Brevard County School District Mr. Eric T Fleming, Principal 250 Wildcat Alley Melbourne, FL 32935 Document Generated On December 21, 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Description of the School 2 School's Purpose 4 Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement 6 Additional Information 7
Introduction Every school has its own story to tell. The context in which teaching and learning takes place influences the processes and procedures by which the school makes decisions around curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The context also impacts the way a school stays faithful to its vision. Many factors contribute to the overall narrative such as an identification of stakeholders, a description of stakeholder engagement, the trends and issues affecting the school, and the kinds of programs and services that a school implements to support student learning. The purpose of the Executive Summary (ES) is to provide a school with an opportunity to describe in narrative form the strengths and challenges it encounters. By doing so, the public and members of the school community will have a more complete picture of how the school perceives itself and the process of self-reflection for continuous improvement. This summary is structured for the school to reflect on how it provides teaching and learning on a day to day basis. Page 1
Description of the School Describe the school's size, community/communities, location, and changes it has experienced in the last three years. Include demographic information about the students, staff, and community at large. What unique features and challenges are associated with the community/communities the school serves? is a secondary school located in Melbourne, Florida on Central Florida's East coast. The school serves South Brevard County as a Public School of Choice and is one of sixteen high schools in the Brevard County School District. The Brevard school district ranks in the top 100 largest districts in the nation. West Shore was established in 1998 as Brevard County's first School of Choice and is known for being a rigorous college preparatory secondary school serving students in grades 7-12. West Shore is an open enrollment school of choice through an application and lottery process. The design of the school accommodates acceleration opportunities with a strong college preparatory curriculum; therefore, all students must be at, or above, grade level to apply for acceptance. Brevard County Florida is located halfway between Jacksonville and Miami. The county extends 72 miles from north to south and averages 26.5 miles wide. The county is unofficially divided into three sections: North County, with the cities of Titusville, Mims and Port St. John; Central Brevard, which includes Cocoa, Rockledge, Merritt Island, Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach; and South County, which includes Melbourne, Palm Bay, Grant, Valkaria, and the South Beaches. The South Beaches is the area south of Patrick Air Force Base, and includes South Patrick Shores, Satellite Beach, Indian Harbour Beach, Indialantic, and Melbourne Beach. Most students enrolled at West Shore reside in southern Brevard County, mainly from the cities of Melbourne, Palm Bay, Rockledge, West Melbourne and the South Beaches. As a School of Choice, our community is larger than a regular neighborhood school and our population is determined by the random lottery acceptance. The makeup of our student body may be different from the demographics of the neighborhood where our school is located. The chart below describes our enrollment numbers and student ethnicity. West Shore Students (2015-2016) Ethnicity # % White 692 72% Black 36 4% Hispanic 78 8% Asian 95 10% Indian 5 1% Island Pacific 0 0% Multi- Racial 56 6% Total 962 100% Due to budget cuts mandated in 2011, Brevard Public Schools eliminated corridor busing for all Choice Schools in the school district. Since its inception in 1998, corridor busing allowed West Shore students to catch a public school bus at locations near their homes and ride to school and back each day. With the elimination of corridor busing, parents must now transport their own children, seek out carpools or pay for busing from a private company. This has put a burden on some families and has decreased the number of new applicants each year. Page 2
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School's Purpose Provide the school's purpose statement and ancillary content such as mission, vision, values, and/or beliefs. Describe how the school embodies its purpose through its program offerings and expectations for students. West Shore Mission Statement:, a center for excellence, creates a nurturing secondary learning environment (grades 7-12) that provides unique experiences for intellectual development, academic achievement, and preparation for life's work. West Shore Belief Statements: Excellence can be achieved. All students deserve challenging, rewarding, and relevant curricular and co-curricular opportunities. People need a safe, nurturing and positive learning environment. Education provides the foundation for success. Individual differences and diversity enrich our unique school culture. Education is the combined responsibility of parents, students, educators and communities. West Shore Vision: Excellence Achieved students and staff work each day to maintain or exceed the high standards set before them. West Shore was designed with a college preparatory focus as evidenced by its graduation requirements. Students are expected to earn 28 credits rather than the standard 26 credits to graduate. Students strive to earn a West Shore Diploma of Distinction, which includes 4 language arts credits, 4 science credits, 4 mathematics credits and 4 social studies credits, and 3 consecutive credits in a foreign language. A minimum of 2 credits of Communications Skills (Performing/Practical Arts) are required. Of the remaining 7 credits, ½ a credit is required in Career Decision Making, 1 credit is required in Health Opportunities for Physical Education [HOPE] and 5.5 elective credits are required. In addition to the 28-credit requirement, there are additional expectations for achieving the West Shore Diploma of Distinction. Students must maintain a competitive portfolio with at least one documented leadership experience. Each student must have at least three areas of acceleration during his/her time at the school, with one being achieved during the student's middle school years. Students must fulfill a service learning component of 25 community service hours each year. Students must also complete a Senior Project, which involves a research paper, a product demonstrating the area of research, a portfolio of the documented experience, and a presentation of the project to a board of educators and community experts. This activity is designed for students to integrate their learning experiences, demonstrate research and problem-solving skills, utilize their communication skills, and expand their critical-thinking processes. Due to the requirements of West Shore's Diploma of Distinction, middle schools students must take one high school level course in 7th or 8th grade. Graduates are also required to complete at least two accelerations in their high school career by taking either Advanced Placement or Dual Enrollment courses at Eastern Florida State College. With 27 different AP courses offered and a myriad of Dual Enrollment courses available, students can tailor these experiences to their needs. All of these accelerated experiences rest on the foundation of the education that the students have received prior to taking them. West Shore prides itself on a vertically-aligned curriculum that provides students with the necessary tools to succeed at the postsecondary level. Constant analysis and self-reflection on the part of administrators, curriculum resource specialists and teachers regarding the curriculum has been the driving force in helping West Shore become very proficient at Page 4
