001We'll do the pledge and then Okay. [Music] would like to have. Oh, there he is. I pledge to the flag of the flag. That was love. Okay, we are going to move on our agenda to our student. All righty. Well, here the high school students just finished up their first week back in zero. Definitely a wake up mom. Um, and we're all hoping for summer. Um, NHS is also looking forward to prom with the juniors and seniors, which is on our 83rd. So, that's very exciting. And they're working on getting all the planning sorted out. NHS is also hosting a talent show on May 9th in South Hall 207. So, a lot of issues are happening. So, if anyone's interested, but not a lot to update on most of our time. Thank you. I would
002entertain a motion. Um, are there any changes or additions to the agenda? Hearing none, I consider a motion to approve the agenda. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Any opposed? All right, we're going to move on to the good stuff. Um, we are going to go for a press presentation and then presentation after that. Well, good evening everyone. I'm Elmer. I'm the principal here from Columbia City STEM Academy and I'm so delighted to have so many people here tonight and all of the students. Thank you for staying up late. We get to keep you up past bedtime tonight. So, you're welcome back. So, we're going to kick off just by thanking you all for being here and inviting everyone to some treats sponsored by our awesome PTO after meeting tonight if you'd
003like to help yourself to some goodies over there. And also a special thanks to Nicole for the lovely tree gift to um all of our school board directors. So, help yourself before you leave this evening. Our focus this year, we have a few priorities. Number one is increasing our reading scores. So, taking students from where they're currently at and bumping them up to the next level. And same with math. We're hoping to take students from where they're at and bump them up a full level before the end of the school year. And increasing our attendance, which is also a district-wide initiative. And finally, implementing our naturebased program, which we're in year one, our pilot year of that program. Digging into our reading data from fall to winter, we had at the beginning of the year
004in September, 43% of our students were in the red. By the time we did our January diagnostic, we only had 26 students left in red. So, we're really proud of that growth because that number almost in half. And that's because of the awesome things our teachers and our paras are doing every day with students. Also in the fall, we had 32% of the school reading at the yellow, which is the medium level, and they bumped that up to 35% in the yellow. And then students in green, we started the year 25% by January, 38% of our school is in the green. So we're making really great growth that we're proud of. From fall to winter, 50% of students either stay in the green or they moved up a whole level. There was lots of students
005grow our data for 48% of those started to off% 43% started off in 55% 9% of the school tested into the green level and now 23% of the schools in green. So we're again really proud of those numbers and we're excited to see where students test from fall to winter. 42% of students either moved up a full level, which is really hard to do. That's a lot of growth in just a few months, or they stayed at the group level. We attribute our success to several things. We just kind of wanted to list those off for you. We have a brand new coordinator position. This is Rachel Height. She's back there. She's our coordinator. She oversees all the intervention materials and groups and holds meetings regarding student placements. So we think that has really helped
006this year. Um our win program which stands for what I need. We're placing students at an area of what they need for their reading and math levels. And then also teachers do a great job of accelerating students. We have some students that go up before grade level or some even are going up two grade levels in reading or math. and then teachers within their own classroom are doing some extreme differentiation. We believe all of those things are really helping our students succeed. Um we do have fluid groups with a win model. So based on student data and teacher recommendation, those groups do change throughout the school year numerous times. And then we keep looking at the student scores, our two program, which we have implemented districtwide. The board knows a lot about that, but we
007have found that that is also um attributing to student success and growth, and we're really grateful for those funds from that very generous donation. We have um our multi-tiered systems of support and PSS um led by Mrs. Kelly. Those meetings happen at least weekly and we're making a lot of students decisions based on their needs during those meetings, really giving in to each student. U we have a new reading curriculum called magnetic that we have found to be really great and connected to the I read and so we're seeing a lot of growth in our reading in K5 because of that curriculum and teachers have implemented a two lesson a week requirement where students have to go onto their individual my path and then I even pass a minimum of two lessons a week at
008their level and that's also helped accelerate their growth and we've implemented And I did growth parties. So celebrating those students who've made the most growth in their class. We get to have a party and are celebrated with certificates at our monthly award assembly. And the mice sheet, which for our board directors, you'll see that in front of you. That's something that Mrs. Height has implemented across all grade levels. And what that does is it really lets parents know where their student has placed within their IR scores. Additionally, new this year is our school compact, also in front of the school board. And what that does is it tells parents how we're partnering with them and it gives students indicators of how they can be successful in our school. So we call that the school home
009compact and we gave that out during parent teacher conferences in the fall. Attendance one of the districtwide initiatives. Looking back a couple years ago our school average daily attendance we ended the year at 80%. Um, last year we ended the year at 92% and so far this year we're at 93% of daily student attendance. So, we're proud of that and we hope to continue to increase that. In naturebased news, where we're at with our pilot year so far, we'd like to thank the very generous donors brought to us by Superintendent of Green Ponchos donated to us. We're really grateful for that that generous donation. our outdoor education shed. Some of the parents in this room even helped contribute to that. Maybe they even helped build that with our weekend. So, we're really grateful for that.
