STILLWATER - Stillwater Area Schools have long been recognized for their academic excellence, but District 834's best and brightest will soon get a lot more attention, thanks to an aggressive new gifted and talented program that will be phased in over a number of years, starting this fall.

Broadly speaking, the program aims to cluster gifted students starting in third grade, create a late-elementary magnet school for the district's top performers, form subject-focused "schools within schools" at the junior highs and offer greater opportunities for advanced or specialized study at the high school level.

The initiative marks a significant shift for District 834, which eliminated its previous gifted and talented program about 15 years ago and has historically limited academic tracking in lower grades to math and English, generally preferring to offer advanced students "enrichment" opportunities within classes that include students of all ability levels.

School administrators said the new gifted and talented program will help them fulfill their mission to serve the needs of diverse learners, and it will better prepare the district's most advanced students for the academically rigorous work they will face in college and beyond.

"We need to meet the needs of our students, and we feel this will be the best way to meet the needs of these (advanced) students. ... We're trying to meet the needs of all students," said Jo Tate, District 834's lead teacher for gifted and remedial services. Tate, along with Assistant Superintendent Don Schuld, gave the School Board an overview of the program at its Thursday night meeting.

District staff have already begun the process of identifying which second- and third-graders might be invited to participate in gifted clusters next year. According to Schuld, parents of those children should receive a letter from the district "within days."

A touchy subject

School board members reacted favorably to the program, but their questions and comments revealed a keen awareness for the political challenges facing any program that would segregate students by academic ability - especially when only 5 percent of students would be labeled "gifted and talented" and a scant 1 percent would be able to attend a magnet elementary school for the district's very brightest.

"I know a lot of parents are going to think that their child is 'gifted and talented,'" warned Board member Scott Papke. "I think we will need to have very specific guidelines for how they are qualified for gifted and talented, and that we are able to work with the parents who think that their child is gifted and talented in a way that we don't discourage them or send a bad message."

Schuld said that is why parent ratings will be one of the many factors apart from test scores and teacher recommendations that will be considered in the assessment process.

"We truly consider all children to have special and unique gifts. What we're trying to accomplish in our identification process is really determine which students need something different than what's being provided every day," he said.

Board member Roland "Bud" Buchman suggested presenting the program as one based on "talent development," and not on the identification and differentiation of individual students.

"The explanation would be, I think, that the student has this particular talent, so it's the talents that we're emphasizing, and not the student," he said.

Buchman noted that Stillwater's athletic and music programs are excellent examples of places where students are already able to develop and showcase their individual talents in the context of a larger group, but said he saw little mention of those programs in the gifted and talented presentation.

Board member Andrée Aronson offered the most enthusiastic praise of the program, saying it was "overdue," especially in light of how much the district spends to educate its most challenged students.

"On a legislative level, there is the idea that we are as a district subsidizing special ed., and it has irritated me forever that we don't take that same interest in the kids on - it's not the other side - but the kids on the other end of the spectrum," she said.

"I'm excited that this is going; I'm excited that this is moving forward. ... I just want to say, 'Thank you!' 'Thank you' to the people who are working on this, and 'thank you' to those who have worked so hard for years and years and years to try and move this forward and finally make it happen."

Keeping up with the Einsteins

After the meeting, district administrators said any concerns they have about the potential drawbacks or political pitfalls of grouping students by academic ability have been overshadowed by their fear that Stillwater schools are in some ways failing their most gifted learners.

When the school board heard a presentation on statewide test results earlier this year, they were told Stillwater students do very well on average, but years of testing data have shown that Stillwater's top scorers consistently lag those of peer school districts. That gap appears in late elementary school and increases each year until graduation, Assessment and Evaluation Coordinator Chris Balow said at the time.

Schuld reiterated that point Thursday night, noting that one of ways the success of the new gifted and talented program will be measured is by its ability to reverse that trend.

"As a whole we're doing very well, but our students that are at the top aren't necessarily doing as well as we think they could," he said. "If our programs are effective we would expect to see more of our students in the top quartile. We would expect that we would continue a trend of students scoring higher on AP courses, and we might also have more students who are National Merit Scholars."

Even more important, Schuld said, will be how students perform once they leave the school system.

"I think some of the best results will be longitudinal - if we can get some feedback after the students leave our district," he said. "How did they find their work at the college level and in the community? Were they well prepared? Did we give them what they needed to be successful?"

Though Tate said District 834 had previously planned to revisit its gifted and talented program for all of the reasons above, she said the Minnesota Legislature provided an added incentive in 2005, when it passed a law giving school districts dedicated funds for gifted and talented education.

"This plan was already in the works," she said. "It was just nice to then have the money to help implement it."

For the 2006-07 school year, that figure was set at $4 per pupil; In 2007-08, it will rise to $9 per pupil. In the case of District 834, that amounts to about $36,300 and $82,000, respectively.

The funding for this school year was used for teacher training, program development and to identify gifted and talented students. District 834 second- and third-graders will be assessed this spring to determine who will be placed in gifted clusters next year.

The gifted and talented program will start with the creation of gifted-student clusters this year, with a magnet school program (tentatively slated for Oak Park Elementary) forming the following year for students who are still not sufficiently challenged.

Tate said the program will continue to grow from there.

"The most important thing is that we're doing everything we can to help all of our students meet their potential, and this is an important part of that," she said. "If things go as we expect them to, moderately advanced and other students will also benefit from the gifted and talented program, since it should give teachers the ability to better tailor instruction to their needs, as well."

Summer construction plans

The school board was asked to solicit bids on a handful of new construction projects tentatively scheduled for this summer. Board members are expected to grant final project approvals at their April 26 meeting. The proposed projects include:

€ Renovation of the Lily Lake Elementary playground. The playground would be upgraded with a number of new play structures and play surfaces at a total estimated cost of $93,000. The Lily Lake Parent-Teacher Organization has been raising money for the project, and it is prepared to pay $65,000 for new equipment; roughly $28,000 from District 834's health and safety budget would be used to cover play area surfacing and borders.

€ Resurfacing of tennis courts at Stillwater Area High School and Afton-Lakeland Elementary. The $400,000 project would resurface 12 courts at the high school and completely replace four courts at the elementary school. All courts would retain their current size and configuration.

€ Replace roofs at Oak-Land Junior High and Lily Lake Elementary, at an estimated cost of $600,000. The existing roofs were installed in 1990 to 1993 and have an average lifespan of 15 years. The new roofs would be expected to last 30 years.

€ Replace the Central Services Building's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system, for about $950,000. The building is the last in the district to have its HVAC system updated. Much of the existing system dates to 1975, when the building first opened.

In other business,

the school board...

€ contracted Washington County to manage upcoming school board elections. The county has run the District 834 school board elections since 2005. School administrators said the arrangement allows for more polling places, longer polling hours and more timely results reporting.

€ revised its 2007-08 academic calendar to reclassify the Wednesday before Thanksgiving a school holiday; schedule teacher workshop days for both Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Presidents Day; move the last day of school back one day, to Friday, June 6, 2008; and alternate late-start days between Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, so that elementary students would not always miss the same weekly or semi-weekly classes, such as music or physical education.