School Improvement Team

School Improvement Teams are required by North Carolina law to develop school improvement plans.  The team is made of the principals, teachers, instructional support personnel, teacher assistants assigned to the school building, and parents of children enrolled in the school.

The Team takes on a leadership role in guiding the educational program at the school to ensure a high quality educational experience for all students. The Team assists the Principal on a regular basis in the planning, operation, supervision, and evaluation of the campus educational program.

The Team is required by law to meet twice monthly.

The General Assembly of North Carolina views parental involvement as a critical component of school success and positive student achievement.  It is the intent that parents, along with teachers, have a substantial role in developing school improvement plans. [NC General Statutes 115C-105.27].

The role of the parent representative is to look for ways to improve the school as a whole. While parents have students at the school, their role as a member of the SIT team is to consider the needs of all students. Parent involvement helps the school to gain a broader perspective of stakeholders outside of the school and to help staff members consider the effect initiatives being considered for the school have on the home environment. Parents benefit from participation as they learn more about the culture of their school and the efforts being made to improve the school as a whole. While parents may not actually determine the strategies developed for school action plans, they may offer insight into the effectiveness of those actions and offer suggestions for removing barriers which may be unintentionally present.

The school improvement plan is a part of the process of continuous improvement. Schools use the plan to set goals for improvement and it allows team members to collaborate on ways to achieve the goals and meet the needs of the school.

Within these plans is:

1) an assessment of the school’s current implementation of research based student success indicators;

2) action steps the school with take to move to full implementation of each indicator selected;

3) regular monitoring of the schools progress toward implementation of each indicator.

NCStar is a web-based tool that guides a district or school team in charting its improvement and managing the continuous improvement process. NCStar builds accountability as well as helps schools track their improvement plans. NCStar is premised on the firm belief that district and school improvement is best accomplished when directed by the people, working in teams, closest to the students.