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Students in kindergarten through fifth grade will continue to have access to DreamBox, a math program produced by Discovery Education, through the 2024-25 school year. If the district wants to keep the program beyond next year, officials will need to find a different way to pay for it.
The district began using the program in November 2022 as a part of its strategy to help students make up ground they lost during the coronavirus pandemic.
The district pays for the program using federal COVID-19 relief dollars intended to help schools reopen safely and close learning gaps left over from the pandemic, said district spokesperson Jessica Becerra.
That funding expires in September, and districts are required to send whatever they haven’t spent by then back to the U.S. Treasury.
District officials said the program complements math curriculum, so the lessons reinforce the instruction they get from their teachers.
Data shows that students who used the program at all averaged a year’s worth of academic growth in a school year. But students who completed five or more of the program’s lessons a week gained 1.3 years’ worth.
During the public comment period of the meeting, Amanda Inay, a fifth-grade teacher, asked board members to approve the renewal, saying the program had made a big difference for her students.
The program allows teachers to see real-time data showing which concepts students have mastered and where they’re still struggling, she said. She noted the program’s data offerings are especially critical since assessment data analysts were among the 133 positions that district officials announced last February that they planned to cut.
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