West Cook News

The 2023-24 school year is shaping up as a time to remember for Lehigh Elementary.

At a recent meeting, the Norridge School Board of Education welcomed members from the school’s building team, where they shared tenements from their improvement plan for the upcoming year. Principal Sean Rabiola, Assistant Principal Allison Carnehl, kindergarten teacher Wendy High, speech pathologist Marlee Fratto, first-grade teacher Valerie McAuley, fourth-grade teacher Felix Saji, second-grade teacher Lindsey Percival, third-grade teacher Trish Schultheis and PE teacher Patrick Woodward stood to present the new plan, sharing a vision plan that focuses on inspiring education in a nurturing environment that focuses on classrooms centered around student needs.

“One of the strengths of Leigh school is that we have a really supportive environment,” Woodward said in a video of the meeting posted to YouTube. “Here are our results from our five essentials survey that students have filled out. It was filled out by about 99% of the student population. And it shows very strong performance for peer support for academic work. Another very strong performance for academic personalism and a continuous strong student-teacher trust really shows evidence that students feel like they have a safe learning environment. They feel like they can trust their peers and that they feel respected by the institute as well.”

Team members went on to point to some of the many ways they go out of their way to make sure their students get a well-rounded experience, including the ongoing partnership with the Park District that offers such after-school enrichment activities as arts, athletics and fun special classes and events. They also touched on how they are now actively encouraging students to develop more of a sense of ownership in the building to the benefit of the entire community.

One example is The Tiger Pride program, which instructs students to be safe, kind, and respectful. Some of the other challenges the school is facing include its physical infrastructure, such as an inefficient HVAC system and some plumbing and storm-water drainage difficulties.  

Finally, after pouring over academic assessment data, team members predicted they could have as many as 70% of their students reach benchmark goals next year in math and ELA, which has over time been a shade under their math growth levels.

Other improvements being targeted for next year include ensuring that all students identified at the start of the year as needing additional social-emotional intervention receive those supports and have an individualized plan to address their needs.

Much of the plan includes increased communication with the community and families in hopes of better monitoring the progress of students as they strive to improve their math and ELA instructional periods.