Wahitas elementary leaders tout daily 'spring math,' aggressive monitoring and new live data dashboard

Justin Johnson, principal at Wahitas Elementary, told the Othello School District board that the school’s improvement work centers on a “growth mindset,” a set of 11 ‘‘non-negotiables’’ and teacher-driven practices meant to accelerate learning across classrooms.

“We say today we’ll do it; tomorrow we’ll do it better,” Johnson said while describing multi-year progress on curriculum alignment and teacher collaboration. He outlined non-negotiables such as maximizing teaching time, using a common curriculum, analyzing data, and holding staff accountable to shared goals.

Johnson and assistant Sheamus McPartland detailed a short, daily intervention they call “spring math,” used systemwide for grades 2–6 to strengthen number sense and fact fluency. The program runs for about 10 minutes each school day, Johnson said, and is designed so all students participate; teachers reported it reduced cognitive load during higher-order tasks by building automaticity in basic computations.

“Kids can do things quicker and free up mental capacity to think at a higher level,” Johnson said, explaining the program’s purpose.

McPartland described the school’s “aggressive monitoring 2.0” approach: teachers track specific skills using per-student sheets, update weekly or daily depending on need, and use the results to drive regrouping and targeted supports. Paras and parents have access to the monitoring sheets to coordinate interventions and the school uses color-coding (green/yellow/red) to indicate mastery levels.

The presenters also showed a dashboard that automatically aggregates teachers’ weekly monitoring into bar graphs and tables by grade and skill so administrators and staff can see the percent of students demonstrating mastery and where groups are struggling.

“The information helps you perform better,” McPartland said, noting that transparency and visible data help hold staff accountable in a nonpunitive way.

Board members praised the site visit and the report. One board member said the visit showed the school’s relational strengths and staff longevity; another thanked teachers for hosting special education services and said it made a measurable difference for students. Members asked practical questions about scheduling and family impact related to extended Monday collaboration time.

Johnson said professional learning communities (PLCs) have evolved—from short grade-level meetings to richer, cross-grade rehearsals and shared lesson planning—to create more cohesion so students do not have to “connect the dots” from one grade to the next.

On literacy, presenters noted use of accountable talk stems and metacognitive strategies and cited slide figures showing classroom discussion with an effect size on learning; presenters said they are replicating general-education systems into special education, aligning prompts and expected student responses across settings.

The presentation closed with invitations for further questions and a reminder that most successful practices at Wahitas originate with teachers trying, refining and scaling what works.

Next step: board members will consider whether to provide additional time for Monday collaborative work and watch the dashboard metrics as they become available districtwide.