Special Services
We are preparing for a series of “Safety Net” team meetings. Michelle McLaughlin has been busy gathering and organizing the necessary documents for the team. Safety Net is an important part of the funding recovery for large expenses in special education. While the Safety Net process only allows districts to recover a portion of their expenses, we find it a valuable process in not only some recovery, but also as a self-audit of our Individual Education Plans. I am confident in the track record of our Safety Net team; I look forward to reporting some Safety Net recovery in an upcoming board report.
Title
We are hosting the annual Title Parent Meeting on Nov 28th: Donuts and Discussion. Click the link for the invite/info! We are personally inviting all of our reading intervention families and asking for an RSVP. We hope we get a better turnout than in years past!
On another note, our reading intervention team is working together as a PLT by making and observing videos of each other's teaching for alignment and ideas to implement our reading intervention program.
LAP
WPS, YALE and WIS teachers continue to work closely with students identified for LAP services. They are monitoring student academic growth, especially in reading fluency and comprehension. This coming December 2018 we will be participating in a training by OSPI regarding the meticulous and important process of LAP Reporting. I am grateful for the expertise and effective work of our teachers implementing LAP services as well as the skillful, careful work of our secretaries inputting the LAP data.
English Language Learners/Bilingual and Family Community Resource Center
Our ELL Program continues welcoming more newcomers and their families to our district (all grades). On October 24th the high school had a family night/Connect Night. This is an event for parents to come and meet the teachers, go to different information sessions, and have a delicious dinner. Our ELL department offered a session in Spanish for our ELL families. This session covered information about credits, graduation requirements and how to apply for higher education. Parent teacher conferences were a success! There were suggestions in how to accommodate our ELL families, but overall we had a great turn out of ELL families.
ELL High School students attended the Clark County Latino Youth Conference at Clark College. This is one of the largest high school student events in SW Washington. Our goal is that ELL students meet other young people and community leaders that inspire and motivate them to seek higher education. After the field trip students wrote what they learned at the conference. So far we have future doctors, teachers, construction workers and lawyers.
WIS is preparing an ELL Family Night. WIS is using Class Dojo as a way to communicate with our ELL families. During this event, parents will sign up and get the Class Dojo App. This program translates messages in different languages.
K-12 Attendance
This month Stacy Mouat attended the BECCA conference and learned some new ideas about how to work proactively with our most at risk youth students. The main thing she took away was from an educational group for an interactive program called CHOICES, designed to help 8th grade students with making positive choices for the life in high school and beyond. Stacy has coordinated with Fibre Federal to sponsor bringing this interactive program to Woodland Middle School. Stacy has been working with James to set the dates for the CHOICES program to be Jan 15th and 16th, 2019, at WMS. The goal of this 2 day, 45 minute workshop is to keep students in school, motivate them toward their educational and future goals, and introduce them to practical life skills to help them succeed.
Recently Stacy was able to observe the Washougal Community Truancy Board (CTB). She wanted to learn how another district has set up their CTB. We are looking for interested business partners who would like to volunteer to work alongside our most at risk youth to make up this CTB for Woodland. Stacy is the main contact for anyone interested.
We are closer to sending out bi-weekly attendance emails to all students notifying families of where their students rank individually in regards to attendance rates. Steve Rippl is helping with the technical aspect of this project, and we hope to have the letters going out by Winter Break.
Lewis River Academy
The annual LRA Halloween Harvest Party went off without a hitch with over 30 students present as well as many siblings and family members. LRA's Leadership Team worked diligently prior to the party, decorating and creating a very nice photo opp with a scarecrow, pumpkins and real corn stalks. It was really impressive, to say the least. Most of the children came in costume, and enjoyed visiting, eating good food, partaking in crafts, and playing fun games!
Also, the "bots" are back!! In case you didn't hear about them last year, we are talking about Ozobots and Bee Bots, which are quite popular again this year. These fit it in nicely with LRA efforts to incorporate more Science, Technology, English, Art and Math (STEAM) activities for students. The Wednesday Workshops have been filling up with students who are interested in programming and running these cute little mini-robots!
TEAM High School
Elizabeth “Liz” and Jillian, TEAM High School Teachers, have been working hard to make sure they are as prepared as possible to teach all students they serve. Part of this preparedness is making sure they are progressing in various endorsements in the many kinds of HS courses they oversee. Liz just let me know that she passed the middle level mathematics endorsement test! This endorsement covers almost all of our students’ Math classes. Great news!
Highly Capable Program
We are in the process of collecting teacher and family referrals for students who may be eligible for Highly Capable programming. We are actively building new ways to challenge our students who are highly capable. I appreciate the great work by the building principals to help educate staff, students and families about differentiated educational opportunities for our students.
K-12 Nurse Services
This year has been quite successful in the world of school nursing services. Even though we have a greater number of students with exceptional health concerns, the team of nurses is collectively meeting the needs of the students and families while keeping all documentation up to date.
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This Thanksgiving Season, I am thankful to be able to work with all of the amazing staff in the Learning Supports and Alternatives portions of Woodland School District! I hope you are as encouraged as I am by the great work they are doing for students and families.
~Jake