Five Douglas schools on federal watch list

Five schools in the Douglas County School District have been placed on a federal watch list, not meeting adequate yearly progress as mandated by No Child Left Behind.

On Tuesday, the district's Director of Assessments Brian Frazier said Scarselli Elementary, Carson Valley Middle School, Douglas High School, Sierra Crest Academy and the high school ASPIRE program have been placed on the watch list.

"It's a warning," Frazier said. "Schools take it seriously."

However, Frazier said in recent years, Douglas has not had a school fall into the 'in need of improvement' category

"If you don't make AYP any given year, you're put on the watch list," he said.

He said if two years pass, and a watch list school doesn't pull back to adequate status, it drops into the 'in need of improvement' designation.

"Two schools, Pau-Wa-Lu and Minden Elementary, were on the watch list last year and made it off this year," Frazier said. "The watch designation is a warning certainly heeded by administrators in the district."

Superintendent Carol Lark said two of the five schools on the list, the high school ASPIRE program and Sierra Crest Academy, a public charter school, were designated as such because of attendance issues.

"Only three were based on academics," she said.

Of those schools, the academic deficiencies could be narrowed down to the special education sub-population, Lark said.

"At CVMS and DHS it was math, and at Scarselli it was English language arts and math; but only in that subpopulation," she said. "Overall the schools are looking good, and we're happy with that. But there are points where we need to improve - we need to focus on those areas determined to need more academic rigor."

Out of 14 schools in the district, seven were deemed adequate. Two, Whittell high/middle school and Zephyr Cove Elementary, were designated as 'high-achieving.'

In comparison, out of 11 schools in Carson City, five were placed in the 'in need of improvement' category, five were deemed adequate, and only one made high-achieving status.