PRINT ARTICLE

Dear K-12 Families,

 

Perrysburg Schools values and appreciates the opportunity to serve all students and work with families to provide our students with the best opportunity to achieve their greatest potential. In order to do this, our schools take steps to better understand students. “Universal screeners” are one of these tools that are administered to collect information about students and schools. Many families are familiar with the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program or the Wood County Youth Survey conducted regularly by the Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services Board (ADAMHS) of Wood County. These instruments collect valuable information about what staff can do to improve school culture for students.

 

The purpose of this letter is to share with you that the schools will be administering a universal wellness screener, as we did this past fall. It will again take about 20-30 minutes and will be completed at school in grades 3-12. It will be conducted May 16-20, 2022. Grades K-2 will not involve any direct screening of students, but teachers will complete screeners.

 

We are asking that all of our students participate as their feedback will provide invaluable insights into their experiences and how we can improve and adapt our school district to their needs. The screener content will ask students to self-reflect on growth mindset, self-management, social awareness, self-efficacy, learning strategies, classroom effort and social perspective-taking. If a student does not feel like they have enough information to answer a question, they may skip it. We have posted the questions that will be posed to students so families may review them. The links to access them may be found below:

 

Grades K-2 Perrysburg Schools Teacher Input:

Grades 3-5 Perrysburg Schools Panorama Screener:

Grades 6-12 Perrysburg Schools Panorama Screener:

 

Families are able to complete a Panorama - Spring 22 - Opt Out Form to exclude their child from participating during the current school year. The opt-out process for the Panorama survey only needs to be completed once per school year. If you opted out in the fall, you do not need to do so again. Opt-out forms for the Panorama survey need to be completed by 11:55 p.m. on Friday, April 29, 2022. Because the time needed to give the survey is brief, students who have opted-out are given the opportunity to do other tasks (homework, study, reading on their own) while those who are participating complete the survey.

Below you will find some additional information. If you have any questions, please contact your child’s principal.

We thank you in advance for your assistance.

 

Sincerely,

Brent Swartzmiller
Executive Director of Teaching & Learning
Perrysburg Schools

 

Panorama Education partners with K-12 schools and districts across the country to collect and analyze data about social-emotional learning, school climate, family engagement and more. With research-backed surveys and a leading technology platform, Panorama helps educators act on data and improve student outcomes. Panorama supports more than 10 million students in 17,000 schools and 1,500 districts across 49 states. To learn more about Panorama Education, visit www.panoramaed.com.

 

The Panorama Student Survey was developed under the leadership of Dr. Hunter Gehlbach, Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of Research at Panorama Education. The research team followed a rigorous survey development process that involved multiple rounds of piloting and refinement, following cognitive interviews with students, an extensive review of survey literature, and feedback from experts around the country.

 

The Panorama Education survey is designed to capture student voice and allow students to express their perspectives about teaching and learning, culture and climate, and their classroom experiences.

No. Panorama survey content is not designed for nor should be used to identify students who require mental health or trauma treatment. The purpose of the Panorama survey is to help educators understand students’ general social-emotional needs and strengths.

 

No. There is no credit or grade which is given to students for participating or not participating. There are no right or wrong responses.

 

Students use an electronic device to access their unique and secure survey link. The survey is taken at school during the school day, under supervision of staff.

 

How much time does the survey take to complete?

The survey is given twice during each school year, once in the fall and again in the spring. On average, it will take the following amount of time:

 

The primary purpose of the survey is to understand students’ perspectives. District leadership, school administrators and staff review the overview data to understand areas of strength and growth opportunities to better serve students and provide targeted student supports.

 

Panorama’s full Privacy Policy can be accessed publicly through Panorama’s website.

 

You can view a sample here: student-level report. (Please note, this is a sample and not completed by an actual student.)

 

To preserve student confidentiality, individual question responses are not visible in the platform to Perrysburg Schools teachers or staff. Perrysburg Schools does not store individual student response data. Only topic-level summary data is available to specific educators who support your student. To learn more about what reports look like for educators who support your student, see the ‘Exploring Student SEL Data’ page.

 

Yes. Please contact your student’s school to request this information.

 

Panorama only uses student data for the purpose of serving schools and districts. Panorama does not collect personal information from students unless performing services for the school or district pursuant to a written contract. The collection and use of students’ personal information is governed by schools and districts and applicable laws. Panorama also does not market, sell, or rent any student's personal information; nor does it engage in, inform, influence, or enable advertising to students.

