On the first day of the school year 2024-2025, Wednesday, August 7, for the Winn Parish school system, Superintendent Al Simmons addressed the Winnfield Rotary Club on matters of public education in the parish. He emphasized that the purpose of our public education system is devoted to giving our kids a better life. Data generally shows that well-educated people live longer, healthier lives, and that is the goal of our educational system and those who labor in it.
According to the Superintendent, Open House was a success at our schools in Winnfield, Calvin and Dodson. They were well-attended and gave students and parents alike an opportunity to learn the location of the children’s classroom(s), meet teachers and generally relieve some of the confusion natural to the first official day of school for everyone. It will take a couple of weeks for everyone to get situated, so schools won’t have definite enrollment numbers for that time. As for teachers, it will likewise take a few weeks to know how well-staffed the system is for the year but that statistic can change from day to day due to medical and situational changes that occur with everyone.
Mr. Simmons also spoke about the recent report showing that students in the Winn Parish School District were top in the state in terms of growth in the number of students showing proficiency in math, science, and English/language arts. Two percent more of Winn’s students showed proficiency in those areas than in 2023-2024. The rest of the state showed no improvement in the numbers of proficient students. Calvin High School showed the highest increase in proficient students of all the traditional public schools in the state. There were two other schools that achieved the same level of improvement, but one of those is a magnet school and the other is a charter school.
More aggregate data regarding district and school performance will be sent to the school districts in a couple of weeks. The district’s current score is presently a B, but Winn won’t know that aggregate score until that data is released to the district at that time.
The superintendent noted that Winn Parish schools have shown improvement in proficiency every year for the last three years. However, the state department of education is planning a big change in the way districts and individual schools are graded year after next, which may result in changes in the school district’s consistently good scores.