MT. VERNON — The City Schools District 80 Board congregated Wednesday evening at the Dr. Andy Hall School building at Casey Middle School to see the fresh paint, new floors and hear about its students in the beginning months of the new school year.

Principal Mike Green and assistant principals Mike Bryant and Mary McGreer made presentations to the board about the middle school’s demographics, achievement, crisis communications, school safety and security, PBIS and more programs used by teachers and staff.

During a presentation to the board, Green said that Casey’s enrollment is up 1 percent from last year.

He said the school didn’t make its adequate yearly progress in the spring 2010 Illinois Standards Achievements Test, partly because the benchmark was increased last year from 70 percent to 77.5 percent.

He added that though the school didn’t make AYP, he felt the results, at 73.2 percent, were encouraging because the Illinois state average for the ISAT is around 74 percent.

According to information provided at the meeting, of all the Casey students tested in Spring 2010, 73.2 percent made AYP; of black students at Casey, 59.4 made AYP; of white students, 79.8 percent made AYP; of students with disabilities, 39.3 made AYP; and of economically disadvantaged students, 67.8 percent made AYP.

Before the board meeting, Bryant led the board on a tour of the Hall building to see improvements made throughout the school.

Bryant pointed out the building’s augmented security system, including multiple cameras in hallways, and said that since the program is online-based, administrators at other buildings like Superintendent Kevin Settle may log on and see what’s happening in the halls.

He showed off improvements to the gymnasium and the cafeteria as well.

“The kids like it, and I love it,” he said. “It’s fantastic. It looks like a brand new school building; our compliments to the board.”

Settle said the building underwent a number of improvements this summer, including new doors, new floors, a new paint job on the walls, and additional security cameras.

“With the paint job, it’s almost like a renovated building,” Settle said. “I think everyone is proud, which really makes it worth our efforts.”

McGreer reported to the board on two programs in operation at the school, Aesop and PBIS.

Aesop is an online or telephone program to make teacher attendance a real-time situation, McGreer said.

The program allows teachers to register their absences at any time, by calling or logging on, and begins looking for a substitute for the teacher’s class immediately, information states.

The program allows substitute teachers to log on and look for available assignments and calls substitutes based on preference lists managed by the district, information states.

McGreer said she has heard nothing but positive remarks from her staff.

“This will show trends and cycles in attendance,” she said. “It allows for uploads of files — it’s a technology-based community with the sub, so teachers can upload files to use, and that allows greater sharing.”

She also talked to the board about Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports, a program the school uses to help students achieve social, emotional and academic success, information states.

“This has been a part of Casey culture for a long time,” she said. “We’re just letting students know our expectations.”

She said Casey uses a web-based information system to track behavior data called the School-Wide Information System, and two teams track trends in the data collected by SWIS.

“As adults, we cannot underestimate the power of praise,” she said. “It’s not about prizes. Prizes are such a tiny little part of PBIS. The most impacting intervention is what I call eyeball time, when you sit down with the student and ask them about their day. It’s self-reflecting for them. It’s the most impactful, successful strategy.”

McGreer lauded the SWIS program for allowing staff to approach PBIS data from a variety of directions — by the time, location, type of behavior offense, and by the individual student, for example.