010That's where we store all of our outdoor education gear. Um, we have a partnership with PEI, stands for Pacific Education Institute, and we've been partnering with them since August when they've done teacher training. Um, we are really excited to get a supplemental science curriculum. We've had a lot of support from Mrs. in regards to this curriculum. Um, and what we're hoping to do is pair that with our history science curriculum. This is an outdoor nature-based curriculum um that we'll be adding into our science um teaching and it's called project merry and project. So those should be coming soon. They're on order. Um also this year during our pilot year, our year of implementation, um we did a lot of hard work with again Mrs. Key. We created a progression chart and matrix which can be
011found on our website. Um the teachers really dug into that work and did a lot around that. We were really um proud of those documents. And we also have culmination projects that are happening within the next couple months that kind of wrap up their current unit. Um and they're all around our nature based um matrix that we created. And we've had various staff members attending nature-based trainings and bringing that back into their own um teaching and instruction. Some have even presented to our staff. And our sunspots, again, we've had a lot of great parent support this year. We had um one parent who really wanted to make sure that we had enough outdoor seating for a whole class to go out and have something to actually sit on during their matrix learning. And he donated
012the stump spots to us. And you'll get to see those in action tonight in Mrs. He's class, but we do have a picture for those of those right here for you to kind of see. And uh we had a couple parents actually help him unload them and load them up from the site that he bought them from. So we're really grateful for those. And the next picture is of our outdoor education shed, which just got put up um last month. So um that was in partnership with parents and our awesome PTO. Tonight we're going to take you on an outdoor adventure. We have five different zones. Um several teachers wanted to partner together, but um what we're going to do is take you outside after Mrs. Truck's class presents. They have a digital component to
013show you a video that will coach you all outside. So they're going to show you something inside before we take the group outdoors. Um but what we have in zone number one, Mrs. Chalk in collaboration with Mrs. Kelly. So, we've got our middle school and our TK, our four-year-olds, our transition to kindergarten students partnered together and they've created an outdoor explorers forest playground. So, they're going to tell you more about that in just a moment. Then you'll get to go outside and actually see it. Um, our second zone is Miss Hiller, our kindergarten, our fifth grade teacher, Mr. Antonson, and Mrs. Money, one of our parents. They partnered together um on a weather exploration station that you'll get to see next to our actual weather station that we have here on campus. And then our
014third zone, we're going to take you out to Sahara Creek trail head right at the beginning of that trail. Mrs. Hoverston, our naturebased art extraordinary wherever she is all this beautiful art here with her students to showcase, but she'll show you what she's been doing in her nature class. And then Mrs. tonight will take you out to do a sunset circle with your fourth grade. Normally it's a sunrise circle which we start our day with but since it's evening she's changed it to a sunset circle and she'll show you a nature journaling activity at the sit spot and then we're going to end the evening with Miss Brown and she's going to present with three students the school garden and the compost environment that she's been working on in her road class. So we're going
015to turn it over to the mattress. This is an aerial shot of where we're going to be. So, we're going to start out in zone one there, right before the weather station. Zone two is right at the weather station. Zone three is at Sahara Creek Trail Head with Mrs. Host Spots or in zone four with Mrs. Hike. And then we're going to end the night at stage five there with Miss Brown and we'll be back up here for comments. So, I'd like to at this time invite Mrs. dropping her students up for STEM class um to showcase their awesome [Music] work here a little closer so they can hear you might think yeah there stand right [Music] Hold up you guys. Miss Kelly's gonna have [Music] Hi, I'm Kelly. My name is teacher here at
