VERNON TOWNSHIP — The bad news, members of Crawford Central School Board learned during their work session Monday night, is that Meadville’s East End Elementary School failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress as required under the federal No Child Left Behind program. Because this has happened for the second year in a row, Pennsylvania Department of Education has officially classified the school as being in School Improvement 1. This means that East End students qualify for School Choice — the option of transferring to schools that did make AYP.

The good news is that East End will be closed for construction for the entire 2009-10 school year — and First District, Second District and Neason Hill elementary schools, the schools East End students will be attending, all made AYP.

“School Choice has already been met because they are attending schools that made AYP,” Suzanne Good, the district’s director of elementary curriculum, said.

“We are really fortunate those schools made AYP,” Vice President Jan VanTuil observed.

“Yes. We are,” Good agreed.

Letters are going into the mail today to all East End parents and guardians, advising them that not enough students with Individual Education Plans met the state’s academic achievement targets in both mathematics and reading and not enough economically disadvantaged students met the reading target. According to results from the 2008-09 Pennsylvania System of State Assessment tests, the school did meet 14 of its 17 targets.

Although they will be physically located in the district’s other three “in-town” schools, East End students will remain in East End classrooms taught by East End teachers, Good explained. That means they will be able to take advantage of special strategies for instructional improvement designed for East End that will be implemented with the intention of bringing the school into compliance with AYP during the coming year.

When it comes to failing to make AYP, East End is not alone.

While the district overall made AYP, only five of its nine buildings made individual AYP. West End Elementary School, which made AYP last year, met 16 of its 17 targets this time around and received a warning.

Meadville Area Senior High School, which met 10 of its 13 targets, received a warning. And Cochranton High School, which met 12 of its 13 targets, was placed in School Improvement I for failing to meet targets for the second consecutive year. According to Jennifer Galdon, the district’s director of secondary curriculum, Cochranton students don’t qualify for the School Choice option because the school doesn’t receive Title I funding.

The district now has three months to put together a plan for the four schools that failed to achieve AYP.

Mary Spicer can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at mspicer@meadvilletribune.com.