New School Year Comes With New Programs

As the summer winds down, students are beginning their school shopping to prepare for the upcoming school year.

But the thousands of Lacey students aren’t the only one’s getting ready. The school district is gearing up for the upcoming school year as they implement new programs.

The school district will be implementing a new reading and math program in the elementary schools as well as a new report card and upgrading the computers in the middle school.

“It’s really exciting to see what we’re going to be implementing with the new school year. I’m excited about it and I’m not even in the classes,” school board member William Quist said.

Other than the installation of new computers, the implementations will all be taking place at the elementary school level.

“What we’re teaching our elementary students today in second and third grade are concepts that I learned 30, 1, 2, 3 years ago in fourth and fifth grade,” school board President Jack Martenak said. “A whole lot has changed in the classroom and a whole lot has changed as far as the expectations of what a seven year old should know.”

Math Series

After 14 years of using the same math series, the school district has ordered new material for grades kindergarten to second.

The search for a new math program was ongoing and took two years of reviewing materials, Assistant Superintendent Vanessa Clark said.

The school district had originally planned to implement a new program last year but had to put it on hold due to finances, she said.

“This year, the salary freeze that the employees took and the solar project enabled us to restore our budget and allow the implementation to continue,” Clark said.

The school district will be implementing enVISION Math at its three elementary schools.

“Teachers collaboratively felt more comfortable with envision Math in terms of program delivery and teaching strategies that were presented,” Clark said.

This math program is considered more traditional than the school district’s previous math program, Everyday Math, she said. It realigns with common core standards and has a big technology component.

“Although math is still the same, the delivery is quite different in terms of what we want students to grasp. There’s more problem solving. Two plus two will always be four but there is so much more demand on students in terms of standardized testing and building a foundation in math,” Clark said.

This new program has daily problems, math focuses, visualized learning strategies, and is interactive.

The strategy of this program is deep in conceptual math and will prepare the students for more complicated subjects such as algebra, geometry, and calculus.

“Our hope is that we’re preparing our students to challenge themselves in high school,” Clark said.

The implementation of the new math program is a two-step process. Next year, the school district plans to implement enVISION Math for grades three to five.

Teachers will begin training in enVISION Math on Aug. 30.

There will be a parent-teacher orientation on the new math program early in September. The orientation will be focused on the changes and how parents can assist their children at home, Superintendent Richard Starodub said.

Read 180

Read 180 is a program published by Scholastics and is an effective system for raising reading achievement, Clark said.

“Its purpose is to help struggling readers,” she said.

The classification rate in the school district is high, Clark said. In order to lower that rate, they need to get the students reading on grade level.

The program is computer based. To start, students will take a test that provides information for the teachers to determine whether they are reading at grade level, Clark said.

Although the program is technologically driven, it is very traditional in nature, Starodub said.

Each school will have a Read 180 classroom that has three stations- one for whole group instruction; another where students work independently using audio books, a laptop, or with the teacher; and another as that culminates the program with the whole group, Clark said.

“The goal is to get the new students reading on grade level. Research has shown the success of students getting on grade level within one school year,” Clark said.

The school district has purchased servers to host the program in district, laptops and headphones, she said.

Report Cards

After a year and a half long process of researching and analyzing, the school district will be implementing new report cards for grades three to six.

“The report card is obviously about the student but it’s a report to the parent. I think it’s many times overlooked who the report is for,” Starodub said.

School supervisors and Clark spent an entire year meeting with a district committee made up of administration and teachers to review the existing report cards, she said.

“The one we used was in place for some time. It was just time to clean up and make it more user friendly for parents,” Clark said.

A variety of report cards from within the state and outside were introduces and the district developed a draft from that review, she said.

In January, the school district met with parents to share the draft and made changes to the report card based on their input, Clark said.

By March, the district had a pre-final draft in place and met with teachers to get their final input.

The report card will be inputted into a computer system and then distributed to the students.

Changes include a new location for the core subjects, an area for first marking period comments, and simplified language. The old report card had a more complicated legend, Clark said.

The report card will be more accurate and parent friendly, Starodub said.

The new report cards will be discussed at Back to School Night and information will be provided on the school district’s website, Clark said.

New Computers

The school district will be upgrading the computers at the middle school.

“That’s happening as we speak. They arrived in district last week,” Clark said.

Along with the new math and reading programs, an upgrade in computers was one of the implementations that the school district began to act on as soon as the budget was passed.

The school district is transitioning from PC to Apple computers, Clark said.

Administration is working with the technology staff to get the computers up and running in time for the upcoming school year, she said.

Next up are the elementary schools.