Special Services
I am pleased to report that we have finished our application for Safety Net funding! We have much appreciation for our WSD Safety Net Team: Devon Fliss, Devon Hillman, Sonya Stemkoski, Stef Anderson, Michelle McLaughlin, and Kim Gustainis! The WSD Safety Net Team is a wonderful gift for us to have in our district as they provide guidance for us and help ensure we are set up with the best opportunity to recover some of the expenditures in Special Services.
Title
WMS Title is always busy in the month of March. Students in intervention classes have been working to demonstrate reading comprehension while improving in their writing strategies. Students have been focused on accurately and automatically reading multisyllabic words and increasing vocabulary. Staff is actively progress monitoring their academic growth. Students and teachers are excited about the gains the students are showing in the data! We hope to see increased scores on the 2019 SBA to affirm that our systems and strategies are working and to adjust where it is needed.
LAP
LAP interventions are continuing consistently this school year. Reading fluency data is collected and monitored every two weeks. When this data reveals the intervention isn’t working, our “Response To Intervention” (RTI) team meets to discuss next steps. When students reach their goals, they are exited from the program and a letter is sent home to families. With conferences coming up, it is our goal to meet with all families of LAP students to celebrate success and communicate what intervention will look like as we move forward.
Highly Capable
The WMS Hi-C class has been learning about designing magnetic levitation trains. The students had to design a powered cart that could move from one end of the track to the other in the least amount of time. There were many unique designs tested! It was a challenging project, and Mr. Jud reports that he really enjoyed watching the students use the engineering design process, actively engaged in their learning! Also, when one team found success with their design, the other team designs slowly began to resemble the early successful ones. WMS Hi-C will be starting the LEGO robotics programming section next which they will continue until the end of the 2018-19 school year.
English Language Learners
ELPA21 annual testing is in progress, and the majority of students are almost finished with this assessment! We are thankful for Sarah Hadaller and Jody Brentin for making sure our students were ready in the computer systems to do the ELPA21.
With conferences just around the corner, Maribel Ramirez has been working with the secretaries and ELL teachers from each building, organizing the schedule for Spring Conferences. We are grateful for Kim Gustainis for her tremendous help coordinating the interpreters! Scheduling conferences is a massive project that requires teamwork, and this has been the best “conference-scheduling” season so far!
At the High School, our ELL students are becoming more involved! Two ELL students will attend Cascadia Tech Academy this Fall. This is amazing since our ELL students are noticing the many opportunities available for them in high school and beyond! Also, one of our ELL students was selected to be a Planters Day Princess 2019! There were two candidates from our ELL program, and both helped each other with their speeches and practice talking in front of people. We are so proud of our students as they explore careers and work hard on making their dreams a reality.
Finally, we are thrilled to have our WSD Spanish Interpreter position filled by Esmeralda Franco! Esmeralda’s first official day in the Spanish Translator position was Monday, 3.18.19. She is currently becoming familiar with her duties and working with Maribel, her fabulous mentor. Esmeralda's office is at Columbia Elementary but her position serves all of the schools and offices in our school district.
Family Community Resource Center
Our FCRC Coordinator, Catherine Pulliam, worked with the district registrar, Jody Brentin, on creating a template within Skyward to document FCRC interventions/supports. This is an awesome technical step in the right direction for our record-keeping, and it will help to increase communication district-wide among staff. Catherine also created a letter to send to all families engaged in the FCRC to introduce herself as the new coordinator, review FCRC resources, and give FCRC contact information out to families. There were 15 new needs assessments completed during the month of February and 45 FCRC visits by families. There were 305 student visits over 4 food pantries, serving 147 students district-wide.
K-12 Attendance
Our Truancy Specialist, Stacy Mouat, continues to communicate regularly with parents around unexcused and excessive absences in the manner of written communications, twice a month emails, phone conferences, as well as face to face meetings. This time of year is especially busy as more students are reaching both the 3 unexcused threshold for the BECCA conference to take place and 10 unexcused absences when a truancy petition is filed. A number of our students who have been on truancy petitions are now reaching the threshold of moving their petitions to the next phase of truancy project intervention or court intervention. Stacy continues to work closely with these students and families to reduce absences. Stacy and the school staff are working to emphasize how important education is to the students’ future success. With this extra effort and time, families have been responsive, and attendance has improved in some cases, as measured by our attendance data! It will be informing to look at how this data compares between this year (baseline) and next year because we will be using the same metrics developed this year by Steve Rippl and Stacy Moaut.
Location
Average Absences to Date
Students with 10+% Absences to Date
District
5.3%
12.6%
WPS
6.1%
14.3%
WIS
16.7%
WMS
5.2%
11.4%
WHS
4.5%
10.3%
Yale
9.3%
Lewis River Academy
March has certainly been a busy month for our 8th graders at LRA. Last Tuesday, Mrs. Heidgerken took several of her students on a field trip to Fort Vancouver. It was a great opportunity for them to see current physical and archaeological remains, which go hand and hand with what they are learning in their Washington State History study. We are fortunate that Mrs. Heidgerken has a background in Archaeology. In fact, one of her former co-workers, who happens to work at the Fort, gave our students a personal tour. Pretty cool!
Also, our 8th graders had a field trip to our own Woodland High School 3.19.19, joining in with WMS! The reason for this field trip was for high school forecasting and meeting the staff. Our students had the opportunity to visit some of the classrooms, take a campus tour, have lunch, attend an assembly, and ask questions.
Coming up at the end of May, all students at LRA are invited to embark on a field trip to the west side of Mount St. Helens. Staff, students, and parents are really looking forward to this trip. In fact, the next several weeks are being dedicated to learning all we can about volcanoes; the Geology and Eruption, as well as the Ecology and Recovery. Last week our students began building cardboard volcanoes. At the end of the study, we will be making them erupt!
TEAM High School
Our teachers and TEAM staff are working hard to prepare our students for graduation with weekly communication about academic progress and attendance. Liz uses the “grad maps” to keep students on track and let parents know how their student is doing. Jillian keeps track of attendance and sends out an email mid-week to keep families informed about how the student is progressing. She also sends a weekly report to show the student’s total hours for the week. We have seniors presently finishing all graduation requirements, and we are offering extra time to students who are trying to finish everything in time for the graduation ceremony 6.5.19. As we have students complete all requirements at TEAM, we are continuing to welcome new students! The “TEAM team” reports that it has been great to have Hunter Huddleston helping at TEAM, and we are all thankful for his work!