Overview of School Characteristics

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1. What are the major defining features and characteristics of your school?
Madison Middle School serves all of the 5th, 6th and 7th grade students in Madison School District. The school is located in a conservative, family oriented town of approximately 20,000 people. Our students come from three elementary school located within the city and four elementary school that are located in the county. Rexburg is also the home of Brigham Young University Idaho. For the past three years the district has experienced a growth in the number of student. This growth is expected to continue and has already created the need to hire additional teachers and crowding in some classrooms.

Based on Fall 2008 data the school had:
. 1,025students
. 9.9% student mobility, (students who have moved in or out of the school during the
school year).
. 90.7% of the students remain in the building for the three years.
. 97% daily attendance is approximately
. 12.6%, (118 students), are eligible for Title I
. 53 % Male, 47% Female
. 92.7% White, 5% Hispanic and 3% other
. 4.6% Limited English Proficiency
. 2.4% Migrant
. 11% Student with Disabilities
. 39.5% eligible for free or reduced lunch

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2. What characteristics or features of your school set it apart from other schools within the district (distinguishing factors)? Examples: special programs or offerings; something the school has created such as a streamlined process; new content that has been added; etc.

. Madison Middle School is organized using the "Team" concept associated with middle schools. The teachers work closely together as teams to provide consistency in rules and procedures, to establish good communications with parents and to meet the individual needs of their students.

. Two years ago the middle school along with the elementary school adopted the Saxon math program which provides a systematic and sequential math program.

. Two years ago the middle school began teaching pre-algebra in the 6th grade.

. This year the middle school adopted a new Reading/Language Arts program that is systematic, sequential and provides coordinated materials for SWD and ELL students.

. An after school program has been established which currently has approximately 25% of the students enrolled.

. Project Northland, a drug and alcohol prevention program has been started in the sixth and seventh grades.

. Steps-to-Respect, a bully prevention program and been started in the fifth grade.

. Second Steps, a violence prevention program has been started in grades 5-7.

. Academy of Math and Academy of Reading have been established to help Title I and ELL students as either a pull-out program during the school day or as part of after school program.

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3. Have there been any significant changes in the major characteristics of your school or community (as evidenced by updated demographics) over the past year?

. There has been a 2% decrease in average daily attendance.

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4. How has the school responded to those changes?

The changes that have occurred because of the changing demographics are: 1) a shifting of our financial and human resources from Migrant to ELL and Title I and 2) We have begun looking into ways of increasing the average daily attendance.