7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2016
Seaside: Seaside High’s graduation rate is 74.8 percent
Continued from Page 1A
break ground before spring
2018, the district remains
charged with providing the
best education to school-aged
children, Roley said.
“When it comes right down
to it, whether it’s an old build-
ing, a new building or a build-
ing under construction, we still
have to do school every day,”
she said. “We fly the airplane
and try to build it while it’s in
flight, because we still have to
be moving forward, working
hard with our kids while all
these other awesome things are
going on.”
The leadership team felt
it particularly imperative to
define its education goals, as
the district underwent numer-
ous administrative changes
ahead of the 2016-17 school
year. Roley recently stepped
into the position of former
Superintendent Doug Dough-
erty. Only Gearhart Elemen-
tary School’s Juli Wozniak is a
returning principal. While the
principals at Seaside Heights
Elementary, Broadway Mid-
dle School and Seaside High
School — John McAndrews,
Robert Rusk and Jeff Rob-
Sheila Roley
erts, respectively — were pre-
viously in administrative posi-
tions, this is their first year at
the helm of their respective
schools.
In addition, Roley said,
the team wanted to redefine
the district’s priorities for the
future to ensure “we’re doing
the right things.”
“This is hard work,” she
said. “We love it, but we want
to make sure our focus is in the
right place.”
Behind the
achievement numbers
The district’s primary mis-
sion is for all students to gradu-
ate college and be career ready.
“We need to be relent-
less in our commitment to get
more kids out the door that are
ready to move on to the next
step,” Roley said.
The main focus is elimi-
nating the opportunity gap, or
providing all students equal
opportunities for effective
learning. By doing so, Roley
said, “achievement will take
care of it.”
Achievement, by the lead-
ership’s standards, includes
essential academic skills; criti-
cal thinking and problem-solv-
ing; the ability to commu-
nicate;
resourcefulness,
resiliency and persistence; the
ability to adapt to new circum-
stances; collaboration skills;
and good citizenship.
Seaside High School’s cur-
rent graduation rate is 74.8
percent across the general
population. Delving into var-
ious demographics, Roley
reported the rate is 72.9 per-
cent for economically disad-
vantaged students, which is
more than half the district’s
population; 92.9 percent for
English learners; 65.5 per-
cent for students with disabili-
ties; and 86 percent for Latino
students.
While the district’s grad-
uation rate is above the state
average, Roley said they are
not satisfied.
“There are still a lot of
kids behind those numbers,”
she said. “We want to do bet-
ter, that’s what it boils down
to. We believe we can do bet-
ter and we’re willing to do the
work to get better. Because
you can’t keep reinventing the
wheel in the same way.”
Clear targets
During its planning pro-
cess, the leadership teamed
worked to establish clear oper-
ational targets. Some areas
where the district seems to be
succeeding at the time, accord-
ing to Roley, are in crafting a
coherent strategy for deliv-
ering instruction; promoting
the ongoing development of
staff; creating strong parent
and community ties; fostering
a clear student-centered cli-
mate; and sharing leadership
to drive growth.
One area that needs
improvement, Roley said, is
long-term planning “to sup-
port continuous growth and
improvement.”
“That’s an operational tar-
get we’re focusing on a bit
more this year than we have
previously,” she said.
In the process of doing so,
the leadership team identi-
fied the district’s assets, which
include the talents of students
and staff; community and par-
ent support and optimism; the
district’s manageable size; the
support and stability of the
school board; and community
partnerships.
When the voters approved
the ballot measure to fund new
schools, “optimism and belief
in the future of our district just
shot through the roof,” Roley
said.
“They’re positive about us
and what we can accomplish,”
she added. “In spite of all the
other stuff we have to do —
like build new schools — now
is when we dive in and do our
best work.”
The leadership team
has identified unmet social
needs as the primary barrier
that negatively impacts stu-
dents’ learning in the district.
Whether it be family crises,
hunger, unaddressed men-
tal or physical health issues
or mobility problems, those
unmet social needs present a
barrier the school district must
address. In order to do that,
Roley said, the district must
examine its current reality and
set measurable objectives for
improved student outcomes.
“If 74.8 percent isn’t good
enough, where do we think we
can get? And how long do we
think it will take us?” she said.
The focus during 2016-
17, which the team dubbed
Year One, is building capacity.
That will incorporate leader-
ship develop, especially since
the district has many admin-
istrators who are new in their
positions; expanding commu-
nity partnerships; and under-
standing strengths and chal-
lenges by observing data and
listening to students, families
and staff about specific needs,
Roley said.
In the following school
year, 2017-18, the team
intends to put together a five-
year outline to define what
academic achievement looks
like for students, and include
measurable
targets
and
well-defined action plans.
“We have a moral impera-
tive to provide the children of
our community with the best
possible future,” Roley said.
Divided: ‘I can honestly say I’m frightened about the future.’
Continued from Page 1A
The rest of us look a lot
more like Nancy Harvey, a
54-year-old child-care center
owner in Oakland, California,
who has less than $2,000 saved.
