By Sarah Brown
Lebanon Local
The Lebanon Community Schools board heard a presentation at its meeting Sept. 8 about the District’s overall goals for the 2022-23 school year for family engagement and inclusion. The focus is primarily on improving student achievement and building more trust with families and encouraging them to understand the educational system better.
The District is planning monthly “Empower Hour” sessions for parents to stay informed and active in their child’s education; a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) resource for families; Character Strong and Purposeful People programs for social-emotional learning; “empathy interviews,” which basically involves allowing families an opportunity to share their stories so the school can respond; and continuing outreach through Latino family night events and the Welcoming Center.
Another tool the District is using for parent/family outreach is an app called ParentSquare, which can be downloaded from Google Play and Apple App stores.
Supt. Bo Yates went over the District’s primary goals, which can be found via a link on the District’s website at http://lebanon.k12.or.us/district/superintendent/. The three primary goals include: improving test scores three percentage points a year, reading at grade-level by the end of grade three, and increasing the graduation rate.
Being at the correct reading level by the third grade is “a huge predictor of if kids are going to be successful moving forward,” Yates said.
“As we have extra resources right now, we’ll really want to push those extra resources toward the target because it’s the same payout in the long run,” he said.
The idea is similar for freshmen, in that if they can end the year in good standing, they’re more likely to be on-track to graduate, he said.
Yates also went over projected enrollment for the year and was happy with the high school’s higher-than-usual number of 1,314. He also noted the elementary classes are usually 285 to 300, but they’re seeing numbers around 250.
“It’s a little bit of a concern because adjusting at the elementary level is much different than adjusting at the high school level,” he said.
