Principals report fall gains, expanded CTE offerings and attendance strategies

Principals across Cascade SD 5 reported program updates and data at the board meeting, highlighting career-technical education expansion, lower failing-student counts at the junior high and targeted efforts to address chronic absenteeism at the district’s alternative campus.

Lade, the junior high principal, said weekly monitoring shows failing students have fallen to 87 from 134 at the same point last year. “We only had 87,” Lade said while discussing outreach, recovery and counselor interventions for students failing one or more classes. He told trustees the junior high enrollment was 649 as of the meeting.

Miss Waliza, the district’s CTE director and high-school assistant principal, summarized career- and college-focused activities: “We invited 32 different colleges, trade schools, branches of the military. We had 30 show up,” she said about the recent college fair. Waliza also highlighted that John Iverson recently became an OSHA 10 certified trainer through Chemeketa, allowing more students to gain industry-recognized safety credentials during pre-apprenticeship and advanced manufacturing coursework.

Cascade Opportunity Center principal Miss Thompson gave comparative data showing the alternate campus holds an attendance rate in the mid-80s and uses a multi-tiered system and care-team meetings to reduce chronic absenteeism; she noted three students currently completing GED work on site. Cloverdale elementary principal Miss Bradley reviewed fall DIBELS and I-Ready screens and described school improvement goals (a modest 3% reading gain target) and last year’s strong end-of-year gains.

Board members asked for follow-up numbers — for example, how many seniors intend to pursue two- versus four-year pathways — and staff said counselors and the Opportunity Center can provide more-complete postsecondary outcome data next month.