Warren County Public Schools on Monday spotlighted its educational objectives and means for pursuing them over the next two years — a continuation of mostly established programming, alongside several newer initiatives, to meet goals aligned with state objectives.

The WCPS Board of Education passed its Comprehensive District Improvement Plan, which lays out this information, on Monday.

The CDIP states that WCPS aims to increase proficiency among students and reduce the percentage of those scoring novice across reading, math, social studies, science and writing. The plan also lists an objective of making progress closing achievement gaps in reading scores for students learning English not as their first language, African Americans, and students with disabilities. WCPS also aims to enhance English learner progress, school climate and safety, and postsecondary readiness as well as maintain its 97% graduation rate.

Required annually by the Kentucky Department of Education, CDIP uses input from school and community stakeholders to create objectives — alongside broad strategies, specific activities for pursuing them and means to monitor progress. The objectives span areas targeted in the commonwealth’s annual accountability measure to meet state and federal requirements, known as the Kentucky Summative Assessment.

Most of WCPS’s steps for meeting these goals are dozens of longtime programs, from educational camps, to educator training opportunities, to established, research-based curricula that connect to one another and align with assessments and the required standard rigor, according to WCPS Assistant Superintendent Sarah Johnson. A more recent focus is the district’s move from offering two days of preschool weekly to four to bolster kindergarten readiness. The Little Learner bus, driven to neighborhoods to support pre-kindergarten children, has also been recently updated.

“(These investments) help students to eventually be proficient by getting the students the foundation that they need before they start kindergarten,” Johnson said.

Other recent focuses include the translation platforms TalkingPoints, which translates communications between the school and families, and Audio Enhancement, which translates teachers’ speech over microphone to students wearing headphones, Johnson said. WCPS intends for both to aid English language learners.

WCPS also this semester expanded its high school FranklinCovey offerings, Johnson said — educational programming that surrounds Stephen Covey’s influential book “Seven Habits of Effective Leadership.” Whereas WCPS high schools previously used some FranklinCovey leadership programming, the high schools now use a FranklinCovey curriculum called “Life-Ready” — for high schoolers, Johnson said.

She named the under-construction Impact Center as one of the investments intended to increase the percentage of students graduating ready to transition out of school.

Much programming covers multiple goals, while some is area specific. Johnson spotlighted a handful — among them:

The curricula Into Math and iReady help target math. To target primary school reading, Johnson said the district uses three curricula — Into Reading, the AI program Amira, and iReady — as well as a summer literacy academy serving some 150-200 students annually.

“We know the importance of ensuring that students can read at grade level by the end of primary,” Johnson said.

Another WCPS initiative to meet the objectives is instructional rounds, where a team of district directors, principals, other administrators and teachers circulate a school to provide additional educational feedback, Johnson said. WCPS also holds learning walks, where a team enters classrooms to observe the goings on — feedback, student work and other areas a school is working on.

The specific goals, in addition to maintaining the graduation rate, are as follows:

• WCPS aims to — within one year — decrease the percentage of students learning English not as their first language who score novice in reading from 36% to 32% in elementary school, 43% to 38% in middle school, and 59% to 51% in high school. For African American students, those percentages are 43% to 40%, 45% to 37% and 45% to 35%. And for students with disabilities, those are 49% to 42%, 53% to 47%, and 56% to 54%.

• The school system aims to, by 2028, increase the percentage of students scoring proficient or distinguished in reading or math from 48% to 53% for elementary schools, 54% to 57% for middle schools and 51% to 55% for high schools. For math, these goals are 43% to 50%, 52% to 55%, and 47% to 52%.

• WCPS aims to, by 2028, increase elementary school students scoring proficient or distinguished from 40% to 44%, 34% to 39%, and 23% to 30% in science. For social studies, these are 34% to 40%, 49% to 52% and 43% to 47%. And for writing, these are 56% to 61%, 67% to 70%, and 50% to 56%.

• The school system aims to increase the percentage of students on track to become proficient enough in language acquisition to exit the English learner program based on an assessment called ACCESS; these students continue to have their progress monitored. WCPS’s objective, by 2028, is to increase this percentage from 52.8% to 54.8% in elementary school, 26.6% to 38.8% in middle school, and 25.5% to 37.9% in high school.

• For climate and school safety, WCPS aims to increase scores 5% across elementary, middle and high schools by 2028.

• WCPS’s postsecondary readiness objective is to increase the number of students graduating transition ready from 88.1% to 91% by 2028.