016um so my class is looking to explore more outdoors. We have three forests play with Mrs. Herson. We have our playground but we were just looking for something a little more. So when we were considering this design we wanted to find a way to incorporate the great outdoors but also the skills that we were learning in the classroom. Um so things like counting, fine motor, observational skills, five senses, but then also that imaginative or play and um just an area to build on our social emotional learning. Um so I pumped the idea to Mrs. Jeff um knowing that she understand they had just done their Nquali Bridge project and they were really excited um to take it on and get started. And so they came in, they did interviews, they met with your payers, they
017asked these questions about kind of things they wanted, what the weather looked like, they came in, measure tables. Um, and it was just really great to see you guys engage with them in that way. And our teachers felt like they were part of something bigger and they were so excited to work with the big kids and even recognizing them in the hallway. So that really felt built community within the building as well. Um, and then watching them reveal the project to the two cars was exciting to see not just the teachers's faces excitement, but to see how proud you guys were and all the work that you did. Um, hi everyone. Uh, my name is Kennedy Brown and I'm going to be introducing you to the STEM class. Um, in this class we introduce Eddie
018Hoffman, Kennedy Brown, myself, um, Lauraai Alenba, Aiden Healey, Wesley Acriman, Curtis Wright, Daffany Nland, and Joshua Royal. Um, the trail is through September through uh, parts of November, a total of 24 students joined uh, STEM. Through that time, we've cleared up the trail, uh made a sit spot, um in the trail, and um made some bridges. Um there is a picture of the trail right there or the trail sit spots. Sit spots. We're planning on expanding this in the future. We we use it to tell stories also to give kids. It's really loud down by the river and so this is before the river and it's quiet there. So you can sit down, you can go over expectations, safety, tell stories, talk about the lesson and then you can access the river from this spot.
019So that's why we're going to enhance it more down the road. Okay, good job. Here. So while we worked on the trail, we cleared debris and removed tripping hazards and other safety issues. Um, we hauled rock to set foundations for the bridge. Um, and we used hand saws to cut fallen trees away from the trail and um to cut lumber for the bridge decking. Um, this is uh one of our bridges that we built. Uh we worked together to make bridge and use gravel as the foundation to make it level. And uh we made it safer for the kids to cross so they don't have tripping hazard. Um this is uh our preschool class using our trail and the bridge uh to it makes it safe and they call it the bouncy bridge. Uh they
020cleared we cleared the stream uh so fish and other critters can go through the stream. Okay. So, this is one of the hills on the trail and we put um Curtis and Wesley um they dug spots and put blocks of wood into there to make the stairs and then me and um another girl, sixth grader and STEM put rebar in front of them to hold them in place and we nailed it into the ground using How do I Can I just play it? Oh, here. Sorry. All right, this is where you guys jump in. This is right across the street from our school, by the way. The trail head. Uh we cleared debris uh so it can make it easier access to go into the trail. We used the clippers out there to kind of
021trim away the edges of the trail to make it wider. Um over here we also uh on the arch coming up here we cleaned it up. We uh cleaned this up this area up over here so we could actually walk through it before it was kind of like a hassle to go through it. And we also have some rope railing just to ensure safety to everybody who crosses there through there on the steps. And we have steps right here. You can't really see them, but they're there down that by down by that ledge. Uh it allows access of just anybody who wants to go down to the river and easily easily easy easy movement. Uh we cleared a couple logs right here. Uh so it's removes a tripping hazard for the little kids. You can
022see throughout the trail there's little pink markers so you don't get off trail and get lost. It's about almost a mile. It's about I think it's 08 m of a mile to the actual river. So for the kids to do this in a half an hour a day, we only had a half an hour to work. So it was like run out there, let's work like crazy. And then we would run back to come catch the buses. It was like as fast as we could go and those kids worked their hearts out. It was beautiful to watch. It was inspiring. You can see the rope railing here. Um people used to go down that way and it would kill vegetation. Um the rope railing prevents that. You can see the second set of stairs there.