Her plan, as of now, is to con-
tinue with real-estate classes in
hopes that it can provide a sec-
ond job.
“I have to work and pray
and hope my health continues
to remain good so that I can
continue to work,” she says. “I
still have a mortgage and all the
insurance that goes along with
that, and I have to pay pay-
roll for my employees, which
is really important to me. I can
honestly say I’m frightened
about the future.”
Harvey isn’t alone, as the
gap widens between the few
households who don’t have
to worry about a comfortable
retirement and everyone else.
The anxiety even stretches
across political affiliations.
Nearly equivalent percentages
of Democrats and Republicans
say they’re not managing very
well in retirement planning,
a recent survey from Lincoln
Financial found.
The looming crisis is the
result of a system that’s increas-
ingly put workers in charge of
saving for and managing their
own retirement. Because the
U.S. households at the top have
reaped most of the income
gains over the last decade —
and because they have dispro-
portionately more access to
retirement plans to begin with
— experts say the gap in retire-
ment savings is only growing
wider. They’re expecting to see
more elderly Americans work-
ing longer, moving in with their
kids and tapping assistance
programs.
“Only the privileged have
access to a secure retirement,”
says Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor
economist at the New School
for Social Research.
The income divide
It’s easier to save when
you’re making more money,
and the vast majority of the
income gains have gone to the
top in recent years.
The top 10 percent of U.S.
households made more than
$162,180 last year, up 6 per-
cent from a decade earlier after
adjusting for inflation. For
middle-income
Americans,
incomes have barely stayed
ahead of inflation. Lower-in-
come households are making
less than a decade ago.
The benefit of making more
money goes beyond having
more to save. Higher-income
households also get a bigger
after-tax benefit from putting
money into a 401(k) or another
tax-advantaged account.
With traditional pensions
increasingly becoming extinct,
it’s grown even more important
for Americans to save. Mean-
while, Social Security — the
last line of defense for many
retirement plans — is at risk of
having enough money to pay
only 79 percent of benefits,
starting in 2034.
‘I have
to work
and pray
and hope
my health
continues to
remain good
so that I can
continue to
work.’
Nancy Harvey
54-year-old child-care center
owner in Oakland, California, who
has less than $2,000 saved
Access to plans
The death of the traditional
pension means the burden is on
us to save, and that’s why access
to 401(k) and other retirement
plans is so important.
David Harraway, 61, and
his wife have built up a nest
egg that will include nearly
$1.4 million in IRAs, $400,000
in cash and almost no liabilities
once they finish the sale of a
nearly paid-off vacation home.
They did that by consis-
tently putting away at least 10
percent of their income in a
retirement plan. Harraway says
they also didn’t eat out much,
didn’t vacation lavishly and
lived in Colorado Springs, Col-
orado, instead of a high-cost
area. Occasionally they might
splurge to see The Who when
they toured.
The couple didn’t make
much money early in their
careers, but they recently were
making enough to be in the top
10 percent.
Most lower-income house-
holds will save when they have
access to a retirement plan. The
problem is that most don’t get
the opportunity.
Eighty percent of high-in-
come working households
have access to a 401(k) or sim-
ilar defined-contribution plan,
according to the U.S. Govern-
ment Accountability Office.
For low-income working
households, it’s just 35 percent.
The low retirement bal-
ances mean the majority of
households — 52 percent —
are at risk of having to cut their
spending by more than 10 per-
cent after entering retirement,
according to the Center for
Retirement Research at Boston
College.
“For an upper-middle class
person, not being able to main-
tain their standard of living
means fewer trips,” says Alicia
Munnell, the center’s director.
“But for lower-income people,
it can really mean depriving
themselves.”
AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
Possible solutions
To help close the gap, states
are trying their own measures.
California recently passed a law
requiring employers to auto-
matically enroll their workers in
a state-run program and deduct
money from each paycheck.
Experts prefer a broader fix
from the federal government
but call the state programs an
encouraging step. In the mean-
time, many workers are simply
working longer.
David Tucker is 74 and still
waking at 1:15 each morning
to get to his job as a skycap at
Reagan National Airport out-
side Washington, D.C.
He’s worked there 54 years,
and he makes $3.77 per hour,
plus tips.
He and his wife have
saved between $50,000 and
$100,000. He also gets $235
monthly from a pension, a ben-
efit earned from one of his first
jobs. His wife wants him to
retire, but he’s worried about
having enough to pay the bills,
and he doesn’t want to take
help from his seven children.
He says he’s going to keep
working, at least until Febru-
ary. Then, he’ll consider cutting
down to a few days per week or
retiring.
“I would like to feel what
it’s like to wake up and not go
to work,” he says.
Give
Back
Nancy Harvey, owner of Lil’ Nancy’s Primary Schoolhouse, second from right, poses for
a portrait with staff members Betty Martinez, at left, Yolanda Wilson, second from left,
and Nadiya Khelif, right, as well as children they care for outside of Harvey’s home and
child care center, in Oakland, Calif.
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