As the school community at Cranston West continues to prepare for their October accreditation visit from a visiting team of educators, they are more than halfway through the preparation process.

“We are now in the process of validating all of the information in all the reports. We will be starting to vote in April,” said Christine Baum, chairperson of the NEASC (New England Association of Schools and Colleges) committee at West. “Each standard committee has to write their own committee report. Each committee is made up of staff, parents and students, and some have community members on their committees as well. The chairs of the committees verify the data that was collected, and make sure that there are no opinions contained in the reports.” In order to do that, a NEASC work session took place recently so that all of the chairs of each committee could gather together with administration, sift through the reports, read them and give feedback. Each committee must give their learning standard a rating of either “Not Yet Meeting the Standard”, “Limited,” “Acceptable” or “Exemplary.”

“About 95 percent of our reports are in the acceptable or exemplary range,” said Baum. “If we have found any deficiencies, we already put the work in progress to fix them. We’ve dedicated faculty meetings to sharing two standard reports per meeting with a week prior given to read the reports and digest them. We don’t want this to be overwhelming, and we’ve gotten great support from our administration and central administration throughout this process.”

The school has until July to finalize all of their information and faculty will continue to gather student work samples through April 25. “Two after school professional learning courses were offered to all faculty to review the standards and the elements of accreditation in relationship to student work,” said Baum. “Teachers are asked to reflect on their teaching and the level of student proficiency. This gives us the time to reflect on the day-to-day and the long-term and to see it all in one place.” Faculty members such as Kathryn Kelley and Melissa Colando have found the process to be beneficial on many levels.

“We are learning about programs we didn’t know existed and things that other teachers in other departments are doing,” said Kelley, who noted that usually teachers are in the trenches, in their own classrooms and with their own departments, but this process provides an opportunity to share across disciplines.

Colando has enjoyed learning about the strengths and weaknesses that exist in the school.

“It’s an opportunity to learn about the strengths that we have in our school,” she said. “There are a lot of great things going on that sometimes don’t get recognized, and it also allows us to recognize that there might be some areas of need.”

Principal Tom Barbieri feels lucky with the support that he’s been given through this process from his leadership team, his faculty and staff, students, parents, community partners and from central administration. “Chairing a leadership committee is not easy work, and it’s work that goes beyond the scope of the classroom,” he said. “Making the reports flow is a lot of work for our leadership, and I don’t know how all of this could be done without them. Now, the staff has done the grunt work, the leaders and parents on the executive board and the community members and students will help with the process of polishing the standards and reports. Every part of our educational body makes this happen.”

Sarah Hobin is a junior and is a student on the Cranston West Student Leadership Team and she is serving on the curriculum committee as a student representative.

“I have learned a lot from being on this committee,” she said. “It’s interesting to see the interdisciplinary connections between the classes and how many outside pathways and opportunities our students have.”

Jake Lauro is a sophomore on the student leadership team and is on the instruction committee. He’s also found the experience to be eye-opening.

“It’s interesting to see how each of the teachers use different tools in each classroom and how they personalize the curriculum for each student,” he said. “Teachers are also able to show students how they will use the things they are learning outside of the classroom and in the real world.”

Baum believes that the connections being made by the students to their every day school routines are important ones.

“The fact that the students are making connections outside of NEASC to what they’re seeing in their school culture is important,” she said. “The students are also able to say what’s on their minds and to feel supported and they know that their opinions matter.”

As the school community continues to read, update and reflect, changes are happening regularly, based on what comes up along the way throughout the process.

“For me, it’s a very reflective process,” said Barbieri. “There are so many things going on in a school, so many ways to communicate things out to the staff and the school community so that everyone knows what is going on. This process allows us to share all of what is going on in our school, not to hold on to it, to let everyone know and to make changes that are needed wherever they are needed.”

It is the sharing and the reflecting that all of the participants agree has had an impact, whether as students or as teachers.

“I can really see the effectiveness on this process in my classes,” Hobin said. “I see my teachers collaborating more as a result of this and I can see partnerships taking place as all the teachers are collaborating with each other.”

“We are getting to hear everyone’s voice, getting to see different people and hear different opinions,” said Kelley. “We are hearing of best practices we wouldn’t get to hear of on a regular daily basis.” “So much comes out of this process,” said Colando.

According to Baum, a school and community summary will be prepared in March which will provide a two-page snapshot of the school, and will be an essential part of the reporting process, showcasing all of the different offerings, opportunities and community involvement that is available at Cranston West. “It will be a great community resource for us,” she said. “It will really be the highlight of the process.”

The school visit will take place from October 21-24.