because of that impact.”
Unfortunately, said Jensen, there is no funding available.
