To: Michael Green
From: Jake Hall
Date: 10.20.22
Re: October 2022 Board Report
Family and Community Resource Center
We are currently working on needs assessments and eligibility for our returning and new students who are experiencing homelessness. We’re starting the school year with approximately 74 students who are experiencing homelessness, 31% of whom are considered Unaccompanied Youth.
On August 20th we gave away over 350 backpacks with school supplies, community resources, and dinner at our Annual Back to School Bash. We were awarded sponsorship by Fibre Federal for $1,000 and IQ Credit Union for $1,500. Red Canoe did a “Fill the Canoe” drive, awarding us with piles of school supplies, and a check to match the donations at over $8,000! It was great to see everyone in person this year!
We were awarded the 3-year McKinney-Vento grant again for approximately $25,000 a year used for tutoring, summer school, technology, and FCRC staff hours. We were also awarded the 2-year HSSeP state grant for approximately $15,000 a year which is used for FCRC staff hours and to contract with a housing navigator. Emergency Support Shelter and Cowlitz Family Health have been meeting with the FCRC regarding possible subcontracting on a Housing Navigator as part of our HSSeP grant. We’ve been preparing for, and participating in meetings with OSPI and state program supervisors regarding these two grants, and it has been a positive connection for our district!
With conferences happening this month, we’ve begun planning the Rotary Christmas Giving Tree program with Joy at Columbia Bank.
Highly Capable Program
Kel Leavens, Shae Lindsay, Heather Christian and I will attend the Washington Association Education of Talented and Gifted (WAETAG) conference on October 21 and 22. I will also present the annual report about our Highly Capable Program for board approval at the October 27, 2022 board meeting.
LAP Program
Columbia, North Fork, and Yale schools are united “and” unique. They run their LAP programs in the same way. However, time frames can be a bit different depending on the support of each school.
North Fork has just completed universal screeners for all students in DIBELS (reading fluency) as well as further testing on phonics skills and created our intervention groups for the first trimester. Groups have already started for kindergarten and first grade and the 2-4 will start on Tuesday. The open house was a great success and we were able to share the details about our support programs with many families.
Columbia has an added layer of their Multilingual Students. Columbia benchmark testing is in full swing. Our LAP team has administered universal screening for all students in DIBELS and Lecutra to determine who is at risk for challenges in reading. Afterward, our team did further testing with your below and well-below students to determine the best instructional starting point for each student. Using this data, intervention groups are being created and the instructional programs are chosen.
Yale is almost done with universal screening and is set to begin intervention services next week.
Overall, intervention is underway! Progress monitoring has been taken 1-2 times depending on the student. Our new mClass system is allowing teachers to see quickly the progress that students are making and how that relates to their aimline. We are watching each student's data closely to determine if we need to pivot. Columbia has also started a new program for Spanish literacy intervention.
Lewis River Academy
All of our LRA families met the requirements for Satisfactory Progress for September--a HUGE win for our school! We are continuing our virtual Google Meets with families and grade levels, and we have also started having on-campus groups again for workshops in grade-level groups for hands-on learning in Math, Writing, and Science.
In addition to focusing our school improvement on writing paragraphs and essays, we are looking for opportunities to re-engage our families in in-person learning in our community. As an example, over half of our families and students attended our field trip to Lelooska for storytelling, a carving demonstration, and a native plant scavenger hunt. We're looking forward to a parent-planned Halloween party on the 26th!
Multilingual Learners Program
At a previous board meeting, I was asked how often we do the assessment for Multilingual Learners to see if they can exit. We do that standardized assessment each spring for all students in the Multilingual Learner program as well as individually for any students identified as Multilingual Learners when they are new to the country. I was also asked how many students are identified as Multilingual Learners in our district. I have that information below for both the number of students actively in the Multilingual Learning Program as well as the number of former Multiling Learners who have successfully exited the program.
WHS
Active: 34
Transitioned: 7
WMS
Active: 53
Transitioned: 11
CES
Active:91
Transitioned:3
NFES
Active: 19
Transitioned:0
LRA
Active: 1
TEAM
Active: 3
Transition:1
WSD (Total)
Active: 201
Transitioned: 22
Nurse Services
Our Health staff are thankfully back to “pre-pandemic” type of work including daily health room care/treatments/procedures, vaccination compliance, updates for new students, planning for vision and hearing screenings, and health history forms review.
Special Services
For the October 2022 special education count we have 343 students with IEPs, an increase of 30 students compared to the count in October 2021. We now have seven students in Partners In Transition, our 18-21 year old program! This is double the amount we had in that program last school year.
This school year, Felicity Silcox, our Occupational Therapist, is providing a two-day professional development training about de-escalation of student misbehaviors and meltdowns. This training is specifically with the Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) and when staff complete the training they are certified CPI, meaning they know and are able to demonstrate safe ways to work with escalated students. In August 2022, she was able to train over 70 staff, including administrators, teachers, counselors, and paraprofessionals. Her next training will be October 24 and 31, 2022. When she completes her fourth training in February 2023, Woodland will have over 100 staff trained and certified by CPI.
Student Engagement
We are up and running with Skyward and our automated attendance tracking and letter generating systems; keeping track is definitely easier now that those systems are coming together. Our new Student Engagement Coordinator, Lindsay Noble, attended our administrators meeting on October 12, 2022. It was very helpful to get everyone up to speed about our systems and let administrators meet with Lindsay in person.
Lindsay is excited to attend the annual “BECCA” conference on October 26-28, 2022! This statewide conference will only give her more insight into the new re-engagement focus versus truancy discipline.
Currently, Lindsay has 114 families that she is actively working with for student engagement.
Lindsay has been meeting with students and families every day (in person, via phone, or via video meetings). This is a new way of doing student engagement meetings; in the past, there was one meeting with many students involved. This new approach has Lindsay one-on-one with students and families and counselors, deans of students, and other administrators have the option to join in if they would like. The goal is to get to the root of the problem of non-attendance before needing to file a truancy petition to the court per the current guidelines. Lindsay reports that these meetings have made the program the most successful thus far as parents don't feel like they are being attacked, punished, or left in the dark about attendance. Families are more willing to work with the schools as a team this way.
Lindsay has been working closely with ESD-112 as well. She currently has a handful of students who have been referred to ESD-112 for extra support. At this time those students have improved in their attendance.
Title Program
WMS Title is in full swing. We are continuing to support several students 1-1 with the Barton Program and Phonics for reading within our Reading intervention program, implementing a new Math intervention program in CORE Math classes to close gaps in foundational Math skills. Students work 15-20 minutes each day on Math skills to mastery, then move on when 50% or more students in the class have hit the target.
We are working to develop systems to support the students who have not yet hit mastery. These students require more 1-1 or small group support. As we build confidence in implementing the new program, we will dive into this challenge.
WMS Title is working with Malinda Huddleston to assess and develop interventions and core instruction for our most struggling readers at K-2 reading levels. We are also implementing a parent involvement dinner for Title Reading families to connect and learn about our school-wide reading programs.