South

Kingstown

Public Schools

Annual Report

Office of Teaching & Learning

To All Members of the South Kingstown School Community:

I hope the 2024-2025 school year was filled with successes for you and your families, and that your summer has been full of memorable moments together. Summer gives us a chance to pause and reflect on the school year as a whole. As we look back on this year's events, I'm pleased to report that 2024-2025 was marked by significant learning, growth, and collaboration across the South Kingstown schools.

Student Achievement and Growth

Our students demonstrated strong performance overall on state assessments taken in spring 2024, including RICAS and the SAT. South Kingstown schools continued to exceed Rhode Island state averages on these academic standards-based measures. We also saw progress in our STAR universal screener data throughout the fall, winter, and spring testing periods this year, with the highest percentage of students reflected in the High Growth category in both math and reading.

While we continue working to close achievement gaps across all student groups, these successes reflect the dedication of our staff, the resilience of our students, and the essential partnerships with families that support student learning and growth.

Curriculum and Instruction

Throughout the year, teachers and school leaders worked together to improve curriculum implementation, strengthen teaching practices, and increase student engagement and attendance. Our goal is to ensure learning remains both challenging, meaningful, and relevant for all students.

Elementary Schools (Matunuck, Peace Dale, and West Kingston) focused on implementing and enhancing:
Eureka Math2 curriculum

Wonders English Language Arts curriculum

Middle and High School efforts included:

Transitioning to OpenSciEd science curriculum at Broad Rock Middle School Ongoing collaboration around Savvas (ELA) and Illustrative Mathematics programs at both Broad Rock and South Kingstown High School

Professional Development

Professional learning was central to supporting our educators and staff in their respective crafts. Starting with our district professional development day in August, these shared learning experiences supported our growth and reinforced our commitment to continuous improvement. Much of this success came from our SKSD Professional Development Committee—a collaborative team of administrators, building leaders, teachers, and teacher assistants who meet monthly, along with staff who led professional learning sessions for their colleagues.

As we planned for future professional learning, our efforts were grounded in areas of need identified in our Equity Audit and in four key questions:

1. What do we want students to know or be able to do?
2. How will we deliver that instructionally?
3. How will we know when they got it?
4. What do we do if they do or don’t get it?

These four questions guide how we plan to focus our adult learning to better position us to meet the needs of every student. As we continue building our Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), we look for leveraging innovative, research-based ways to support students academically, behaviorally, and socially. The foundation of this work is providing a strong core learning experience that is consistent and available to all students—meaning every student has access to effective teaching, high-quality curriculum, and supportive learning environments. Through high-quality professional learning, we strive to ensure the ubiquity of this strong core.

Equity and Community

The 2024-2025 school year also gave us the opportunity to examine how all community members experience our schools through our Equity Audit—a comprehensive needs assessment. This process helped us identify our many strengths and assets, as well as areas where we need greater consistency and improvement. The foundation of all this work is building positive relationships based on trust and respect throughout our community, and we are fortunate that this is an area of distinction on which we can build and grow.

Looking Ahead

As we look toward 2025-2026, the Office of Teaching and Learning remains committed to supporting efforts to improve student achievement through professional development, revisions and improvements to existing curriculum and assessments, as well looking at new initiatives and programming that will benefit all students growth while also addressing historical achievement gaps as highlighted by the Equity Audit. We celebrate the progress made this year and the hard work of our staff and students, while staying focused on the ongoing work needed to ensure all students are positioned to succeed and thrive.

Respectfully yours,