From the Desk of Principal Wilson

There has been a lot going on in the school. While it has been busy, it has been a good busy with a lot of positive things going on. Students and staff continue to bring energy and enthusiasm to the building.

Through February, we celebrated tournament season for both basketball and wrestling with dress up days and an assembly. Valentine’s day landed perfectly on a Wednesday before a break. Last week was FFA week; on Monday we held a school wide assembly. Tuesday, FFA leaders from the high school spent time visiting with the elementary students with the purpose of educating about FFA. The 100th day of school was the 29th of February and Dr. Seuss Day is the 7th of March.

The school science fair will be February 27. This was an optional participation for high school students. For junior high, students elected to either participate with an individual science fair project, or work in groups of two to present to the judges a project framed by the scientific method. Only those who chose to participate with an individual project will be eligible to move on to the Regional Fair. The Regional Fair will be held on the 7th of March. The State Fair is being held on the 4th of April.

A major thank you goes to our two exceptional MTDA facilitators. These individuals jumped right in and have worked well together in ensuring our students are successful in this new style of learning. This wouldn’t be a success without them and all their efforts. I’m confident in saying that the switch to MTDA has been a success. Our students have taken on the challenge of online/hybrid learning with a positive attitude. We’ve certainly faced challenges and hiccups, however between MTDA, our facilitators, Schoolhouse IT, and most importantly our students, we are making the most of the situation. Overall, student achievement is comparable to having a teacher providing instruction. The communication between MTDA, students, families and us has been the key to the success. I’m pleased with the level of instruction, content knowledge, support, and willingness to be flexible that the MTDA teachers have provided. So far, the partnership has been very successful.

Finally a short but needed break from testing.The fourth of five MAST testing windows opens mid March and closes in early April. The short break will be enjoyed.

An update on the new reading curriculum in the elementary school. Elementary teachers have narrowed down the curriculum to the one they have the most interest in. We started the process in October with four different curriculum vendors, Wonders, Into Reading, Savvas, and Benchmark. Each vendor provided samples of printed and digital materials. Each teacher vetted their own grade level and completed an in-depth scoring rubric. From there, we collected the scores and compiled the data into an average overall score. Benchmark from Benchmark Education scored higher than the others. We are proceeding with a presentation from this company which will be this Friday during PIR. Afterward, I would like to set a time for community 9 SECTION II - K1-12 PRINCIPAL members to take a look at the materials and offer input. From there, we will make our recommendations to the board.

As the year has continued, I’ve had time to learn and observe the needs of our school. I and other members of the staff have found a need for character education. While all the facets of character education and development are too great for this report, I’ll pass out information that will provide a quick insight into what character education is and how it can be implemented into Cascade Public Schools.

Character education consists of 11 principles.These 11 principles serve as a guide and means to assess the implementation of character education in schools. Currently, we have a committee of 12 individuals from elementary, junior high, high school, and athletics working on principle one which is selecting, defining, and embedding a set of core values that will serve as the foundation for building a culture of character. In this process, we’ve also included students from high school, junior high, and upper elementary to gather their input and see the direction that they would like our school to go. Our next step is to get these words, our defined core values, into the community for feedback and input. I also plan to present our selected and defined values to the board this March. This process will take time and a great deal of buy-in from all stakeholders from our students to the community. While the process is lengthy and takes a lot of hard work and consistency, I’ve been a part of school communities that have invested and dedicated themselves to the process and have seen the great benefit of implementing character education.

Finally, we have had interest from two candidates for the 5th grade position and one candidate for the open science position. We will likely be starting the vetting process towards the end of the week and into early next week.