University Place presents E3 report showing strong student effort but flags sense-of-belonging, harassment reporting

University Place School District officials on Tuesday emphasized high student engagement and community service while noting areas for improvement in students’ sense of belonging and reporting of harassment.

Executive Director of Secondary Education Lainie Matthews presented the district’s E3 report — collected from historical perception surveys, narrative responses, counselor surveys and Panorama social‑emotional learning data — saying the material shows students “have these individual skills, these social skills to help contribute to the betterment of others and to our democratic society.”

The report aggregates student and staff responses by grade band and highlights several strengths: high percent‑favorable ratings for traits such as effort, responsibility and caring; steady or improving counselor perceptions for many traits; robust club participation at the secondary level; and documented community service. Matthews told the board the district logged roughly 90,000 service hours for grades 9–12 last year, and that Curtis High School registered more than 300 seniors to vote this year during in‑school sessions with the county auditor. AP Government pass rates were reported at about 88.8%, and seniors’ civics proficiency at about 97.5%.

Nut graf: The E3 report presents mixed results. District leaders said students demonstrate personal traits and civic knowledge that the board values, but several indicators — especially middle‑ and high‑school students’ sense of belonging and willingness to report harassment — lag behind other measures and will be focal points for next steps.

Matthews walked board members through multiple data sets. Student historic‑perception items (percent favorable) were high for “effort,” often in the 80s and 90s across grade bands, while items framed negatively — such as resisting and reporting harassment or conflict resolution — produced lower percent‑favorable scores, particularly in some seventh‑ and eighth‑grade cohorts. Matthews said the district added eighth grade as a marker this year to give the junior high a comparable historic measure moving forward.

Panorama SEL survey findings were presented as percent‑favorable scores (Panorama is administered twice yearly). The district’s sense‑of‑belonging metric was identified as an area of attention: scores generally decline as students get older, a pattern the presenter and board members attributed in part to normal adolescent development and the larger, less personal environment of secondary schools. The superintendent and board also noted nationwide and pandemic‑era influences on social‑emotional indicators.

Matthews described school‑level responses and interventions: principals and equity teams analyze school data, counselors use student‑level dashboards to support individual students, and schools expand club and leadership opportunities (including nonathletic clubs) to increase student connections. She pointed to examples of constructive student behavior in narrative responses — a sixth grader describing a peer as a role model for showing respect, and a senior describing helping a new student navigate a large campus — as evidence of civic and social learning in practice.

Board members asked for clarity about responding to lower scores. Matthews and board members said responses are primarily school driven: opening‑of‑year staff days, counselor follow‑up, targeted club offerings and student focus groups at the junior high and high school to learn why some students report low connection to adults or school. The district also emphasized family partnerships and encouraged parents to contact counselors when they see a child needing connection.

The presentation included other items the district tracks as part of E3: transition‑to‑kindergarten pilot classrooms (two classrooms at University Place Primary and Chambers with 39 students total this year; expansion paused pending state funding), cultural assemblies (including a Native American land acknowledgment developed with the Puyallup Tribe), ROTC community service and voter‑registration efforts at Curtis High School.

After the presentation, a board member moved that the board “find that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted our policy language and the district is making reasonable progress toward achieving the desired results,” explicitly naming honesty, harassment reporting and sense of belonging as areas for growth. The motion was seconded and approved by voice vote.

Ending: Matthews said the district plans to add digital citizenship to next year’s E3 reporting and thanked staff who compiled the data. Board members praised the breadth of the report and signaled that the district will continue monitoring the sense‑of‑belonging indicators and harassment‑reporting measures at the school level.