The Port Arthur Independent School District board of trustees convened for its annual retreat Saturday morning in the district’s newly renovated Administration Building on Ninth Avenue.

“We met to discuss and update some of our goals and objectives for our district,” superintendent Mark Porterie said. “Basically, we look at what direction the district’s going in and come up with suitable goals to accompany it.”

Despite all odds

The 2017 to 2018 Port Arthur school year was a banner year to be sure, with the district starting late and suffering several staff and location setbacks after Hurricane Harvey flooded the city with torrential rains. It was a time that Porterie said the district and all those within it stepped up to the challenge of rebuilding and improving.

“I feel we’ve done a very good job considering all the challenges Harvey threw at us,” he said. “Our staff, students and community have done an outstanding job in bringing it all together to succeed.

“We definitely had a very successful 2017-2018 school year in spite of everything else.”

Porterie said preliminary reports looked pretty good in terms of students’ STAAR results, especially in light of the notable school year the district had.

“We feel that students did an excellent job in meeting standards — because there were so many standards to meet…” he said. “We use the curriculum as a vehicle to deliver those standards.”

Porterie emphasized the importance of reading in achieving those goals.

“Reading is the most important subject we should be responsible for,” he said.

“Because I believe that every other content area we have, students have to be able to comprehend those areas in the first place in order to pass their tests in math, science, social studies or subject they’re working in.”

Appropriately, the district’s focus for students in grades pre-K through second is to teach reading basics and strategies. When students enter grades three through five, that focus shifts to the content of what they’re reading.

“In grades pre-K through second, they’re learning to read; in grades three, four and five, they’re reading to learn,” Porterie said.

Driving student success

Executive Director for Region 5, Danny Lovett, attended the board’s retreat in order to speak about the board’s goals and how best to align that with state policies.

“He led the discussion for board goals,” Porterie said. “Specifically, we went over how to better implement House Bill 1566.”

HB 1566 is a piece of legislature that, among other things, requires board members to oversee student performance and evaluations.

“Really what we did was focus on our (board) meetings and how to implement that policy within them,” Porterie said.

Lovett detailed how 50 percent of every agenda  item for meetings should be focused on student success.

“The state feels that 50 percent of every item should be focused on the outcome of our students,” Porterie said. “Of course, both Lovett and the board recognized that there isn’t any way you are going to get 50 percent of every agenda item focusing on student success because not every item has to do with students or student matters.”

Accordingly, Porterie said Lovett and board members agreed that it wouldn’t so much be the number of agenda items that would have to deal with student success, but rather the time put into discussion for what the administration and faculty need to do in order to assist their staff and students.

“A highly functional board focuses on curriculum and instruction that would drive student success throughout the year as well as finances in order to make sure our staff has the tools it needs to be successful in their instruction,” Porterie said.

Better to be safe

Safety was another important topic for the board and the district as a whole. Items like better lighting and safety drills were discussed during the retreat.

“We’re going out for bids for better lighting at the stadium,” Porterie said. “And to make sure that our students are getting ready to work with police and other safety officials so we could start having active shooter drills.”

In addition, the district plans on closing — or continuing its closure — of its press box at Memorial Stadium in order to do renovations. This would entail some rearranging of the school’s football schedule for the new school year.

“We’re going to announce later where our five home games will be held,” he said.

The press box walkway specifically will be fixed.

When discussing policies and community, Porterie said the district definitely wants feedback from its community.

“We definitely want participation from the community,” he said. “We’d like them to address things that are on our agendas and things we’re doing at the time.”

Porterie was also clear in stating the district wants feedback, whether good or bad.

“People will address the school board if they feel there are issues present that they have concern with,” he said. “But we also want them to come to us when things are going well because it is all a partnership.”

He made special mention that if and when people approach the board with either praise or criticism, to be sure their concerns also come with ideas for solutions to those concerns.

“We want to hear them,” Porterie said. “But help us understand the dynamics of those concerns and help us come up with solutions.”