Alternative Learning Experiences (ALE) -- Lewis River Academy and TEAM High School
We are moving forward in “TEAM LRA”! We are proud of our work together, and we are monitoring and adjusting our systems through focused work in weekly staff meetings. We have clarified our understanding and expectations on how to effectively and efficiently do the work in ways that make the most sense for students, families, and staff. Our guiding priorities are that:
At TEAM, our theme song is Merle Haggard’s, “If We Make It Through December,” as we are looking forward to January 2021 with two new additions: an additional paraprofessional to join the TEAM staff and an addition to our TEAM building, making it 50% bigger! The TEAM building addition arrived yesterday, and we are all very excited for what this will be able to offer for our students. The addition will be attached to the existing TEAM building, providing an option for our students with anxiety as well as any others who need a quiet place to study.
We started December 2020 with around 190 students and have had some more intake meetings for new students from our district and from surrounding districts. While it has been very busy at TEAM, we are thankful for each and every one of our students and look forward to the opportunity to see them in person and get to know them better. In the meantime, our staff has been meeting with students through Google Meet and some individualized “in person” time at TEAM. We are appreciative of the support we continue to receive from staff outside of TEAM High School and the overall support from Michael, Stacy Brown, and Scott Landrigan! Lastly, we have started an Alumni Spotlight on our TEAM Facebook page. Our first spotlight is former graduate Cassie Allen; we are so proud of her and all our graduates!
Family and Community Resource Center
We’ve received so much generosity in the FCRC this season! Here are some highlights:
We’re extremely grateful for such wonderful community support!
Highly Capable Program
We have updated our Highly Capable Handbook that is posted on our website with the timelines and forms. We will be delivering the referral packets to the schools in January 2021. We are putting together the packets for students to be referred for consideration of Highly Capable designation by their teacher and/or family. Every kindergartener, all new 1st through 4th graders, and all referred students will be given a cognitive assessment in February and March 2021 and considered for Highly Capable by the Multidisciplinary Selection Team (MDST) in April 2021. The MDST will consider teacher and family reports, cognitive assessment, classroom based assessments, district and state assessments, and any other relevant data as a holistic view of the student.
K-12 Attendance
On Nov. 13th OSPI made an emergency ruling announcement:
The reason was because:
This new ruling also allows districts to continue to keep students enrolled in school even if they have missed 20 days in a row (though not including them in monthly count purposes for funding) in order to continue trying to engage students.
Schools are continuing to take regular attendance. Each school uses this data to make a concerted effort to verify why students are not "attending" and problem solve solutions for increased student active engagement.
Student engagement efforts have included regular phone calls, texts, emails, home visits, providing hot spots and free internet information, bringing individual students in the building safely, etc. For many high school students who have struggled with the Google classroom platform, we have offered the opportunity to transfer them to TEAM (LRA for younger students) or to do a hybrid schedule at WHS to allow them to do some classes for credit recovery through the APEX platform.
Stacy Mouat’s role has continued to evolve as she works with the hardest to engage students. Stacy is focusing this work primarily on supporting our TEAM and WHS staff and students.
K-12 Health Services
Our two AMAZING nurses have supported all the schools with attestations & related COVID-19 processes for identifying, responding, and communicating. With support from Michael and Woodland Leadership’s “First Team,” we are implementing an attestation flow chart. This workflow is allowing our nurses to provide direct care and communication for students at North Fork and Columbia as well as on call support to the other schools in the district. Our nurses are also training new hires in the Diverse Support Programs and other new hires. They are generally just being awesome with GREAT work ethic and positive attitudes!
LAP Program
LAP and ELD are continuing to work in conjunction to best serve our students. With grades 2-4 moving to virtual learning, we made another change to our schedules, but we are still able to serve students 4 times per week. Bi-monthly progress monitoring continues to drive instructional decision making. We are preparing for benchmark testing in January 2021 and the potential changes that will bring schoolwide. Attendance for intervention groups has been fairly good, and we are hoping to see growth despite the challenging circumstances.
Special Services
We have a new “Least Restrictive Environment” student count system that reports to our other data systems such as CEDARS and Skyward. These numbers calculate how much time students with IEPs spend with their same age peers in the general education setting. Our goal is to provide the services needed by students qualifying for special education in general education to the maximum extent possible in their individualized plan.
The December monthly special education count is 354 students. In December 2019, our special education count was 353. Since the beginning of this school year, we've seen a steady rise in the numbers pre-Covid-19. Considering all the students that are opting out of services due to the pandemic, our count numbers are growing significantly as students with special needs continue to be identified for specialized services.
Title Programs
WMS Title welcomes a new paraprofessional to our program: Kim Gordon. Kim will start in January 2021. She comes to us with para experience, and we are excited to have her on board!
Tara has been working closely with Title paraprofessionals and teachers to continuously assess the needs of students and evaluate the effectiveness of services offered, specifically with paraprofessional afternoon meets. Paraprofessionals have been incredibly flexible in working with students during this time of remote learning to support them in both reading intervention and CORE English Language Arts and Math classes. Together, we are offering support to students and reaching out to families when they are not accessing the support offered. While we can't force students to show up or “click in” to class, we continuously invite and encourage students. Many are taking advantage of this support regularly and get much needed reading practice and tutoring.