A. The School will develop strong and consistent protocols, principles, and practices that build seamlessly from pre-kindergarten through the 8th grade.

Status to date: Ongoing.
Annual revisions and updates to the new Staff Handbook will be an ongoing process to be sure that teachers have an up-to-date manual on protocols, principles, and practices. Staff Council will devote approximately 50% its meetings to address “business” issues, which center primarily on practices. Other progress this year includes:

• The development of new scope and sequence/content maps for Science and Social Studies which have now been approved by Staff Council.
• The Assessment Committee is working with all teachers over two years on how to optimize all of our assessment practices, including portfolios, to best impact student learning.
• The professional development project is underway, focusing on our practices in assessment as well as in the teaching of math, reading, and math. The Assessment Committee made significant changes in the portfolio requirements for Passages this year, with the emphasis focusing more on character than academics. Most of the funding has been secured for funding for the project over the next five years.
• We examined our implementation of the Investigations and Connected Math curricula so as to improve our instruction in math. Primary changes will include continuing with these two programs as they fit our constructivist approach to education, teaching by grade rather than in multi-age groupings, investing in the new editions of both curricula, and ensuring that teachers have adequate training in how to teach the programs.

B. The School will strengthen and improve instruction on learning expeditions, to include: orientation for all staff, accountability and support, ongoing review, critique and development, documentation for internal and external use.

Status to date: Ongoing. We significantly increased our work with the national ELOB office again this year via an increase of days to a total of 52 with our school designer, Gretchen Morgan. Professional development sessions were oriented toward planning of expeditions as well as of successful learning designs within expeditions. Lead teachers are documenting expeditions on the new EL software program, LEO, which allows easier reviews and updates as well a growing library of expedition plans for future use. Funding from the professional development project will allow us to maintain our days with Gretchen in future years at 40 per year.

A change next year will be a new position, that of Instructional Guide, who will focus on supporting our classroom teachers in a variety of ways. Jen Wood will work half time at Odyssey and half time at RMSEL in this role, which will facilitate significant learning for both schools as we learn from each other’s best practices. Our School Designer, Gretchen Morgan, is also the School Designer for RMSEL, which will only add to our momentum!

This year we have expanded the time available for planning next year’s expeditions by adding one day to the Spring Institute, which is scheduled for the week after school. Next year a full week will be devoted to Spring Institute to allow lead teachers to plan for both of the coming year’s expeditions, in line with our new content standards.

New teachers will continue to be given the opportunity to attend EL workshops to more quickly become familiar with developing and implementing expeditions.

C. The School will establish high standards for Literacy and Math competencies, with a goal of proficiency for all students.

Status to date: Ongoing. The EL professional development program has begun and will provide great opportunities over the next 5 years to strengthen teacher practices in assessment, math, reading, and writing to benefit our students. Primary goals include increases in student achievement and growth as evidenced by CSAP and MAP tests. By the end of the project, our outcomes re: student achievement should include these results:

• CSAP: The percentage of students at the “proficient or above” level on CSAP tests will be 90% for reading, 85% for writing, 80% for math, and 80% for science for all students who have been at Odyssey for at least two years.
• CSAP: 90% of students who enter Odyssey at the “unsatisfactory” or “partially proficient” levels will increase at least one proficiency level on all CSAP tests after two years at Odyssey.
• CSAP: 20% of students will be at the “advanced” level on at least one test after 4 years at Odyssey.
• MAP: 80% of all students will make a year of growth annually.
• MAP: 95% of students who entered Odyssey below grade level will make more than one year’s growth annually, ensuring that we close the achievement gap for these students.

Expeditionary Learning Schools will use its annual Implementation Review to assess improvements in teacher practices. Our desired outcome is that Odyssey will score at the highest levels for active pedagogy and leadership as measured on the Implementation Review. Specifically, our target outcome is that annual scores on Implementation Reviews for “active pedagogy” and “leadership” will be at the “exemplary” level for teachers who have been at Odyssey for more than two years; the overall score for all Odyssey teachers will be at the “accomplished” level.

With regard to the other assessment measures to be utilized, our outcomes are as follows:

• Retention of all students will increase by 15%, while 90% of Odyssey students entering 6th, 7th, or 8th grades will remain at Odyssey for the duration of their middle school education.
• Demographic data for our student body will remain constant over time with 50% of students of color and at least 33% of students qualified for the Free/ Reduced Lunch program.
• Quality of student work in portfolio for Passages in grades 3, 5 and 8 will be at the “accomplished” or “exemplary” levels for 85% of students.

As presented above, we also initiated a professional development effort in math at both the elementary and middle school levels. Because to the insights from this work gathered during the year, these changes will be made next year, as reported above: changes will include continuing with our two math programs as they fit our constructivist approach to education, teaching by grade rather than in multi-age groupings, investing in the new editions of both curricula, and ensuring that teachers have adequate training in how to teach the programs.

