OXFORD — The Oxford Hills School District will save $120,000 set aside for mandated tutorial services under the No Child Left Behind legislation.

Curriculum Director Kathy Elkins told the Oxford Hills School District board of directors Monday night that the Department of Education has approved a waiver allowing the state to calculate a new way to determine which schools will be put on a priority list for school improvement.

Earlier this week, Gov. Paul R. LePage and State Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen announced that the U.S. Department of Education granted Maine a two-year waiver from school improvement provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind.

According to a statement from the Maine Department of Education, Maine and 39 other states successfully applied for flexibility since 2011 because the accountability requirements of NCLB — including 100 percent student proficiency in math and reading by 2014, were “universally unobtainable and not sensitive to the individual challenges of schools and states, especially rural ones.”

The legislation required that districts pay for tutorial after school services for Title 1 schools that were classified as CIPS2 (Continuous Improvement Priority School) for 2 years or more when schools did not make adequate yearly progress.

Scores of schools in Maine, including some in the Oxford Hills School District and Lewiston, Auburn and Lisbon districts, as well as Buckfield Junior-Senior High School, Jay Elementary School, Dirigo Elementary School and Mountain Valley Middle School in RSU 10 are some of the affected schools across the state.

Title I is the federal designation for schools with high percentages of disadvantaged learners, including those that are low-income or part of some minority groups, as well as students with limited English proficiency.

Elkins said Oxford Elementary School, for example, did not make the achievement gains and was placed on the list.

That means that any Oxford student who qualified for free/reduced lunch was able to receive up to $1,246 each in tutorial services, Elkins said. The school had highest free/reduced lunch rate (78%) in the district. The tutorial providers were chosen by parents from a federally approved private providers list.

“We will no longer have to set aside money to pay outside tutoring services, which means that we can reallocate that money back into the Title I program and maximize our intervention system,” she said.

According to a statement from the DOE, the state has developed a plan for continued implementation of the Maine Learning Results, a set of high standards developed by the state to ensure students graduate college and are career-ready.

Maine DOE will also help local school districts develop and deploy educator evaluation and support systems. A pilot program will  begin in 2014-2015 and will be fully implemented in 2015-2016. The department has developed  a system of differentiated recognition, accountability and support for Maine’s 380 Title I-served schools.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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