The St. Joseph school board discussed student testing and expressed general satisfaction with student achievement over the past year during its regular monthly meeting Monday evening.

School officials gave presentations to the St. Joseph School District Board of Education that looked at Missouri Assessment Program scores as well as ACT scores to give an overall view of progress in the district.

In some areas, the school district exceeded state and national levels. In others, it mirrored or fell below the averages.

District superintendent Melody Smith said she was pleased overall with the report. But she added that improvement is an ongoing process.

“I believe the St. Joseph School District is improving. We’ve proved that tonight by showing those areas where we’re starting to close the gap,” Dr. Smith said. “We’re going to look at where we found our gaps are and work on strategies to improve so next year we hope we can say again we’ve improved.”

Jamie Dial, assistant director of secondary education for the district, said a three-year trend in the communication arts portion of the MAP showed small increases in scores.

“We’ve improved in all areas at all four middle schools,” she said. Students in the proficient and advanced math portion of the test scored a little above the state average of 46.7 percent.

The score of students in free and reduced-price lunch programs fell below the state average of 49.8 in communication arts.

“We have one of the toughest, most rigorous (MAP) tests in the United States,” said Laura Nelson, assistant director of assessment and program evaluation. “And that wasn’t told by us, but told by a national magazine, Time magazine.”

The average ACT scores of the city district at 21.5 were comparable with the 21.6 state and national numbers.

In other business Monday, the school board unanimously approved the following measures:

To accept the renewal quote from CBIZ, its current health insurance consultant, of $84,000 a year. The quote is guaranteed for three years.

To accept the renewal quote of a 10 percent insurance premium increase from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City for employees. The plan includes a smoking cessation provision and eligible dependent coverage. Total cost for one member would be $531.27 per month, with the board paying 95 percent. The family plan will be a 50/50 split between board and member with a total monthly cost of $1,220.84.

Voted to file a resolution to restructure the No Child Left Behind Act to more effectively target schools with larger concentrations of low income and minority children.

Authorize the district to begin negotiations with the state to donate land for additional parking at Helen Davis State School from Parkway Elementary property at 29th and Scott streets.

Alonzo Weston can be reached at alonzow@npgco.com.