001Welcome USD264 parents, staff members, stakeholders, and anyone watching on YouTube. Welcome to our Clearwater Clarity, our update for November 2025, and this is our 22nd volume. So, this month we're going to really talk about our board goal number two for this year. Um, last month we really talked about board goal number one, which was going to uh increase the leverage or increase the ability for us to leverage student publications where we have artwork uh now located at both banks in town uh at Enrize and at Home Bacon Trust. We also have artwork in our district office. Uh there is also uh artwork displayed um in other locations as well as making sure that if you uh subscribe to the YouTube channel, you'll be able to see all of the student digital podcast and daily shows
002that CIMS is uh producing as well as the podcast that CHS is producing. So please, if you're watching this, go to the YouTube channel, subscribe to it. If you know someone uh that would be interested in that, please uh direct them to the YouTube channel. And as you're visiting the local banks or u the city office or the central office uh please take that opportunity to look at the student artwork that we have uh displayed to be able to see. This month we're going to talk about our second goal which is increasing partnerships with our outside entities that increase uh diverse academic extracurricular college and career opportunities for each student which is part of our uh strategic plan and it was something that the board has pulled out uh this year to be able to
003look at. So why are we doing this? Again, we always start with our why, what, and how. But why are we doing this is to really just start looking at our post-secondary effectiveness. So, that is one of the measures um that we have from the state. That's an outcome to talk about what uh are students doing postgraduation uh meaning two years or 18 months outside of graduation. Have they achieved some sort of uh post-secary um certificate? Have they achieved some sort of uh bachelor's degree or still working towards a bachelor's degree? Have they achieved an associates degree, an applied science uh degree, or do they have some sort of uh certificate from welding um from OSHA, from emergency management, uh fire safety, lineman school, uh things along those lines to help drive the economy uh
004in doing that. So, in helping that, we start with that in 8th grade with our uh individual plans of study and that concludes through uh 12th grade. And that's a lot of what our eighth graders through high schoolers are doing during their tribe time is starting to create those career interest exploration opportunities. From there, there's other activities in the high school where they go and explore different careers. Sometimes they go to Hutcherson uh to a career fair there at that's put on by ESDAC. Um, so we're just trying to create those opportunities for students before they graduate um to understand and learn more about things that they may be interested in before they have to make an impact or a decision that it will affect their future. Um, this will also be able to provide
005direct support and pathway for economic success not only locally uh but also as a state. And so being able to provide opportunities for students to explore careers early uh within their uh junior high and high school career gives them an opportunity for those decisions that will help the overall economic success of the state. So how are we going to do this? We want to be able to partner with local businesses for internships and job shadows. We partner with colleges for dual credit and then we also partner with colleges in WSU Tech for certificate-based programs such as uh welding getting their welding certificate, OSHA certificates as well as uh construction science programs uh that we partner with there. So that's how we are going to achieve this and then when are we going to start working
006on this is in 8th grade we start with career exploring. So they start looking at what are the careers out there. What are the domains that they're in like public service or entrepreneurship. Um so they're looking at bigger global type um petals as what we call on the job leaf or the job uh flower and it lets them start explore everything that's within public service. Public service includes things like fire, police work, uh nursing, hospital, um city work, public service, uh teaching. Those are all things that are in public service. uh where sometimes they may also be looking at hospitality and they hospitality be looking at um whether it is um a chef, whether it is um hosting, an interior decorator, things along those lines. They start looking at the bigger, broader leaves and not
007the narrow job focuses. And then in ninth and tth grade, they develop course work that will help them start focusing on what CTE classes they may be interested in. Um, so some kids will take a CTE class their freshman or sophomore year thinking they're very interested in this uh particular field and then realize it maybe wasn't for them. And that way we give them an opportunity to take as many CTE courses as possible. Then as a junior and senior they start getting into capstone classes. And those capstone classes are things such as on the job training or internships where we're working to get students in the actual environment of what the workplace would look like or feel like so that they have that experience before they make that decision postgraduation. So here is a graphic
008of what we've actually currently done this year. Um, so this year we have 46 total students involved with 21 different businesses or locations or schools um that are working on some of these post-secondary internships. What we're always wanting to do is partner with more people. So if you are a business owner or you're working in a business that would uh uh operate with the opportunity for students to be able to intern or be on the job shadowing, please reach out to me or the high school counselors or Mr. Cooper at the high school um to start working on setting up some of these relationships so that we can uh make sure that our students get a broad scope of what's available for them. As you can see, we've got three that are in the agriculture,
009five in business, 12 in education, four in healthcare, five in building programs, four in public service, nine in skilled trades, and four in technology and engineering. So, you can see all the different ones that are represented. Some of those are represented through WSU Tech. Some of those through Cali Auto and Cali Welding as well as other Cali College classes. And then the rest are just businesses, local businesses here in town of Clearwater are also businesses that are in the Witchaw metro area. Again, we have 46 students this year. Last year we had seven. Our hope is that by the time a student graduates, every single student will have the opportunity to participate in an internship or on the job training or provide them with some college classes that will work towards a certificate. So, right
010now we're looking at we're about 30% of of our juniors and seniors and we want to get closer to 100%. So, we're going to continue working on that. Again, our goal for this year is to be in the arena, which means we're all in the same boat together, working hard and and focusing in on how we can support each other. So, as a community, if you or you know of someone that's be willing to uh participate in our internship program and on the job training, uh please, here's my email address. Here's my office phone number. Uh also you can contact the high school and the counselors at the high school to start working on setting some of these up so that when we have students that are interested through their career interest uh surveys and
011want to be able to work in a field that you may represent, we'll get that opportunity. So again, always feel free to contact and we are very excited about uh finishing up our first semester and all the work that the students have done and helping us achieve our board goals and we'll look forward to uh even better in the future.