Mon Jun 25 2018, 5:30pm
WHS Room 2203
Regular Meeting

REPORTS TO THE BOARD

Learning Supports and Alternatives

To: Michael Green

From: Jake Hall

Date: 6.20.18

Re: June 2018 Board Report

English Language Learners/Bilingual Program

Our ELL students have finished the state assessment known as the “ELPA21” and overall showed a significant growth in language acquisition!  I am proud of the great work of our ELL teachers and instructional assistants to make this growth a reality! Pam Dietrich has taken extra time to help me fill out annual state reports and plans for ELL in WSD.  These reports will be submitted to OSPI by the end of this month of June 2018.

Family and Community Resource Center

Leslie Mohlman continues her great work building connections between community organizations and Woodland School District. Leslie is also helping to fill out state reports regarding students in Homeless status and areas of need in our schools. I appreciate Leslie’s tenacity in finding and applying for grants to help our students and families!

Highly Capable Program

We have recently finished the Highly Capable screener for all students in WPS, WIS and Yale.  Using this screener in conjunction with other measures of student capability, the school teams have identified new students for Highly Capable education.  Our next step is to provide instructional materials and professional development to help our teachers differentiate instruction to challenge all our students in their classes.

K-12 Attendance

This last month of school Stacy Mouat has focused solely on filing truancy petitions and following up with students who have chronic attendance problems. This includes our students who are on active truancy petitions.

Overall, this has a been an impactful year by Stacy Mouat.  She has made over 500 BECCA notifications this school year and filed 63 truancy petitions (compared to 9 truancy petitions filed in 2016-17).  Here is a breakdown of Truancy Petitions: (the numbers may not match due to dismissals/transfers, etc).

  • WPS = 3 active (1 = court)
  • WIS = 6 active (1 = court, 1 = truancy project)
  • WMS = 26 active (6 = truancy project, 2 = court, 2 received positive exits from the truancy project but monitoring will continue into next school year, 1 transferred to Kalama).
  • WHS = 24 ( 1 = Truancy Project, 5 = court)
  • *TEAM = 10 (2 = Truancy Project, 3 = court)
  • LRA = 1 (1 transferred to Battle Ground)
  • YALE = 0

*TEAM and LRA students were filed while the student was still at WMS or WHS.

Stacy has set up systems going into the 2018/2019 school year with both LRA and TEAM so we can better capture those students who are falling behind and may be at risk for dropping out of school.  She has been able to re-engage at least two students into TEAM, including a 2018 WSD graduate.

Stacy’s goal for next year is to set up "nudge" letters to send home at Christmas and Spring Breaks notifying parents where their students sit percentage wise compared to other students within the district and within their school.  This will go out to all families with 3 different letters generated (great job letter for 9 or less absences, concern letter for 10-17 absences, chronically absent letter for 18+ absences).

Stacy will also focus on chronically absent students (18+ excused absences) and trying to set up an intervention meeting with school staff to address barriers to attendance and set strict expectations for what will and what will not be excused for future absences.

LAP Program

LAP intervention services ended today, Tuesday June 19, 2018. LAP data has been entered and reported to the state. As we entered data, it was extremely rewarding to see student growth in the area of reading. We do have reason to reflect and refine to reach even more students with a deeper impact. We are set with data for Fall intervention placement, and we have research based programs in place, as well as a fresh lense to create positive academic growth.

Lewis River Academy

LRA recently celebrated the end of the school year by having their annual End of the School Year BBQ at Horseshoe Lake Park on Wednesday, June 6th.  We had a terrific turnout this year, and the weather ended up being perfect!  Great food, great fellowship, and a great time was had by all.

This last week of school, students are busy finishing up their schoolwork, checking curriculum back in, and turning in their contact time/logs. The staff is busy getting things wrapped up for the school year, so they can plan for next year and enjoy their summer!


Nurse Services

We are still in the process of trying to fill the open positions for a full-time LPN at WPS and another .5 LPN at WIS.  We have had a round of interviews and we are checking references. If you know of any qualified LPNs who would like a rewarding position in Woodland School District, please encourage them to apply!  

Special Services

Woodland School District recovered almost half of it's expenditures supporting high needs students with IEPs; this is known as "Safety Net".  While SPED is not fully funded in Washington, recovering almost half of the expenditures is absolutely amazing! The reason we were eligible to recover these costs is because the IEPs were, in the words of OSPI, "perfect".

Deb Kernen and I attended the Safety Net meeting yesterday and listened to the committee talk about the errors in just about every district's IEPs... and we had to wait until the very last district's results... Woodland.  There was one particularly critical committee member, and we were both hoping they were not the reviewer of Woodland IEPs. Well... at the end of the very long meeting, that committee member had, for the first time I saw, a HUGE smile and said Woodland's IEPs are perfect!!!  Out of 294 school districts in Washington State, only 11 (3.7% of WA districts) submitted 100% PERFECT IEPs for Safety Net.  

Title Program

Our title department is focusing on revamping our reading intervention system at WMS.  We have adopted curriculum to serve students who are significantly below and just below grade level to help increase achievement and have reallocated teacher and para support into the reading intervention block.  Next step will be staff training and collaboration around student data and available resources, to be happening in August.

We have also been working to aligning all 5-8 CORE ELA classes, as evidenced by an alignment document.  We will continue to hone in on this in August during our DDPD days.

We have developed common supports across all 3 tiers for ELA CORE and Intervention as evidenced in this ELA CORE/Interventions Supports document.

TEAM High School

TEAM High School held their graduation at WHS on Wednesday, 6.13.18.  Dan Uhlenkott organized and ran the graduation and graciously took extra time to show me the whole process.  This is the second TEAM High School graduation I have attended, and I am absolutely amazed by the great work of TEAM graduates and the awesome staff who support them.  TEAM High School teachers and Mary Burnett talked specifically about the strengths and inspiring journeys for each graduate; it was a heartfelt, touching ceremony, and it encouraged my thinking about “why” we are here to serve all students.

Transitional Bilingual Intervention Program

On June 7, 2018, WHS held an event that Maribel organized specifically for students and families of students with English as a second language to learn about high school credits, career pathways, college and the trades. Maribel coordinated with the WHS counselors, admin, career specialist and WMS ELL; all attended the event and helped make it worthwhile for families.  Maribel, the WHS admin/counselor team, and the WMS ELL team all worked together to make the event a success! I learned a lot about career pathways from the WHS team and Maribel. At one point, I counted 15 students and 10 parents in attendance. Nice job! Appreciation is due to Maribel, WHS admin/counselors, and WMS ELL!

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Thank you for a GREAT school year supporting the work of these district programs under my responsibility.  I am more than proud of the work by the amazing people in these programs and their countless hours spent making a positive impact on Woodland Public Schools.

~Jake