The School Improvement Plan for Advancing Academic Achievement is a strategic plan created by each Chicago Public School. This plan identifies the school's strengths, concerns, and priority areas for improvement; it is approved by the Local School Council and Area Instruction Officer, where applicable. The action plan described in the SIPAAA, supported by the school's discretionary funds, is implemented and adjusted over a two-year period.

This year Cuffe has developed our next two-year school improvement plan. This vital process allows us to review what we do well, what needs to change, and how we might transform our vision and mission. The "SIPAAA", (aka School Improvement Plan) committee can be made up of parents, teachers,  and community members with the guidance of the Local School Council. The resulting school improvement plan will guide discretionary funding allocations and programmatic decisions for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years.

The following information was helpful as we embarked upon writing our new School Improvement Plan.

-Educational researchers find that successful schools focus their improvement efforts on a few key areas. The Five Fundamentals for School Success model, built on research and refined by CPS practitioners and stakeholders, helps all schools focus on what matters most.

-It is recommended our first step is reviewing the CPS overview for the next School Improvement Committee meeting to be held in (date and time to be determined soon), which includes:

Nine essential steps in SIPAAA planning:

1. Select SIPAAA team members
2. Revisit the school vision and mission and revise as necessary
3. Communicate school targets identified by Research, Evaluation, and Accountability
4. Involve stakeholders during the vision/mission and analysis steps
5. Gather and summarize outcome data, organized around the school scorecard categories
   • Student outcomes
   • Academic progress
   • Student connection
   • School characteristics
6. Gather and summarize process data, organized around the Five Fundamentals
   • Instruction
   • Instructional Leadership
   • Professional Capacity
   • Learning Climate
   • Family and Community Involvement
7. Name up to four school-wide priorities and indicators of success
8. Detail all activities for each priority, naming a person responsible
9. Budget discretionary funds for each activity as needed

The link below will take you to our current SIPAAA.