The Regional 4 School District has received $267,891 in a third installment of federal COVID-19 relief grant funds, bringing the total amount of grant relief funding for the district to $604,980, according to a Sept. 2 report from Finance Director Bob Grissom at Board of Education (BOE) meeting.

While earlier allocations under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) were meant to help school districts get through the COVID-19 pandemic and then be successful in their recoveries, the latest and third round of funds promises to “transform” schools, according to state guidance.

“It was a greater amount than we had received in any of the other previous funding, and it also lasts for three years,” said Grissom. “So, we thought this was a really interesting opportunity to look at sort of the long-range approach on how we could potentially transform our schools, or really provide lasting impact to our students and our staff.”

Superintendent of Schools Brian White said that the funding is “an opportunity to build some structures across our systems, the benefit of which would last well beyond the COVID pandemic.”

The district’s K to 12 academic intervention model has been identified as one area of focus, as well as enhancing strategies for social and emotional learning.

“We’re doing this with a combination of additional staff positions as well as enhancing our digital technologies in both of these areas,” said Grissom.

White said “highly effective teaching strategies” will be a third area of focus.

“So, being able to focus those resources on those major focus areas we feel strongly will be the best use of those dollars,” said White.

The grant funding has allowed administrators to carefully look at how the district’s intervention model is applied for consistent student outcomes, as an example.

“We’ve been able to, at the central office level, really apply an equity lens across the district to ensure that our intervention models, for example at our three elementary schools, are comparable in a way that all of our students are benefiting from similar resources and support,” said White.

“So that, for example, students leaving any of our elementary schools would be equally well prepared for success at” John Winthrop Middle School, he continued.

In order to meet certain requirements and timelines associated with the grant funding, the district worked with building principals over the summer, prior to the start of the 2021–’22 school year, to evaluate current intervention strategies and brainstorm ways to improve upon them.

A teacher’s curricular or diagnostic assessments will play an important role in determining a student’s level of academic performance this year as opposed to data from the Connecticut Smarter Balanced assessments, commonly referred to as SBAC, according to Assistant Superintendent Sarah Brzozowy, at the Sept. 2 meeting.

“I’m not relying heavily on that [SBAC] data set because it’s a combination of students that were in person and remote,” said Brzozowy. “Students had the options of taking the test in different locations and it was students taking a high stakes assessment in the middle of a pandemic.”

A baseline of student academic performance will be established prior to implementing any intervention strategies, she added.

“I should have a lot more, a much better sense, probably closer to mid-October in terms of what that work is going to look like in terms of that tiered approach to instruction,” said Brzozowy. “So, looking at intervening, but as well as looking at enrichment opportunities and really extending learning.

“So, more to come on that for sure, but that is definitely on the forefront of our thinking,” she continued.