There is reason to believe that the designated math teacher in the upper grades is proving to be a good model for success. Results from the MAP testing after one year provided some interesting if early insights. MAP and CSAP data for this year still need to be reviewed.

Our Reading Volunteer program continued to expand. Julie Neitz Wielga also established a new pilot Writing Volunteer program to work with students on the mechanics of writing, which proved to be very successful and will continue next year. To support writing Julie continued with her WordWork program with Marcia’s 3rd grade and Jason’s 4/5 crews. Additionally, our 7/8 crew leaders added a literacy block this fall. We continue to add new books to all of our crew libraries and bookroom usage for grades 6-8 has increased commensurately.

Our CSAP writing scores all decreased last year, but this may not be a reflection of how well our children are learning to write, as our focus is on teaching them more to be creative writers, rather than on the mechanics of writing. That said, we do need to focus more on the mechanics of writing. Our focus for the 2nd year of the professional development program will be on writing.

We now have our 3rd grade CSAP reading scores for 2007, with 88% of our students proficient or above, our highest score ever. Only three DPS schools scored higher. More importantly, preliminary review of our MAP results indicated that students who qualify for the federal Free/Reduced Lunch (FRL) program are doing well at Odyssey. On this year’s test, 82% of all FRL students (22 out of 27) who have been at Odyssey for more than two years are at grade level or above.

D. The School will meet the individual needs of students.

Status to date: Ongoing. Stronger expedition planning and implementation, along with support from our School Designer, is significantly helping with meeting the individual needs of students. This is helping support teachers in planning lessons in advance with differentiation of instruction as a priority. The EL professional development program began this year and will provide great opportunities over the next 5 years to strengthen teacher practices in many areas and allow greater differentiation of instruction to benefit our students. As part of the EL professional development program, the Assessment Committee is looking at all aspects of assessment at Odyssey over this year and next, to include in-depth study of our data to determine how we are and how we are not meeting student needs. Members of the Assessment Committee attended a 3-day assessment seminar here in Denver provided by EL Schools and facilitated by our own school designer, Gretchen Morgan. The Alpine Achievement software/data analysis program allows us greater facility to analyze our CSAP and MAP data in ways that are of interest to us.

We initiated a professional development effort in math at both the elementary and middle school levels. Our consultants for the elementary grades informed us the Investigations program was never meant to be taught to multiage classrooms. Interestingly, instruction is currently already being provided on a single-age basis in grades K, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Next year math will be taught on a single grade basis at all grade levels. Other changes to improve our math instruction have been documented above.

The MAP computerized testing assessments provided teachers for grades 3-8 with timely input and feedback on student achievement and growth. Next year, with our new grade 2/3 configuration, 2nd grade students will also take the MAP test at the beginning and end of the year. As we become more familiar with the MAP program, we should have valuable insights from the data to help improve instruction. For example, as indicated above, MAP tests this year provided insights on how well or FRL students are doing at Odyssey. Further review of the progress of our FRL students indicated the following:

• Of the 24 students in grades K – 2 of who qualify for the FRL program, all will be promoted to the next grade for the 2007/2008 school year.

• Of the 54 students in grades 3 - 8 who qualify or have qualified for the FRL program, 87% made sufficient progress to be promoted to the next grade level next year.

• Of the 9 students in 3rd grade who qualify for the FRL program. 78% are proficient in reading, as measured by this year’s CSAP test. Additionally, 100% of the 3rd grade students who have been at Odyssey for more than one year are proficient readers. Overall, the proficiency rate for all 3rd grade students is 88%.

Our Reading Volunteer program continues to expand. The new Writing Volunteer program was successful and will continue next year. We will again have counseling interns from Naropa who will work on an individual basis with 18-20 students referred by teachers. Group counseling may be initiated as well. There will be an intern in Anne Spruill’s 4/5 classroom, and we may add a 4th Teaching Assistant if our 6th grade crew is over enrolled with 27 students.

Next year efforts will be made to strengthen our work with special needs children, as this is an area in which few EL schools have excelled. Marcia Fulton will convene a working group to include teachers and parents, to determine how we as a school can be more proactive in our work with special education.

E. The School will strengthen and define the Adventure Program.
Status to date: Ongoing. Jim Parker has taken over the leadership of the Adventure program. Progress to date includes: moving the Adventure room, a first-ever Kindergarten fall camping trip, work on a new scope and sequence/content map for the Adventure program, and integration of more adventure into the PE program which will provide time for both building fitness for upcoming trips as well as teaching and practicing skills that will be called upon on these trips. Upcoming tasks include
finalizing the new Risk Management handbook, which will be completed this month, and finding funding for purchase of a new or used van to replace the equipment van we have now, which is getting very old.

A. Odyssey will increase the cultural competency of the school community. Every aspect of the School will be a learning environment for the development of character and knowledge.

