After being named a school in need of improvement when the Annual Yearly Progress reports were released, Bow Memorial School administrators are still in the process of appealing.

The first appeal to the Commissioner of Education was denied, so Bow Superintendent of Schools Dean Cascadden wrote a letter of appeal to the State Board of Education on Oct. 9.

When the test results were released in early September, Bow Memorial was placed in the category of needing improvement because students in the educational disability category didn’t achieve the proper score in math.

However, under the test regulations, if a school shows improvement of at least 10 percent from the previous year’s scores, it makes Annual Yearly Progress, or AYP, under the safe harbor exception.

“Our position is that the data is incorrect. Because of that, the school is incorrectly given the label. If the data is corrected, then we will make AYP,” said Principal Kirk Spofford. “We feel based on our statistics and a review of the state’s figures that the state figures are clearly wrong. We think the state should allow the figures to be corrected.”

Going back to the 2005-06 data, the state reported Bow Memorial had 33 special education students, when the school actually had 37, according to Spofford. In this year’s data, the school is listed with 31 students, while Spofford said there are 34.

The state denied the original appeal because it does not look at data that “is not current.”

Cascadden said he knows the school is correct in its stance that the data should be fixed.

“I think we’re totally right, and I think it’s in the spirit of the law. And, we should be able to correct that data and be removed from the school in need of improvement,” he said.

Spofford agreed with the superintendent’s feeling. “We want kids counted where they belong. If you take the kids who are really special education students and take their scores, we make AYP,” he said. “The reality is, what the state used for students who are special education are not correct. They counted a certain amount, and the number they counted is incorrect. We want kids counted where they belong. If you take the kids who are really special education students and take their scores, we make AYP.”