Roosevelt Elementary highlights attendance, student awards and ASL club at Lakewood City Schools meeting
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Summary
Roosevelt Elementary presented student recognitions and described building goals including a focus on writing, an attendance initiative with 88% of students missing no more than 10% of the year, and an American Sign Language club that involves roughly 75 K–5 students.
Roosevelt Elementary principal Lisonbee Aber told the Lakewood City Schools board that the school’s efforts are showing results and community engagement. Aber presented the Resilient Ranger award to Mahika Manya and the Stay in the Game attendance award to fourth-grader Violet Millis, and described building goals focused on improving writing across subjects and sustaining high student attendance.
Aber said Roosevelt’s attendance initiative — which includes welcome postcards, targeted home visits and a ‘‘2 by 10’’ check-in strategy (two minutes a day for 10 days for at-risk students) — contributes to an 88% rate of students who have missed no more than 10% of the school year. ‘‘This success is built on strong partnerships with families,’’ Aber said, noting that interventions and a house system also help students feel belonging.
The meeting included an extended description of the American Sign Language club, co-led by Jessica Farmer, educational interpreter Laura Shewalter and Christine Mason. Farmer said the club enrolls about 75 K–5 students and teaches basic ASL skills, finger-spelling and cultural awareness. Students demonstrated learned signs and described the club’s activities: one student said, "We learned how to greet someone which helps everyone feel like they belong." The club’s activities also include a weekly sign featured in schoolwide video announcements to build schoolwide awareness.
Dr. Palumbo later recognized staff members Liz Street and Laura Shewalter as exemplary educators, noting classroom leadership and extracurricular involvement. The board photographed award recipients and thanked Roosevelt staff for their work.
The presentation emphasized practical classroom strategies — including the ‘‘because, but, so’’ sentence scaffolding Aber described for strengthening sentence-level instruction — and tied those strategies to the building’s goal of boosting student writing, critical thinking and communication across math, science and social studies.
The Roosevelt presentation concluded with board members praising the attendance results and club participation and encouraging continued family outreach.
The board will vote on related items at a subsequent meeting when applicable.