ADAMS TOWNSHIP — Clinton-Massie High School wants to become a Purple Star School, which is a program that supports military-connected children as they relocate to new schools due to a parent’s change in duty station.
Aaron Seewer, CMHS principal, made the announcement at Monday’s school board meeting. High school counselor Chris Downing is slated to be the military liaison.
As military families explore southwest Ohio and look for a destination district, “We want to put our best foot forward to reach out to those military families and welcome them in,” Seewer said.
According to the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) website, “The Purple Star Award for military-friendly schools recognizes schools that show a major commitment to students and families connected to our nation’s military.”
The Military Child Education Coalition website states military children move every two to three years. The Purple Star School program, it says, is designed to help schools respond to the educational and social-emotional challenges military-connected children face during their transition to a new school and keep them on track to be college, workforce, and life-ready.
A school can earn Purple Star School designation if it completes all the required activities, plus one optional activity, according to the ODE. The Purple Star Advisory Board, formed by the Ohio departments of Education, Higher Education, Veterans Services and the Adjutant General, helps decide a school’s eligibility for the award.
Also during his board report, Seewer spoke about the growth in the high school’s College Credit Plus partnership with Sinclair Community College over the past five academic years. There were 19 CMHS students five years ago taking Sinclair courses, while the past three years have seen 146, 122 and 127 CMHS students respectively take at least one Sinclair class.
But it’s not simply that CM students are taking Sinclair college-level courses. “We have a lot of students excelling in the College Credit Plus classes,” said the principal.
Ninety percent of the Sinclair course grades received by CMHS students are either an A or B, Seewer reported.
Moreover, Sinclair said Clinton-Massie’s are the best grade results they have seen from the high schools partnering with it.
Seewer announced Sinclair Community College’s American sign language class has been brought back for the new school year, and CM will have two full sections of the course to be held on the Lebanon Road campus.
Clinton-Massie Director of Innovation and Learning David Moss reported the district’s standardized test scores are down, “pretty much across the board,” presumably due to the learning-loss effects of the pandemic.
Overall, math scores tend to be somewhat lower than the English Language Arts scores, something that seems to be fairly consistent among regional school districts, he said. A lot of that is attributed to children not getting as much guided practice in math that they would normally receive in the classroom, Moss added.
He feels like each CM school building “has a plan of attack” to help recover students’ learning losses.
Superintendent Matt Baker announced the district received $350,000 additional dollars in broadband connectivity fund money.
Six of the school district’s 12 new employees are CM grads, which helps satisfy the goal of bringing people in who have a rural education mindset and also is conducive to keeping staff for the long-term, said Baker.
Reach Gary Huffenberger at 937-556-5768.
