OTTUMWA — School administrators believe they know how to get off the District in Need of Assistance list.

Superintendent Jon Sheldahl discussed an “action plan” with school board members at their work session Monday. It was reported in September that the district had received the label.

The list, issued by the Iowa Department of Education, names districts which failed to improve fast enough to match the federal government’s “No Child Left Behind” act. The feds have said 100 percent of students must be proficient by 2014. So every year the percentage of students who must pass the test rises.

“Achievement continues to improve,” said Sheldahl. “Unfortunately, we’re not keeping pace with the trajectory.”

It takes two consecutive years of meeting the target test scores in all grades and in all subgroups (like English Language Learners or special education students) to get off the list. After a study, administrators have devised a plan to do so.

“Our heavy focus on literacy should continue, and our strategies are scientifically researched as being the [right methods],” he said.

But they have identified a problem.

“There appears to be a gap in consistent application of these strategies,” he told the board.

That means teachers who take their professional development courses must then implement them correctly. There are those who don’t like the idea of taking time out of the day to teach teachers while sending kids home early, Sheldahl acknowledged.

But he said he would tell those people that “professional development is critical to district [improvement].”

The district also needs to “more clearly define what mastery of the benchmarks of literacy” looks like at each grade level. Another subject to be addressed is how to test the students in order to know the teaching methods are working.

In the final minutes of the meeting, Sheldahl told the board he accepted responsibility for calling off school at a late hour recently; he said he has been up front with anyone who has called to express concern.

He said his rationale, knowing how cold it was going to be the next day, was that for some youngsters, staying home meant staying in a house where the cold air was blowing right through it.

“For some of our kids in town, school is the safest place to be, [it’s] the warmest place for [those] kids and the only place they’re going to get a hot meal.”

Later, he said, in consultation with other superintendents and when districts around the area all started shutting down, he began to rethink his decision and canceled school when some youngsters had already begun arriving or had boarded buses.