District staff on Feb. 1 presented a review of secondary gifted services and a committee’s work to produce a consistent entry and exit matrix for middle and high school students.

Dr. Ryder described current middle school programming as a mix of compacted ELA and gifted resource electives in grades 6–8 and said the district provides a gifted resource teacher at the high school who also teaches a Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) course. “In all of these scenarios, these are homogeneous groupings, meaning students that have been identified as needing GIEP supports and services are the students that are in these programming,” Dr. Ryder said.

Mrs. Brown, supervisor of secondary special education, summarized the secondary matrix committee’s work, noting the committee met several times with principals, classroom teachers, counselors and psychologists and reviewed other districts’ matrices and county guidance. The committee recommended multiple data points for identification and re-evaluation, including universal screeners (STAR), curriculum assessments, above-level testing and, eventually, IQ measures such as the WISC. Brown said it is rare for students to be first identified at the high school level and that many students’ curricular needs are met by existing course-leveling (extended core, honors, AP) as they age.

Staff provided enrollment counts: 208 districtwide students currently receive gifted services; 87 at the elementary level (plus 13 dual-identified), 64 at middle school (plus seven dual-identified) and 32 at the high school (plus five dual-identified). Committee members and staff asked whether the drop from elementary to secondary reflected programming changes rather than loss of giftedness; staff answered that course leveling, differentiated instruction and placement in accelerated courses often meet curricular need without a formal GIEP.

The committee recommended clearer, data-driven exit criteria to replace prior, more anecdotal approaches and reported work to develop new ELA assessments to help determine acceleration needs. Staff said they will continue disaggregating data by subject area and demographic groups to examine disproportionality, program duration and whether identification practices are consistent across schools.

Several board members emphasized the need to ensure students who struggle in advanced classes remain visible to the multidisciplinary review team; staff said a multidisciplinary team — including parents, a local education agent, the gifted teacher and regular-education teachers — reviews cases and can recommend continued services if needed.