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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.”
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