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Board hears update on Highly Capable program; administrators seek to boost referrals
Summary
Director Kim Null told the board 421 students currently participate in the Yakima School District Highly Capable program (~2.85% of enrollment) and described screening, training and stakeholder steps to raise that toward a 5% goal; board members pressed for clarity on uneven nomination-to-recommendation patterns across schools.
Kim Null, director of human resources who oversees the district’s Highly Capable (HighCap) program, presented program mission and data and said the program currently serves 421 students—about 2.85% of district enrollment—with a stated growth goal of approximately 5% representation. "We need to figure out how do we get more students in the program," Null told the board, outlining steps that include continued teacher training on differentiation, parent information nights, and expanded stakeholder meetings that will add parent and student voice.
Null described identification processes: district screening of second- and sixth-grade cohorts, multidimensional review by a multidisciplinary group (including school psychologists and principals), and use of asynchronous measures (students can qualify in math or English separately). She said the district tracks demographic splits (including free-and-reduced lunch and language status) and that 421 is the present program count; the board asked for a comparable count for the fine-arts program that Jamie Lee had cited earlier.
Board members raised concerns about discrepancies between nominations and recommendations at particular schools (examples cited in the slides showed Adams, Gilbert and Washington with notably different nomination-to-recommendation ratios). Tanya Randolph, HighCap teacher on special assignment, said differences reflect inconsistent local outreach and familiarity with screening criteria: "Consistency needs to happen across all buildings," she said, noting that stakeholders are revisiting nomination practices and staff training to increase referrals and reduce under-identification.
Null and Randolph said next steps include more consistent staff training on characteristics of highly capable students, timeline clarity for referral windows, expanded family nights to explain HighCap expectations, and rotating "HighCap kits" to provide equitable resources across buildings. Null said she will provide board members with additional disaggregated data on nominations and recommendations per school.
No board action was taken; presentation materials and supporting slide decks were included in board documents for review.
