Derby USD 260 school officials on Jan. 27 told the Board of Education they are replacing the district's high‑school and middle‑school reading screener and reviewed midyear student assessment results while principals described local interventions intended to keep students in class and support mental health.

Assistant Superintendent Holly Putnam Jackson said the district will replace the vendor‑provided Reading Inventory (RI) with Ready Reading for grades 2–12 after the RI product was discontinued by its vendor. "We have moved over to Ready Reading, which is on the state approved list of dyslexia screeners," Putnam Jackson said, adding the district will continue using DIBELS at K–5 and will gather feedback through May to confirm the chosen tools give teachers the information they need.

The change responds to the state of Kansas dyslexia requirements and KSDE guidance, Putnam Jackson said. She also described updated, state‑required dyslexia training modules about the science of reading, structured literacy, and classroom action. "These are the five baseline modules that every new teacher has to go through," she said.

Why it matters: the change affects how students are screened for reading risks, which influences referrals to tiered interventions and the district’s training obligations for teachers. Board members raised how the new data will be used and whether high‑school screening results accurately reflect students who take college courses off campus.

District assessment results and local context

Putnam Jackson presented districtwide middle‑of‑year results showing general gains on multiple measures but with important caveats. The district continues universal screening three times a year with DIBELS at the elementary level, she said. Ready Reading provides Lexile‑level comparisons similar to the retired RI, but Putnam Jackson warned that differences in assessment rigor affect comparability: for example, she cited typical fifth‑grade Lexile bands discussed in the presentation as roughly 609–800 for on‑grade scores versus end‑of‑year targets near 830–1,010, depending on the measure.

At Derby Middle School, Principal Clint Shipley described building‑level efforts to reduce lost instructional time and address discipline and mental health needs. Shipley highlighted a new electronic hall‑pass system, Securly Hall Pass, that "is a completely software based" subscription service that lets teachers approve passes from a device and set rules to block passes during instruction, limit the number of students out of class and prevent specified students from being in the hallways together. "Right now, we're able to limit the entire building to only 15 students out of class at a time," Shipley said.

Shipley also described the school’s nascent on‑site mental‑health partnership that connects students to Comcare therapists without parents needing to travel to off‑site appointments. The program began in November and had about six students receiving services with a wait list, he said.

Shipley cited several other local metrics: vaping/tobacco incidents were seven in the first semester both this year and last year even though the school doubled the number of vape detectors; tardies recorded in the system dropped from about 4,000 in the first semester last year to about 1,450 this year after teachers moved to marking conduct cards (Shipley said that number may undercount because of reporting lags); and out‑of‑school suspensions for first semester fell from 47 to 27 year‑over‑year. Shipley cautioned where numbers might be affected by reporting changes: "I hope that we're marking both, but I suspect that maybe there's times that they mark the conduct card and it doesn't get recorded in Skyward. So 1,450 might be, best case scenario," he said.

Board discussion and implementation questions

Board members asked how Ready Reading compares to RI and whether the district should consider alternate measures at the high‑school level (for example, the ACT) because juniors and seniors sometimes decline to take local screeners if they are enrolled in college courses. Gretchen Pontius, principal at Derby High School, said older students often "are more focused on where they're going with that diploma" and may not see the value of a district screener when they are taking college classes.

Putnam Jackson said Ready Reading gives more diagnostic detail than RI — including subtests for fluency, vocabulary, phonics and phonemic awareness when a student falls into a risk band — and that the district will continue to align screening and intervention through the dyslexia flowcharts it has shared with staff.

No formal board action was taken specifically on the dyslexia update or on Ready Reading during the Jan. 27 meeting; the presentation was an informational update and staff said they will continue gathering feedback through the spring screeners.

Ending

District leaders said they will return to the board with implementation feedback and that the screening and training changes are part of an ongoing, multi‑year alignment to state dyslexia guidance and to local intervention capacity. Parents and teachers who want more detail were directed to the State Department of Education materials and to contact building administrators for local intervention procedures.