The Bowling Green Independent Schools Board of Education on Monday reviewed the district’s performance on No Child Left Behind assessment measures.

Administrators said the commitment to improving reading and math scores at Bowling Green Junior High School and Bowling Green High School will continue year-round.

District Superintendent Joe Tinius said supplemental tutoring opportunities would be made available to students in an effort to raise scores in future years.

Jennifer Davis, director of elementary and secondary programs for the district, said overall the results should please the district, emphasizing the 100 percent achievement of the elementary schools and the fact that many schools either met or exceeded state averages in reading and math as well as social studies, writing and science scores not considered by federal guidelines.

“The test scores are what they are, and they’re very useful to determine what we need to address, but it’s a snapshot of one day in the school system,” Davis said. “We’re constantly looking at ways to address instructional issues before students get too far behind.”

Davis said the district would continue stressing its efforts to improve students’ personal and teachers’ professional development throughout the year.

Associate Superintendent Vicki Writsel said that with the new presidential administration, she anticipates federal NCLB legislation to be reauthorized, though she added it was too early to speculate on what, if any, changes may be made to the system and how those possible changes would affect the district.

Reading and math scores on the Kentucky Core Content Test are used for NCLB annual reporting while the state develops a new assessment and accountability program to replace the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System.

Based on test scores in reading and math, the district met 17 of 19 target goals to meet adequate yearly progress for the 2008-09 school year, short of the 100 percent goal required to be met.

Under NCLB guidelines, student bodies at schools are divided into subpopulations, such as African-American, Hispanic, special education and students receiving free/reduced lunch, and a given percentage of each subpopulation must earn proficient or distinguish scores on the reading and math tests considered by NCLB.

Each of the district’s five elementary schools met their targets for every applicable subgroup, but Bowling Green Junior High School saw reading and math scores for its African-American and free/reduced lunch student subgroups fall short of adequate yearly progress goals in those subjects, although the total student population achieved higher test scores than what was set forth by NCLB guidelines.

At BGJHS, 69.47 percent of students achieved proficient or distinguished scores in reading and 64.71 percent in math, whereas the national middle school goals for reading and math are 66 percent and 47.81 percent, respectively.

At Bowling Green High School, NCLB goals were achieved in each subpopulation except for math scores among African-American and free/reduced lunch students.

For high schools, federal guidelines require a 49.54 percent in reading and 49.85 percent in math; BGHS recorded 76.23 percent of its students scoring proficient or distinguished in reading and 45.42 percent in math.

Statewide, only 75 of 175 school systems met 100 percent of their adequate yearly progress targets, and the city district achieved their targets in 89 percent of applicable subpopulation, outpacing the statewide average of 76 percent.

That performance still has to be reconciled with the pass-fail standards of NCLB.

“It’s difficult to understand how you put that label on a school when they’re achieving the state average in every content area,” Tinius said.

In other business Monday, the district approved taking on employee dishonesty, flood and terrorism insurance, with the board voting to pay a prorated premium on employee dishonesty coverage for the remainder of the school year not to exceed $499.

The flood insurance premium payment, also prorated, is not to exceed $2,975.

Terrorism coverage involved paying a $200 premium.

The policies were purchased through Neace Lukens Insurance Agency.

John Kernohan of Neace Lukens said the terrorism coverage would pay out only in the event of an occurrence deemed officially by the Kentucky Secretary of State and the U.S. Treasury Department to be an act of terrorism.

Fielding a question about possible coverage for cyberbullying, Kernohan said that that particular insurance is new to the marketplace, and that rates vary widely.