023The rope railing would also ris uh eliminate the risk of falling or damaging any any potly line. Uh there's a big log right here that it took a lot of time to clear out. It took a couple days. Did you use handsaws for that big? Yeah, we used uh this is our this is our first bridge that we worked on. It's there's a little stream that was below so it's easier. And then along the trail, me and my friends have found like chipmunks and frogs and things and able to see the wildlife along the edge. And again, to ensure everybody's safety, we hand saw some logs. About four logs were just here through this intersection. It allows for the ease of movement and so everybody just doesn't have to jump over logs while they're trying
024to go on the trail. There's a sit spot to the left. Uh this is our second bridge that we worked on which is our more flowing stream and it's cleared debris from it and made it easier. We also cut down trees over here to clear up the trail and make it more obvious where it was. their little ones, saplings that had grown up in the trail um near the river or at the river. Uh we would go down and take and take samples of water to do water testing for labs, stuff like that. The water and science. Yeah. And then um along here was where we did the water testing for the student congress that's up in this river. And then this is also where we got gravel for the bridges because we hauled it
025from here back to the bridges. They go all the way to the river. Do you want to watch all the way to the river? It's almost there. We're almost there. This one fast forward somebody. Okay. Yeah. We did run to the Austin. He is an GoPro down and film this for them. We wanted to take you guys down tonight, but we were worried you don't have to get this video instead. There's the river. The kids love it down there. Love. Matter of fact, we're going down there tomorrow, too. We went down today, too. Yeah. And we invite all of you to try the trail when next time you're ready for a little hike and you just want to cross park here in our parking lot and and give it a try. We invite you to
026enjoy what the students have done. It's not only great for the actual students here since all 11 grade levels use this trail, but also it helps the entire community and and visitors as well. Okay. Yeah. This moves on to our next um project. Um our TK teacher, Miss Kelly, requested us to make outdoor workstations for the school and just the uh TKers. This is what we've been working on the past couple of weeks. We had talked and planned with the TK class to make sure the outdoor activity stations would be helpful and easy to use. Miss Miss Kelly was helpful in sending us ideas to me. We also measured how high the tables were just to allow easy access for all the little kids to get on top of it. Um, in this photo, we've
027made three outdoor stations so far. In this picture, we are working on the math station. So, um, in this picture, we were sanding down the logs so it's smooth for the kids so they don't get hurt. And okay, after measuring the tables and furniture in the TK room, we began our work. We made sure that the cut the cuts on our uh leg table legs were to height for the TK so they could uh get on top of the tables, do whatever without them breaking or snapping or damaging the wood or hurting the TKs, even worse. Um here in this shot, we are making the frame for an outdoor workt which will be a part of the outdoor kitchen we were making. And um oh sorry go ahead. Um uh here we were working on
028the outdoor math station for the TK class. Uh the kids will be able to practice their numbers by counting the rings and placing them on the wooden bowels. They can match the numbers on the rings to the log rounds. They will even be able to practice some math skills like adding and subtracting. Sensory squares. For the third project, uh Joshua and Daphne uh made squares. Basically, you can fill them up with anything. You can use your senses like uh touch, um sight, and uh uh smell, and then feel uh on your feet. Um and it allows you to develop like your words for things, sensory skills. Um in this picture uh these log rounds with rings are the math station. The kids uh can have the rings and put them on the corresponding long rounds.
