Cityside Annual Report

Alternative Text: Cityside Annual Report

February 2, 2024

Dear Parents and Community Members:

We are pleased to present you with the Annual Education Report (AER), which provides key information on the 2022-23 educational progress for Cityside Middle School. The AER addresses the complex reporting information required by federal and state laws. The school’s report contains information about student assessment, accountability, and teacher quality. If you have any questions about the AER, please contact Sarah Huizenga for assistance.

The AER is available for you to review electronically by visiting the following website https://bit.ly/3H6KxZU  or you may review a copy in the main office at your child’s school.

For the 2023-24 school year, schools were identified based on previous years’ performance using definitions and labels as required in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). A Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) school is one that had at least one underperforming student subgroup in 2018-19. An Additional Targeted Support (ATS) school is one that had a student subgroup performing at the same level as the lowest 5% of all schools in the state in 2017-18. A Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) school is one whose performance was in the lowest 5% of all schools in the state or had a graduation rate at or below 67% in 2016-17. Some schools are not identified with any of these labels. In these cases, no label is given.

Fortunately, our school has not been given one of these labels. 

Although Cityside Middle School is above the state average in all areas, we are not without our challenges.  We are targeting ways to close the achievement gap with all of our students, specifically our English Language Learners and our Special Education subgroups. We have devised new guidelines for our EL curriculum and are training all of our middle school staff members in SIOP training to better teach our language learners. Some are taking the initial training, and some are taking an extended training. We are team-teaching with our EL teacher and regular teachers for added support.  We are working with our special education team to provide the most support possible for our students with disabilities.  We look forward to seeing the growth of these two subgroups as these interventions are strengthened. We are constantly exploring ways to strengthen the academic performance and the social and emotional health of all of our students. 

State law requires that we also report additional information that we have included below from the 2021-22 & 2022-23 school years:

PROCESS FOR ASSIGNING PUPILS TO THE SCHOOL

Students in Zeeland are assigned based upon their geographical home location.  ZPS also offers school of choice openings, which are placed after the residents of Zeeland are assigned to their home school.  Our Spanish Immersion & Balanced Calendar PBL programs are filled on a first come, first served basis and may change the building of choice for students.  There are 7 elementary schools in Zeeland and those schools feed into two middle schools, Cityside and Creekside.  New Groningen, Roosevelt, ZQuest, and Quincy elementaries feed into Creekside Middle School and eventually to Zeeland West High School. Adams, Lincoln, and Woodbridge elementaries feed into Cityside Middle School, and eventually to Zeeland East High School.

THE STATUS OF THE 3-5 YEAR SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN

Over the past three years, the district has been working through steps in the MICIP platform to identify three key goal areas: Student Wellness, Mathematics, and English Language Arts. At Cityside, our focus has been implementing a new course in 6th grade called Changes. It covers a variety of topics to help students adjust to middle school and includes student wellness. Students then go on to take Challenges in 7th grade to further their development. A PreK-12 Math Coalition is working to examine math achievement and instructional practices across the wide. At Cityside, our focus has been to work on essential standards and to hone our best math practices. The district is just beginning to examine ELA data, following an implementation cycle that began 7 years ago to determine strengths and needs. Our scores continue to show improvement in reading. 

A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF EACH SPECIALIZED SCHOOL

Students in the elementary program at Zeeland Public Schools are given the opportunity to participate in a variety of experiences in addition to traditional education programs that include special education, Gifted and Talented for 4th/5th-grade students, Spanish Immersion, and Zeeland Quest (a K-8, year-round balanced calendar, project-based learning school).

IDENTIFY HOW TO ACCESS A COPY OF THE CORE CURRICULUM, A DESCRIPTION OF ITS IMPLEMENTATION, AND AN EXPLANATION OF THE VARIANCES FROM THE STATE’S MODEL

The Core Curriculum for our school is based upon the State of Michigan Standards and National Common Core Standards. This information is available at our school office or on our district website. Zeeland Public Schools makes sure our students are provided with challenging lessons that are consistent across grade levels. A team of Zeeland educators regularly evaluates and revises our curriculum to ensure that classroom lessons meet state requirements for kindergarten through twelfth grade. 

THE AGGREGATE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT RESULTS FOR ANY LOCAL COMPETENCY TESTS OR NATIONALLY NORMED ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

IDENTIFY THE NUMBER AND PERCENT OF STUDENTS REPRESENTED BY PARENTS AT PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES

The community of Zeeland has always supported our schools. For school

years 2022-2023 we had 410/738 parents represent their child(ren) at parent teacher conferences. 

CONCLUSION

ZPS is proud of the work happening in each building. The commitment of district staff to ensure that all Zeeland students are able to learn in an environment where they feel safe, valued, and loved is evident at all levels. At Cityside we are particularly proud of the relationships with our students, the offerings we have in extra-curricular activities as well as academics, and the culture of the building. With the partnership of family and community, we take pride in fostering lifelong learners.

Sincerely,

Sarah Huizenga

Principal

Cityside Middle School