 

Panorama follows best practices for data privacy and security. The company implements administrative, technical, and physical security controls designed to protect information stored on its servers, which are located in the United States. Panorama does not use student data for purposes other than serving schools and districts and cannot share any education or student information unless authorized by the school or district or under applicable law.

 

Panorama only collects student data in the course of performing services for the school or district pursuant to a written contract, and Panorama only uses student data for the purpose of serving schools and districts.

 

Panorama’s products enable educators to gain insights from their students’ data in order to better understand and support them. Panorama does not market, sell, or rent any student's personal information. Panorama does not engage in, inform, influence, or enable advertising to students. Panorama does not collect information from students unless we are performing services for their school or district pursuant to a written contract. Panorama cannot share any education or student information unless authorized by the school or district or under applicable law.

 

No. Panorama only uses student data for the purpose of serving schools and districts.

 

Social and Emotional Learning is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships and make responsible decisions. To access a short video describing SEL, please click the following link: SEL 101.

 

Our commitment to the whole child is not a new commitment. It has been a long-standing Perrysburg commitment. There is a significant amount of research that shows that when students feel valued and connected, they will be better learners. If teachers cannot make meaningful connections with students, the delivery and mastery of content will suffer.

Three and a half years ago, Perrysburg Schools began the process of creating Perrysburg's Portrait of a Jacket. This was a collaborative effort of members of our community, the business community, and higher education, along with Perrysburg administration, faculty, students, parents and members of our Board of Education. We worked to identify the competencies we most desired for our graduates. As you can see, the competencies identified require development of the whole child and not just strict adherence to content.

 

In Each Child, Our Future, Ohio’s strategic plan for education, social and emotional learning is one of four equal learning domains supporting Ohio’s goal of preparing each student in Ohio for postsecondary life. Through a stakeholder-driven process, Ohio teachers, school counselors and education personnel developed Ohio's Social and Emotional Learning Standards for grades kindergarten through 12 (K-12). The Ohio State Board of Education adopted the social-emotional learning standards in June 2019. Here is a link to those standards: Ohio’s K-12 Social and Emotional Learning Standards.

 

For specific information on CASEL and the CASEL framework, feel free to click the following link:  Social and Emotional Learning Fundamentals: SEL 101 with CASEL.

 

Skills related to:

·                 Self awareness includes perspective-taking, empathy, appreciation for diversity and respect for others.

·                 Self management includes impulse control, stress management, self-discipline, self-motivation, goal-setting and organizational skills.

·                 Relationship skills include communication, social engagement, relationship-building and teamwork.

·                 Responsible decision making includes problem-solving, situational analysis, evaluation, reflection and ethical responsibility.

·                 Social awareness includes identifying emotions, self-perception, recognizing strengths and weaknesses, self-confidence and self-efficacy.

·                 

The importance of Social and Emotional Learning has dominated discussion within the educational community since the very start of our COVID-19 experience. These sentiments were shared by our staff members when surveyed in the second half of the 2020-2021 academic year. Concern for student well-being and the doubling of our local chronic absenteeism (from 5.1% in 2019 to 10.8% in 2021) adds to this growing concern. The implementation of a formal Social and Emotional Learning screener and the resulting conversations is an incredible opportunity for us to examine the school environments and activities we want to create to continue to best serve the needs of our students.

 

The need to educate the whole child was a foundational pillar in the creation of our school district goals (our One Plan). It can be viewed by clicking the following link: One Plan - 2021-2024. Perrysburg Schools recognizes the value in educating the whole child and will continue to have this as a pillar when reviewing and revising district plans going forward.

 

We have always done work with Social and Emotional Learning. We also recognize that at the end of a year, we wish there were more time to address the needs of all our students. The data from the screener will permit us to have data-centered conversations on how to best use the valuable time we do have with students.

 

First and foremost, there are Social and Emotional Learning competencies that are geared for a social setting like school (think teamwork, problem-solving, organizational skills and goal-setting as examples).

Second, there is significant research that shows when students feel valued and connected, they will be better learners. If teachers cannot make meaningful connections with students, the delivery and mastery of content will suffer. Ask teaching professionals and they will tell you that connections and content go hand-in-hand. We cannot teach absent recognition and development of the Social and Emotional Learning standards.