029Uh the log rounds have the numbers 1 to 9 attached to them. The rings will have the matching numbers. We didn't quite finish this project, but we will stay with it. And in this picture, um the people that were working on this project were Joshua, Daphne, uh Lai, and So this is the completed um work table and sink. Uh it has uh they can collect leaves and specimens and bring them to the table to share with their class and use for art and school work. Um so this is after we finished it and put it in its place outside. Um, we brought the TK class out with their eyes closed if they could be surprised. They they're really excited. It was a lot of fun. First, we had to explain to the TK careers what
030they were going to see and just so they could get a feel about what their new playground equipment would be. Then, after we explained them, we told them to open their eyes and they ran joyously to their new playground equipment and they played endlessly. I don't know when they ended actually. Um, but they were super excited and they played at the workstations, they played with the sensory boxes, they played with the math station. It was really good. You should have seen it. They were squealing and laughing and I'm It was just beautiful. It was beautiful. Okay, here we go. Uh oh. Can't hear it. Can I rewind? Of course. Yes. [Music] Well, while she's working on that. The I went around afterwards just as we were finishing up and I asked the kids, "How do
031you feel?" And and the kids, you can hear them. They're playing. They're having a great time. And these guys were beaming. Just so full of joy seeing those little kids play, weren't you? You all were absolutely so excited to watch those little kids play on that equipment that they had been working on. It was just a wonderful thing. So, and that's what this is. There we go. [Music] Wait for wait for him to talk. Okay. [Applause] How do you feel? Amazing. Sounds good. So good. How's it feel, Aiden? Aiden, how you feel? Feels good. All right, Curtis, I can get you. Wow. And then one more slide. Oh, there I am. And that's um this was a quote that we decided to put on our slideshow. It says, "Do your little bit of good where
032you are. It is those little It's those little bits of good put together to over to overwhelm the world by Desmond. Now with that, we're ready to Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Questions. You have any questions? I have a question. So, this is your STEM class. So, I know that you learned what how it feels good to serve, but what did you learn about STEM? Um, some of the skills that you learned. Uh, I personally learned how to build things effectively and infrastructure and how to use like machinery or tools like drills and stuff. Yeah, we used a lot of tools that we'll have to use later to do lots of different things. I also think teamwork was a big part of it because we learned how to work together as a team to build
033projects that make other people happy. Yeah, just working together. I heard a lot that you were really thoughtful about some of the safety mechanisms you provided for the schoolers and also for the trail. I think that's an important part of ST that's an engineering piece. I think that I think that was one of our top priorities just to ensure safety to all the teachers and anybody who ever went on that trip. They had to design the project first. That's that's not their favorite part. Um but they had to design everything first. So they drew them out. They they drew the knot on a piece of paper. They went through what materials would be needed. So there was that design process that they had to practice first before they even started building anything. I can say
034I've done over a decade of um helping with water testing down that trail before you guys put in all those safety things. And I can tell you just looking at that, it is definitely improved and much better environment for students of all ages, not just for the older kids. So, thank you so much as a community member and as parents and everybody. And one of the things I wanted to say is um is as you were giving your descriptions and meeting showing us what was going on here, I could tell by your voice and how you felt about preparing the exciting and thank you. Thank you for help. Chris over at first Chris Berllo over there. He was on our team helping with the trail. So everybody should give him a wave, too. I know
035him. But yeah, you got to show them the equipment. [Music] Awesome. Well, that concludes our outdoor adventure. Thank you everyone. Maybe next year our meeting will start at 6. We appreciate everyone for joining us on um our outdoor excursions. And that just gives you a little taste. We had a All the teachers want to show off the great things that they were doing, but we did limit it to five outdoor adventures. So, there's plenty more going on here if you want to stop by any day of the week and see some of the great things happening here at Columbia. But, we're really proud of our nature based program. I'm so proud of all of our teachers and staff for digging in and trying things out. At the beginning of the year, we had a lot
036of other things going on that we tried that we realized, this might not work. We kind of revise it, change it a little bit, and some things really stuck and we've kept doing every single day since the first day of school. But other things we've adjusted and figured out what works and tried new things since the beginning of the year. Um, so it's a growing process and we're really proud of where we're currently at in our pilot year, year one. We're really excited for year two next year. It's going to keep getting bigger and better and more systematic. Um, so I'd like to say thank you to the board for giving us this opportunity to get our tracking and see what it's like. And um special thanks to Sally and Mrs. Key for really um
037doing the ground work with us and partnering with us in the implementation. So we really appreciate that. Um and Superintendent Brown for giving us just great resources and partnering us with really great experts in the field. We appreciate your everyone's support in this and all the parents who donated their time and resources to us, money and supplies. I mean this has just been a really community building um program to implement and we are so excited to see where it takes us next year. Um so with that that concludes the Columbia Crest state of the school presentation for the 2425 smoking. So thank you everyone. Thank you Alison just and to everyone those of you who are still sticking around. Thank you so much. We're going to um continue on the agenda and we are at
038superintendent. Yes, thank you so much. Um first of all, I just want to say principal slow and CCA staff u that was amazing. That was a real treat and something I won't forget. So, thank you for everything you're doing to bring learning to nature and nature to learn. Just two quick items. The first one is that we have an important day coming up. community day and that is on Friday, May 2nd. That will kick off at 11:30. We'll have a groundbreaking ceremony for our our track, field, and stadium. And so we invite everyone to be there and invite everyone. We'll be one of the last events happens in the stadium. So we believe that by 1:30 there'll be a coordination ceremony. We know that several of you are involved in that. I appreciate uh that.
