“I’m super-excited” MSBSD Superintendent looks forward to new school year

It is mid-July, the middle of summer break, and for many students, the start of school is a distant thought. Meanwhile, Matanuska Susitna Borough School District Superintendent Dr. Randi Trani is hard at work planning for the upcoming school year.

He took time to talk about the upcoming school year and what he is looking forward to as the August 16 school start day quickly approaches.

“I am looking forward to a more normal school year, like the last half of last year,” he says, talking about having a normal school year, free of pandemics and shutdowns.

“I hope COVID levels stay down and schools can focus on achievement.”

The first thing is to get in-person attendance back up to pre-pandemic levels.

“Attendance has been rooted in COVID, and as we have started to put it behind us, there is improvement, but daily attendance across the board has been down,” Dr. Trani says. He is hopeful that students and families return to an in-person attendance normalcy without any more confusing shutdowns or distance learning.

The hardest hit by COVID nationwide are the students who are getting ready to enter the 2nd grade. In a study released in January from Brown University, findings reflect that achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020, indicating that disruptions and prolonged school closures to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

“They were in Kindergarten when COVID hit, a time when most kids are stepping into the classroom for tor the first time, and nationwide, those students were impacted the most,” adds Dr. Trani.

Shoring up learning deficits from COVID is one of the challenges Dr. Trani faces. Another is the implementation of a new Professional Development model known as “PLC Mondays.”

PLC, short for Professional Learning Communities, is a set time each week for teachers and other educators meet to collaborate, discuss best practices, and work to improve teaching and learning. For the upcoming school year, select schools will implement PLC on Monday mornings before the start of school.

“The high schools and middle schools will still have the same core time, there will be no loss in teaching time, and in fact some time will increase for the most vulnerable students,” says Dr. Trani, who believes that implementing PLC Mondays will improve the trajectory of student learning and performance.

Dr. Trani is proud that overall, the school district performs really well, but worries when compared to districts across the United States. He is looking at ways to change that, starting with a focus on teaching to standards. By that, he means “What do we want kids to learn and know?” He references teacher clarity as a means to reach the deepest level of learning, in which teachers and students have a clear, shared understanding of the ultimate learning goal behind each lesson.

“When teachers understand and people are invested in whatever they’re doing, they perform better,” said Dr. Trani.

Understanding and investing in student performance are top priorities, and Dr. Trani hopes that the hard work and collaboration will pay off, but also acknowledges that it must be reflected in common assessments.

“How are we measuring their learning?” Dr. Trani would like to see learning be equal across the board, no matter where or how students are learning.

“For example, if a student is taking Algebra 1, and receives an ‘A,’ that’s great, but there is no common assessment of what that means, what they learned. How do we know that they learned it?” While this is covered in the formative assessments students take throughout the coursework, Dr. Trani wants the Algebra 1 class a student takes at Palmer to be the same as the Algebra 1 taken at Wasilla, Houston, or Su Valley, or any other school across the district.

“I want the learning to be exactly the same and measured the same so if a student transfers from 1 school to another, there isn’t anything lost.”

While that could pose a daunting challenge for a district as large as the Mat-Su Borough school district, which is often compared in size to West Virginia, Dr. Trani is optimistic about the future of MSBSD.

“I’m super excited for the new school year. There are great things in store and a real opportunity to impact more students.”

One great thing that students, parents, and teachers are indeed looking forward to is the opening of the new Houston High School, which was irreparably damaged during the 2018 earthquake, and demolished in 2020. Houston High was forced to combine into the Houston Junior-Senior High School while construction has gotten underway.

“Everything is still on schedule to open mid-year. It’s going to be great.”

The estimated delivery date for the new Houston High School is December 2022, with an anticipated opening of January 2023.