FAIRVIEW PARK, Ohio - Disappointing and unacceptable, that's how Fairview Park City Schools Superintendent Bill Wagner described the district's recently released Ohio Department of Education 2016-2017 Ohio School Report Card.

"We knew things were going to be difficult since they were increasing the cut scores in all areas up to 80 percent," Wagner said. "Some areas were up 14 percentage points, so we knew we were going to see some dip in the achievement and indirectly in the progress."

The district's component grades were as follows: Achievement (D), Gap Closing (F), K-3 Literacy (C), Graduation Rate (B), Progress (D) and Prepared for Success (C). The Superintendent said Fairview Park City Schools scored at near the state average and just below comparable districts.

"In a nutshell, the report card showed we didn't hit the mark in most areas," said Wagner. "We increased our K-3 literacy without marginalizing our efforts. We are strong believers that if our students need help to gain success in reading, we don't hesitate to put them on Reading Intervention and Monitoring Plans (RIMP).

"For Prepared for Success, we maintained a C. We'd like that to be better. We want our students to be able to achieve those college ready scores even higher than that state average - that baseline expectation, which is a C."

Regarding the lower grades in Achievement, Progress and Gap Closing, Wagner said the District is focused on aligning its instruction from Pre-K to grade 12.

"We think for the first time in a long time we've really got our pieces in the right place, and we're starting to gain some traction," Wagner said. "We anticipate the next couple of years we should see some growth in these scores."

Fairview Park City Schools released the informational document "Gaining Traction, Gaining Ground," which clarifies the District's past, present and future in relation to internal and external factors related to the Ohio School Report Card.

"A lot of the externals are related to the changing report card, the changing cut scores or the benchmark they are holding us to," Wagner said. "There's nothing wrong with continuing to challenge yourself to a higher goal, but sometimes you can challenge yourself and you're not quite there yet.

"You have to keep working to get there, and I'm pretty confident we will. Many of the things we've been doing the past several years have been putting pieces in place to have some systemic change that will build forward so we can improve on (the Ohio School Report Card)."