producing postsecondary ready students. Maintaining these high levels of readiness, and improving them where possible, continues to be paramount to our school's mission. Page 5
Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement Describe the school's notable achievements and areas of improvement in the last three years. Additionally, describe areas for improvement that the school is striving to achieve in the next three years. In 2012, West Shore was named as a winner of the National Blue Ribbon Award for Public and Private Schools. An important part of the U.S. Department of Education, the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program recognizes outstanding public and nonpublic schools. In identifying several hundred outstanding schools annually, the program celebrates some of the most skilled and effective educators in the country. The Award is both a high aspiration and a potent resource of practitioner knowledge. West Shore also received this honor once before in 2004. West Shore is continually recognized each year by U.S. News and World Report as one of "America's Best High Schools". As a Gold Medal winner in 2015, our school was ranked at #63 out of the top 100 schools nationally. West Shore was also recognized by Newsweek Magazine as one of "America's Top High Schools" by being ranked at #65 out of the top 100 schools nationally in 2015. West Shore is a Senior Project Exemplary School. A board of judges from the Partnership for Dynamic Learning reviewed the Senior Project requirements needed for West Shore's coveted Diploma of Distinction and noted that the curriculum surrounding the Senior Project is one of relevant rigor for college success. Senior Project is designed to academically "stretch" students by requiring them to write a college-level essay, maintain a professional portfolio, design and develop a product and formally present their project to a panel of community judges and educators. Over the next three years, West Shore administration would like to have an increase in the number of AP courses available to students and to increase the number of highly qualified teachers to oversee the instruction of these courses. Page 6
Additional Information Provide any additional information you would like to share with the public and community that were not prompted in the previous sections. As part of the West Shore enrollment contract, parents are required to complete 20 hours of volunteer time each year per child enrolled at West Shore. Since parent involvement is vital to student success, this requirement allows for parents to partake in activities, understand the content being taught in the classrooms, as well as immerse themselves in the culture of the school. With the commencement of Brevard County's Secondary Schools of National Prominence initiative, the faculty at West Shore chose to focus on relationships within the classroom. This led to the development of Small Learning Communities [SLC] in each and every grade level. This weekly SLC homeroom period is an advisory program that was designed to create positive relationships between the faculty and students. The vertically aligned curriculum was developed to foster student growth in the areas of academic achievement, career planning, service learning, responsible citizenship and character education. Students develop a sense of belonging, trust, and confidence with their homeroom teacher-advisor as this relationship is vital in providing the student with a significant support person on campus. Teacheradvisors are scheduled with the same group of students for the duration of the students' years at West Shore. New to West Shore this year is an initiative called "Power Hour". Power Hour gives students one hour in the middle of the school day to eat lunch and participate in different activities. The teachers have lunch during half of the hour and they hold office hours during the other half hour so they can offer tutoring, sponsor clubs, create learning opportunities, provide make up sessions, or anything else that would enhance a positive school culture for our school. Students can eat at any time during the hour at certain locations on campus. They can also use the hour to get help from a teacher, join a club or other school activity, or simply socialize with other students. Another new program to West Shore is AP Capstone. AP Capstone is an innovative diploma program, instituted by College Board, which provides students with an opportunity to engage in rigorous scholarly practice of the core academic skills necessary for successful college completion. AP Capstone is built on the foundation of two courses -- AP Seminar and AP Research -- and is designed to complement and enhance the in-depth, discipline-specific study provided through AP courses. It cultivates curious, independent, and collaborative scholars and prepares them to make logical, evidence-based decisions. Students typically take AP Seminar in the 10th or 11th grade, followed by AP Research. Students who earn scores of 3 or higher in AP Seminar and AP Research and on four additional AP Exams of their choosing will receive the AP Capstone Diploma. This signifies their outstanding academic achievement and attainment of college-level academic and research skills. Alternatively, students who earn scores of 3 or higher in AP Seminar and AP Research will receive the AP Seminar and Research Certificate signifying their attainment of collegelevel academic and research skills. All West Shore teachers promote and use Creating Independence through Student-owned Strategies [C.R.I.S.S.]. CRISS is a program designed to bring out students' prior knowledge, make them active and engaged learners, and help them achieve metacognition. Teachers pull from a repertoire of instructional strategies (such as Author's Craft, Power Thinking, Pattern Puzzle, Think/Pair/Share, Concept Mapping, Opinion-Proof, Spool Paper and Content Frames) used to assist student in learning and mastering the content. Students then select those strategies they feel best serve their needs while the teacher facilitates the lesson. Page 7
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