Fort Vancouver teachers lead guiding-coalition work as district dashboard shows early gains
Summary
Fort Vancouver High School leaders told the Vancouver School District board that teacher-led guiding coalitions, PLC rotations and targeted interim-assessment practice are linked to early improvements in discipline and attendance; school staff cited Panorama survey results showing 31% of students feel able to achieve high academic outcomes and 25% feel able to tackle difficult tasks.
Fort Vancouver High School principal Luis Castro Quintanilla told the Vancouver School District board the school's guiding coalition is a joint effort with district support that uses teacher leaders, professional development and compensated time to align school- and district-level goals toward graduates who are "life ready." Castro said the district provided short- and long-term plans and financial resources to support the work.
Teacher Luana Ingram described the school's PLC (professional learning community) rotations, instituted in 2024 to stabilize teacher groupings after staffing changes. She said teachers self-select PLCs focused on essential standards, universal design for learning, rubrics/reflection and data dives, and that time during Wednesday professional development is used for sustained PLC work.
Ingram said the guiding coalition used a seven-step implementation protocol and staff-collected feedback to design a one-page academic-intervention plan for the first six weeks of intervention. "Teachers did not have to follow this," she said, "but they needed to kind of curb whatever they were doing in that time period to fit these goals," naming time management, productive struggle and reflection as core activities.
School staff tied the work to two specific goals drawn from a Panorama survey: only 31% of students said they believed they could achieve high academic outcomes, and only 25% felt able to accomplish difficult tasks. To address those results, the coalition emphasized explicit goal-setting with rubrics so students can "monitor where they are" and understand steps toward growth.
The presenters also reported changes in disciplinary and attendance indicators. Comparing the early months of the prior school year to this year, the presenters said out-of-school suspensions fell from 147 to 93 and the category for students out of class without a pass fell from 650 to 432. The staff cautioned multiple initiatives may contribute to the trend and said the data are not a single-cause proof of impact.
On interim assessments, Ingram noted the use of IABs (interim assessment blocks) written at a higher level to build students' capacity to answer complex questions. She said Fort's algebra and geometry teams selected strategic IAB questions for classroom practice and saw the lowest-performing category shrink while middle and upper bands grew.
Board members asked for the slide deck with live links; Janelle Ephraim said staff would provide a version with active links. The district said the performance dashboard has been updated to include the four-year graduation rate and can be queried by school, program and demographic subgroup.
The school’s next steps include piloting student self-checks across classes and a two-week professional development session focused on rubrics so students can self-monitor and request supports.
The district’s strategic-plan monitoring and Fort Vancouver’s guiding coalition work will return in future updates; staff said they will track measures tied to the goals and report back to the board.
