• Category 2

    Selected in 2019

  • Grades: pre k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 30,778
    Student Enrollment: 567
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 36%
    White/Caucasian: 47%
    Hispanic: 10%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 1%
    Asian: 1%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 5%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:19.5
    % Reduced Lunch: 63%
    % ELL Learners: 3.7%
    Founded: 1953
  • PRINCIPAL:
    John Metts
  • CONTACT:
    255 East Pine Log Road
    Aiken, SC 29803
    803-641-2580
    jmetts@acpsd.net
Millbrook Elementary School
Aiken, SC
We believe that we are all life-long learners and can grow professionally all the time.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
Millbrook Elementary believes that teaching children is a community wide responsibility. We take every opportunity to invite families to the school to volunteer, tutor, and to just enjoy being part of their student's education. We also welcome input from families on the use of our Title I funds as well as improvements discussed during our school improvement council meetings.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
To strengthen ties with our community, our school has initiated opportunities for local stakeholders and community businesses to participate as members of our school family. We participate in our district initiative “Principal for a Day.” Community members take on the role of principal for an entire day. Theme days like Field Day and “lunch with a loved One,” encourage families to visit during the school day, building a confident connection with our school families. Millbrook staff and students participate in many outreach programs such as our “Day of Caring”, local animal shelter food drives, Golden Harvest Food Drive, and collecting items to donate to local nursing homes. By developing these positive relationships with our community, we have built successful partnerships with local businesses and churches, resulting in needed funding, and afterschool mentoring programs. We are proud of the successful relationship we have developed and continue to develop with our community.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
Our school has a belief that we are all life-long learners and can grow professionally all the time. We consistently bounce ideas off of each other and try to improve our craft as educators. In order to continuously improve, all stakeholders must be open to try new things and to monitor the effectiveness of the programs that are in place.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
Our top two goals for next year are to continue growing every student academically and to increase the community involvement in our school. We want to see academic excellence for all students as we continue to build our community friendly school environment.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
The single most important factor in the success of your school that others can replicate is to have a growth mindset. We focused all of our attention to growing every single student from the beginning of the school year until the end. We worked hard the entire year providing the needed services for every child to be successful. Goal setting, individual student conferencing, school-wide data meetings, and collaborative planning allowed us to ensure we provided the highest quality education to all students that we could.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
I think the program that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing the achievement gaps has been our goal-oriented focus. We are a team, working in partnership to set goals for our students, teachers and administrators. A crucial component in our success is allowing our students to share in the process of goal setting. We encourage our students to set a personal goal, then challenge them meet or exceed their goal. Our students love to rise up to a good challenge! Teacher and staff members collaborated, developed a growth mindset and were determined to make sure that every single student grew throughout the year. Our school guidance counselor supports our students each with week lessons that connect to the attributes of highly effective students. Students hear from all educators from custodians to classroom teachers, principal to classroom aides, we are all focused on one goal.
Explain how ESEA federal funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
Our Title I Committee members decided to use our funds to provide support in the areas of weakness as identified in the data. Based upon our most recent and trend data, we have hired two reading interventionist in grades K-2nd. The quality instruction that is happening in intervention and homeroom classrooms helps to prepare our younger students for the growing challenges that the upper grade curriculum requires. The collaborative conversations between interventionists and classroom teachers are focused on using the same language in small group as well as in whole group settings. We decided to use the additional funds to purchase quality curricular items for all teachers so they have the needed resources to meet the diverse academic needs of their students.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
The critical professional development activity that we use to improve teaching and student learning is reflective teaching and intentionality with creating quality lessons and quality assessments for students. Teacher and administrators meet weekly to discuss student concerns, academic needs, intervention needs, and overall planning to address state standards. Teachers are consistently looking for ways to improve, be it lesson plan writing, teaching techniques or assessment building. Grade level teams work together to improve and are motivated to continue to grow as professionals. We have implemented problem-solving protocol introduced last year by our district, this plan helps us determine focus areas of support and the action steps that are needed to grow.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Individual student success is a priority for our school. Data is a major component in monitoring and documenting student achievement. Individual assessments give educators information on student performance in individual classes, summative and formative assessments give teachers feedback on classroom instruction. Standardized assessment data is a key tool in school-wide planning and decision making about student achievement.
Students are progress monitored and data is used to plan for differentiated instruction during small group reading and math, as well as intensive reading and math tutoring. Our teachers work with our literacy coach to devise lesson plans to target each student’s identified needs. Continuously monitoring and updating student data allow our team of professionals to provide reading intervention for all primary students who are identified as intensive or strategic. We consistently monitor all our students' assessments through monthly data meetings.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
The professional climate at Millbrook Elementary is electric and our passion for student learning is contagious. Our school community is dedicated to student success through continuous reflection on practices, and a willingness to adept to a continuously changing world, as we strive for excellence each day.
Stats
  • Category 2

    Selected in 2019

  • Grades: pre k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 30,778
    Student Enrollment: 567
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 36%
    White/Caucasian: 47%
    Hispanic: 10%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 1%
    Asian: 1%
    Native American: 0%
    Other: 5%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:19.5
    % Reduced Lunch: 63%
    % ELL Learners: 3.7%
    Founded: 1953
  • PRINCIPAL:
    John Metts
  • CONTACT:
    255 East Pine Log Road
    Aiken, SC 29803
    803-641-2580
    jmetts@acpsd.net