Two Washington State Fellows:
Tara Eilts and Malinda Huddleston have each been accepted into the State Fellowship. The Fellows cohort is a state-wide effort to build teacher leadership and a foundation of knowledge and skills to support instructional shifts necessary to help all students in Washington State be career and college ready.
The fellowship is intended to help develop a deep understanding of high-leverage practices for implementation of the Washington State Learning Standards (CCSS/NGSS) and to support professional learning in their leadership role within our school district.
Grant Increases:
Two grants we have been awarded have offered to increase our funding for this year and going into next year. An additional $4,500 has been awarded to help offset the cost of training we provided for the new evaluation participants; and an additional $7,500 has been provided to support our Transforming Professional Learning work. It’s exciting to see the work we are doing is being recognized and supported more fully.
Assessments:
Thanks to the diligent work of our building principals, instructional coaches, instructional support secretary Sarah Hadaller, and the technology team, we have had an uneventful SBA assessment completion. While the assessment itself is clearly more rigorous than previous state assessments, the online delivery went as smooth as it possibly could. As stated previously, I expect our results to follow the State trend downward this first year. However, we are hopeful to make quick and steady improvement as we will have quality data coming back to us from this assessment. We expect results to come back to the District and parents in the similar time frame as in past years; early fall. We had hoped to have third grade reading results back before the end of the year, as the State had promised. However, these have yet to appear in the database.
Foreign Language Material Review:
I have continued to work with our foreign language department to evaluate new resources. Most recently we visited Clark College to observe and discuss materials with their professors. Our next step is to meet with two vendors and have all our remaining questions answered. We hope to have a recommendation before school is out.
English Language Arts Adoption:
Included in the Board agenda, is the final recommendation for the K-8 English Language Arts curriculum adoption. I am pleased to have had support from such a wide range of expertise as we analyzed resources. As you will see, our process was very thorough, and I am pleased to recommend two resources as highly aligned to the English Language Arts. I am confident they will support our staff as we endeavor to have all students college and career ready. Samples of the resources are in the District Office for any who wish to stop by and review them.