Angela Conway, Elementary School Principal, brought the Albion Board of Education back on March 5 to a slide she had first shown the previous month: districtwide, the share of Kindergarten-through-fifth-grade students reading at or above grade level had climbed from 47% at the start of the 2023-2024 school year to 57% at midyear, according to the minutes. She said she was not satisfied with 57%, but was happy with the progress that had been made. The number matters against where the district started. In the fall of 2021, only 26% of K-5 students were reading at or above grade level, and more students needed urgent intervention than were reading proficiently, the minutes record. That school year ended at 52%. The two years since have each begun with a dip — a summer slide from two months away from instruction — before climbing back through the year. This year's cohort-by-cohort breakdown showed most grades continuing that climb: second grade rose from 37% in the fall to 54% in the winter, third grade from 49% to 62%, and fifth grade from 47% to 53%. Fourth grade moved the other way, slipping slightly from 56% in the fall to 53% in the winter — the only grade tracked that declined. According to the minutes, fourth grade was the cohort hit hardest by the pandemic, with almost half its students needing urgent intervention in the fall of 2021. That same group's share needing urgent intervention has continued to shrink, from 23% in the fall of 2023 to 16% this winter, even as its overall grade-level reading percentage slipped. Conway walked the board through what the district has changed to produce the districtwide gains. The Response to Intervention process was revamped to assign an intervention teacher to every grade level. A new program called WIN — What I Need — gives all students 30 to 40 minutes of targeted support daily. A Student Support Team now monitors students needing the most intensive, Tier 3 services, and the special-education referral process has been streamlined. New K-5 English Language Arts curricula, including Amplify CKLA, Really Great Reading and Heggerty, have been adopted, alongside a new assessment calendar built around STAR, a Really Great Reading grouping matrix and DIBELS testing for new entrants. One slide posed the question "What have we been doing differently?" before running through that list. Conway's list of next steps — curriculum maps and scope-and-sequence documents, standards-based report cards, and a shift toward skills vs. knowledge and the science of reading — connected directly to a report delivered later in the same meeting. Rebecca Manfreda, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction, told the board that faculty will spend a March 11 Staff Development Day continuing exactly that work: the district is in year two of a three-year plan to bring every curriculum area and course into the same digital format for scope-and-sequence and curriculum-mapping documents, with Orleans Niagara BOCES and Genesee Valley BOCES assisting. Manfreda described the documents as meant to travel with the district — usable by administrators reviewing teachers' work, by teachers changing grade levels or courses, and by long-term substitutes and new hires stepping into a classroom mid-year. Conway told the board that if the current trend holds, 60% to 62% of K-5 students could be reading at or above grade level by the end of the 2024 school year, with continued progress potentially reaching 70% or higher by 2028. She cautioned that the pace of change is affected by students moving in and out of the district, students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and instruction itself — factors the board will be able to measure again against the next data update. The rest of the March 5 agenda moved through routine district business. The board adopted eleven revised policies as a block after Board Policy, Process and Protocol Committee chairperson Mrs. Weller reported the committee's first read, waiving a second reading under the terms of the district's own policy on policy adoption. The Finance and Audit Committee, whose chairperson Mr. Kast said continues to work through building-level budgets, reported that a fuel-price comparison favors the district's use of Kurk, and that one of two March budget meetings had been consolidated to March 26 to allow more complete information to be ready for review. The board also approved a $6,000 transfer for audio-visual equipment, a change to the budget vote location, final approval of the High School band's May trip to Toronto, and a slate of personnel resignations, appointments and leave requests.