REPORTS TO THE BOARD

Special Services Report

To: Michael Green
Re: March Monthly Special Services Report
Date: March 4, 2009
From: Deb Kernen

I have been working with our Title 1 specialists, WPS & WIS principals these last 2 months on a project that will improve and streamline our approach to providing Title 1 services to our schools.  The following is a summary:

Schoolwide 101 J

• Eligible if school has a minimum of 40% low-income families-WPS is currently at 48.4% and WIS is at 40.3%.
• Funding is the same as current Targeted Assistance model( our current model)
• Individual students are not identified as eligible to participate (rank order) - all students are Title I-eliminates a HUGE amount of paperwork for our Title 1staff.
• No distinctions are made between staff paid with Title I funds and staff who are not - all staff is Title I-eliminates additional paperwork
• One time process

In general it is a plan for:

• Comprehensive , long-term improvement
• Serves all students with highly qualified teachers and instructional assistants
• Provides continuous learning for staff, parent, and the community
• Uses research-based practices to develop and implement enriched instruction for all students
• Uses inclusive approaches to strengthen the school's organization structure
• Consolidates resources to achieve program goals
• Engages in continuous self-assessment and improvement

Three core elements to the process:

1.        Conduct a comprehensive needs assessment that identifies the school's strengths and challenges in key areas that affect student achievement.

2.        Develop a comprehensive schoolwide plan that describes how it will achieve the goals it has identified as a result of its needs assessment.

3.        Evaluate annually the outcomes and the plan's implementation to determine whether the academic achievement of all students, and particularly of low-achieving students, improved, whether the goals and objectives continued in the plan were achieved, and if the plan is still appropriate as written.

 The following staff/parents are on the School wide Planning committee that has just spent 2 days developing the plan:

WPS-Mark Houk, Malinda Huddleston, Jenn Barry, Stacy Aschoff, Nikki Hill, Louise Chambers, Teri Schlenz, Marilyn Paul, and Liz Landrigan (parent)

WIS-Chris Wiseman, Mo Anderson, Nancy Harms, Kim Knudson, Kim Mathis, Pam Malik, Veronica Heller, Linda Wilson, and Michelle Upson (parent)

Barb Lomis from ESD112 has been our facilitator.  We expect to have this plan approved and ready to implement during this next school year.