Status to date: Ongoing. Our major effort in this area this year has been on streamlining our discipline system so that it is more consistent, with fewer opportunities for confusion. Staff reviewed the changes this year in Staff Council. In general the changes seem to be effective, with few students sent to the office and a reduction in referrals in general. This seems to have been the best year in the past five with regard to our discipline and behavior management system. Though a few refinements will need to be made, the changes made for this year have been very successful.

A. The School will recruit and retain teachers, staff, and students that reflect the diversity of the community.

Status to date: Ongoing. Recruitment and admissions of a racially and economically diverse student body remains a high priority. Racial diversity is holding steady at about 50% students or color and 50% white. Socio-economic diversity is now assured with an admissions priority for FRL students. Currently 34% of our students qualify for the FRL program.
Regarding staff diversity, review of hiring efforts over the past five years indicate some success with increasing diversity, particularly in the area of gender. Not including AmeriCorps Volunteers, who are hired by the Urban Education Service Corps, our hires since 2002 have included 16 women and 16 men, of whom 6 were of color (19%). Hiring for next year is not yet complete, but our gender diversity will increase, with the addition of Andy Hartman as our new 2/3 teacher and Patrick McGinty as our new Special Education teacher. Our intern for next year is of color, and we hope that if successful, we will be able to find a spot for her as a teacher at

B. The School will critically assess its current crew configuration and select one that best meets student needs.

Status to date: In process of completion. A decision to go forward was made last year, with the transition to take place over this year. Our format for next year will be a K-1 loop, 2/3 multiage, 4/5 multiage, stand-alone 6, and 7/8 multiage configuration. Plans have been made this spring for moving classrooms and purchasing the necessary furniture for the final stage of the reconfiguration changes. A staff survey done in the late fall this year indicated strong consensus that the new structure is working well.

C. The School will maintain or reduce the student / teacher ratio by having two adults in every classroom or through other creative solutions.

Status to date: In process. This year we had TA support for grades K-3. We also had two part-time AmeriCorps Volunteers working in grades 4/5. For next year our plan at the moment is to have a full-time TA with Kindergarten and another with 1st grade, our first year with a full grade 1/ 2 loop configuration. Our 3rd full-time TA will be assigned to grades 2/ 3. Anne’s 4/5 crew will have a teacher intern all year, and we will likely hire a 4th TA for one year only to support Jason’s 4/5 crew as well as Jon’s 6th grade crew, which is slated to have at least 27 students next year
Our best options at the moment for more adults in the classroom are via teacher certification programs. We again had an intern from UC Boulder this year. We are currently exploring options with the University of Colorado at Denver, and hope to have as many as 5 teaching interns at Odyssey for the 2008-2009 school year from the School of Education as part of a new Teacher Certification program in Expeditionary Learning.

D. The School will investigate, design, plan, and implement a pre-school that is consistent with its mission and philosophy, to include a commitment to low-income families.

Status to date: On hold. A pre-school program for Odyssey is not possible at this time. From a budget perspective, an ECE program is not financially feasible as it is tuition-based. It would be difficult to provide spaces to students from Free/Reduced lunch families; and we would not be able to accommodate all ECE students as they progressed to Kindergarten. Space is also an issue, as there is no space available in the building for an Odyssey ECE classroom. There are also issues regarding admissions, diversity of student body, etc.

A. The School will design governance protocols, boundaries, and responsibilities that result in mutual trust, respect, and communication.

Status to date: Completed during the 2004-2005 school year. Governance policies are in place.

B. Odyssey’s budget process will reflect the vision of the school, be based on DPS and School fiscal policies, and be inclusive of all governing bodies. The budget process will consider community needs and interests and find creative ways to develop resources for the School.

Status to date: Completed during the 2004-2005 school year. Ongoing.

C. The School will have an active fundraising strategy.

Status to date: Completed and ongoing. Our fundraising strategy has been to limit the number of community fund raising events, as we do not want to overburden parents with myriad money raising activities. The basic components of the plan now include:
(1) Odyssey community efforts, to include the voluntary adventure contribution, the Annual Campaign, a Silent Auction, and a spring Carnival; and
(2) grant writing. We still need to determine the feasibility and acceptability of corporate sponsorships for the school. We initiated, on a trial basis, a program with King Soopers whereby families and staff can buy $25 vouchers for groceries at Odyssey, with a percentage of the proceeds coming to Odyssey. This seems to be working well.

We met our goal of $35,000 for community fund raising, with the Annual Campaign bringing in about $22,000, the Silent Auction approximately $16,000, and the Carnival over $2,000. The Board has approved the hiring of a ½ time Development Consultant for next year to determine whether the incorporation of such a role into the administration of the school can raise sufficient funds to make the position both feasible and sustainable.

We were successful again with the Sturm Foundation, and raised another $20,000 to support our Kindergarten scholarship program for FRL students for another year. Our professional development project brought in over $100,000 in funding from the Daniels Fund, Rose Community Foundation, EL Schools, and the Stapleton Foundation.

Jackie Wells was successful in securing funding from the DPS Foundation for the After School Enrichment program for both this year and