2 La Grande Pride September 2019 • www.lagrandesd.org From the Superintendent's Desk ... Dear Parent, Guardian, and Community Members, On behalf of the LGSD Board of Education and all of us who work with and support your children, I want to welcome you back for another exciting school year! La Grande educators are back in full swing, hard at work prepar- ing for a great school year of learning, laughter, safety, and growth. La Grande School District is continu- ally striving to provide a high quality, engaging, and personalized educa- )GQTIG/GPFQ\C tion experience for all students. With LA GRANDE SCHOOL this topic in mind our district took the DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT time to develop a fi ve-year Strategic Plan that will better focus our staff and funding in how we serve and educate our students. The foundation of our district’s Strategic Plan focuses on three pillar Goals that I would like to share with you all. Goal 1: “Ensure All Students are Ready to Learn” from this goal we will focus on the implementation of social emotional learning and trauma informed practices to support our students and staff; Improved Attendance rates, Improved School safety training and practices, as well as more early learning program- ming. Goal 2: “Foster Increased Academic Success” this pillar goal emphasizes on 9th grade on track rates, Math and reading test scores as well as increased graduation/completer rates. These are all indicators of academic success and growth and there are many best practices our district will utilize to increase results. Goal 3: “Develop Engage Life Long Learners” this overarch- ing goal is focused on increasing community service, increasing participation in clubs, sports, and activities, growing partnerships with job industry and dual credit/college credit earning courses, increased focus on developing job skills/soft skills as well as fi nancial literacy. We have updated our mission, vision, values and goals based on community and staff input and I am very excited to make this strategic plan come to life with your support. When you get a moment, please review our strategic plan. Our primary goals are to ensure we have strong programs and services that ensure students are ready to learn, academically successful, as well as engaged life-long learners. Should you wish to visit, ask ques- tions, or share concerns around the district’s strategic plan our district administrative team will make ourselves available to you. Have a fantastic school year. Sincerely, George Mendoza La Grande SD Superintendent This publication serves as a platform to keep our community informed and connected to the school district. We appreciate your involvement and support. Should you wish to contact me my phone number is 541-663-3201; email: george.mendoza@ lagrandesd.org Student Success Act Passed By Trish Yerges The Student Success Act, funded by a new business tax, was passed by the Or- egon State Legislature last July and will produce about $2 billion per biennium for early learning and K-12 education. “The funds are given on a per pupil allocation to all districts across the state, and our portion of that is a little over $1 million,” said Scott Carpenter, LGSD Pro- grams Director. The money has to be used and applied to four State- defi ned objectives or pur- poses. “First, it has to go to extending services to stu- dents, whether that’s ex- tending the school day or school year or offering sum- mer programs. We have to provide more services and time in the schools,” he said. The other three purposes for the money involve well- rounded education, social emotion initiatives and ad- dressing safety and security issues in schools. “What we’ll do is take those funds and apply them to those four purposes and our district strategic plan- ning initiatives,” he said. “Those initiatives will line up pretty well with those (funding) purposes.” The funding will become available for the 2020-21 school year, so right now the LGSD is moving into its planning phase, consider- ing how they will increase their services, ways we can improve safety or outreach to families. “We have to submit that plan to the Oregon Department of Education by November of this year,” Carpenter said. “The super- intendent and I are working with building administra- tors to develop that plan, based on the district’s stra- tegic plan initiatives.” “We have to write a plan for those funds and follow the plan,” he said. “Then we are accountable for the results of our action items that we put in the plan.” The other benefi t of the Student Success Act is that it fully funds Measure 98, meaning that the La Grande High School will now get a full allotment rather than the 60 percent of what Measure 98 prom- ised. “That’s a little more than $600,000 that can be used to improve graduation rates, decrease drop-out rates and bolster career technical edu- cation,” said Carpenter. In the driver’s seat; New Program on wheels By Trish Yerges Programs Director Scott Carpenter has announced an exciting new program for LHS students this year. It’s called “La Grande Drives, “a district-operated driver’s education program. “When Malheur ESD stopped serving Baker and Union Counties, the La Grande School District worked with the Oregon De- partment of Transportation to develop a new driver’s education program,” Car- penter said. The fi rst session was held this summer and another one will start the beginning of September 3. “We’ve had a lot of inter- est by the community,” he said. “It costs $250 per student for 11 weeks of instruction. That’s actually a low price for rates across the state.” There are fi ve different instructors available to train students, but the lead instructor and program co- ordinator is Matt Wolcott. “We’re also working with M.J. Goss, who are helping us with the vehicles,” Car- penter said. Students are reminded to check with their insur- ance agent to see if their course completion qualifi es them for an auto insurance discount. Other news off the desk of Scott Carpenter has to do with the new culinary kitchen in the CTE build- ing. “We redid the culinary kitchen so it’s going to be a professional kitchen. That was a little over a $300,000 renovation,” he said. “We went from a 1950s Home- economics design to a pro- fessional kitchen.” continued on page 5