039And that will go all the way out into the streets eventually till 7:30 at night, I believe. And so I promise it's where you want to be. It's where you want to be on Friday, May 2nd. The second thing is that I really love the fact that you're highlighting the growth that you're making academically. to think that 50% of the students have moved a full year's growth in Apple year that's uh that speaks volumes and this uh let's see was that actually just yesterday or the day before that we actually went on a learning walk when we started at warehouser and then went to elementary school and uh we had an opportunity um to see kids in actions and and teachers that are really implementing the curriculum with Fidelity curriculum. So I asked Sally just
040to say a couple words about that. So we are excited to see our new ELA curriculum in action. Um we had a magnificent uh turnout. We would love to add other people to the walkthroughs and we hope to do we're going to be doing one coming up at CCA and maybe some of you can join us at that. But just real quickly, this is part of our threeyear implementation plan. and wanted to do in order to have strong roll out, strong instruction. Um um we have a three-year uh support plan with that which means we have ongoing professional development and the learning blocks were part of that which you will continue in the next school year as well. We were really um excited about all the great instruction we saw. It was really topnotch. I
041would have to say that um excellent by every classroom we visited. Um and our focus we had the identified focuses. We have a core a core instructional leaders team that identifies success criteria we'd be looking for around the implementation of the curriculum for K2 and the 35. Um but our teachers really brought it for strong core instruction really knocked it out of the park. We were really impressed. I would say the three things that stuck out in my mind by uh attending those many classrooms were just the self-management by the students. Uh they were in control. They were regulated all the time and uh that doesn't happen without teachers who are helping them do that. The second thing was their rigor. It was great to see a lot of questions that were challenging students thinking
042but not different than what we've heard tonight. And so um self-management rigor and then the last one was just student engagement. They were excited to um be in the curriculum and and whether it was kindergarten or fifth grade they were they were all engaged in what they were doing and the whole class and so uh it was it was a great day and uh academically we're making a great start. So thank you very much. All right, we'll go to board comments. We'll start at the end and we're just going to pass the mic just for you. I just want to say thank you for everybody um just putting in the effort. It's not that often, you know, that well actually probably a pretty awkward ride, right? within the after hours um and the parents, the
043you know staff just coming and putting on the presentation for the kids and I just appreciate everybody being so selfless with their time and um you know making a great experience. Thank you for um the presentations tonight. They work excellently and I love the enthusiasm of the students and seeing how invested they are not only in their education but in each other and that just really touched my heart and seeing what I'm seeing have them here um is something that I wish more students could participate in. Um, I just cannot express enough my gratitude to the willingness of the staff, the parents, the students, and the community to take on this wildly innovative dream and goal and to embrace it. It is hard work. I know that your staff, everyone in this building has put
044in so much work and I hope that you will just continue and your growth is outstanding. So exciting to see that. Thank you for the hard work that's we always want to keep academics at the front. A quick update today. I had the opportunity to meet with uh Commissioner Updo from the Department of Natural Resources and they have been wonderful partners at this school as well. And I had the opportunity to thank him personally for the time and energy of that part DNR employees that have come out and spent time with their kids, but also to express um how important the timber sales are to small and rural schools and particularly to Edenville schools. and he was very gracious. Um, and Superintendent Brower was there uh and and he was new to the conversation about
045how important the funding was to us. He was grateful that we shared with him how important it was and he is a willing partner to help us find a resolution. May not be necessarily the obvious one we're looking at, but he's willing to find a resolution. So, I was grateful uh for that opportunity and I hope everybody enjoys spring break because you guys work so hard to despic [Music] um just a great opportunity for kids and thank you for having your students here doing that And teachers, you can tell the passion you have with your kids for this. And I was super excited. I just realized I have like three former students have students here who's participating and it just reminded me again of what we continue to owe our kids as opportunities because that's
046really cool to see that generational stuff. So awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. All right. With that, thank you all so much for all you've done and for sticking it off this long. We appreciate you having turn this meeting down. That's my watch. 856.