Last, the benefits of high-quality work in Social and Emotional Learning are well known. You can find research for this by clicking on the following link: Why is Ohio Focused on Social-Emotional Learning?

 

Panorama has done extensive work in Social and Emotional Learning and provides for us an incredible overall package. We are excited for the screener and data the platform will provide for us, but there is more. Teachers and schools will have access to Panorama’s professional learning community, Playbook, to find classroom strategies focused on SEL topics. Playbook was built by teachers, for teachers. The ideas behind Playbook are simple: nobody knows what works better in practice than teachers, and teachers learn best from each other. There is a massive amount of expertise sitting in the classrooms of our teachers, and it should be easy for teachers to learn with and from each other. Playbook contains hundreds of research-backed SEL interventions, activities and resources from expert organizations to improve our practice.

 

A universal screener is a brief assessment that is typically administered three times per year – fall, winter, and spring. The idea that all students complete the screener, because it helps us identify how students perform compared to their peer group or feeling about their school environment and where they fit into that school environment. Universal screening is considered a first step in helping identify students in need of additional support.

The reality of universal screening is that we will get false positives and false negatives. In other words, we will likely have kids that end up jumping out as a concern, but in actuality other factors may have influenced that first impression. Similarly, we may also have students who appear to do well on these measures, but are truly struggling in some areas. This is why the screening data is only a starting point and should never be the end of the conversation. As professionals, it is important that we can use the data we get from universal screeners to help us best allocate our time and resources to gather more information on students. However, it is also our professional obligation to look beyond the screening data.

 

Perrysburg Schools shares student data directly with Panorama. No other parties have access to the data. Student data will be kept confidential and used only for the educational purposes outlined by Perrysburg Schools. Furthermore, Panorama complies with all applicable federal laws, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), as well as state and local regulations concerning student data.

 

The answers do not get entered into students' records/cumulative files.

 

It will be identifiable to each individual student.

 

Families can request final results from their Principal. They will be able to provide you with a report that does not include any identifiable information.

 

Our work is done in collaborative teams. We have building leadership teams (BLTs) and teacher-based teams (TBTs). These teams will receive an initial training, as well as support throughout the year. As with any new initiative, our work will be pretty foundational at the start and become more nuanced with time.

As we begin this work, our focus will center on four guiding questions:

·                 What areas jumped out as needing our attention the most?

·                 As a group/team/grade level, are there areas that surprised us?

·                 Are there students that we need to have more information on as a result of this data?

·                 As a result of this data, what adult behaviors do we need to implement to provide a supportive environment for ALL students?

 

If we were to identify the need for student-centered intervention plans, the look of such a plan would be very dependent on the needs of the child. A family-school partnership would be necessary and we would communicate and work collaboratively. This is not a change in practice as we have followed this philosophy in the past when addressing individual student challenges.

We felt the responsibility of completing a screener for each individual student would add to the already very full plate of every K-2 classroom teacher. As such, we will implement a randomized sampling to give us a general feel for the overall needs of grade levels and classrooms. We fully realize this will not permit these grade levels to have conversations about individual students, but it will allow classroom teachers to reflect on the overall environment and the adult actions that have an incredible impact on the overall needs of each classroom.

We recognize that any tool like this will have bias. Panorama has decades of doing these screeners and plans for bias accordingly. This does not mean that the data and the conversations will not be relevant for the here and now. We also need to remember that our focus and collective understanding will build over time. Our experience with administering the Olweus Bullying Prevention Student Questionnaire the first year was vastly different after a few years of experience. We anticipate this will follow a similar trajectory.

The screener questions ask for teacher perception of student behaviors within the school setting, a social setting appropriate to many of the competencies being examined. The behaviors of students will almost always be different in the comfort of the familiar home setting when comparing them to a school setting. This does not impact the intent to the screener for our purposes.

Our work is done in collaborative teams. We have building leadership teams (BLTs) and teacher-based teams (TBTs). These teams will receive an initial training, as well as support throughout the year. As with any new initiative, our work will be pretty foundational at the start and become more nuanced with time. With time and familiarity, our work in this area will become more sophisticated and have an enduring impact on Perrysburg students and the adults working with them through their PreK-12 experience.