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2020 Student Investment Account Application

Plan Summary Sisters Schools’ 145+ employees serve 1,110 students across three schools. Approximately 24% of our students qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches; <5% are linguistically diverse; and slightly under 11% qualify for IEP’s. Our students shine on many measures. Our graduation rate is 89%. Our students perform above the state average in third grade reading. The greatest challenge for our district is to ensure that all students have the skills, knowledge, and dispositions to be successful in both the present and the future. After extensive efforts to listen to our students, staff, and families; to study student experience and outcome data; and to collaborate with key communicators across the district, Sisters Schools has committed its Student Investment Account (SIA) funds to three categories: promoting students’ health and safety by greatly increasing social and emotional support: reducing class size targeting our K-5 classrooms, and looking at how we support our historically underserved students. Our rapidly growing community population has led to increased class sizes throughout our elementary schools. One use of our SIA funds will be to reduce class sizes which will increase the individualized attention and care that each student needs in order to reduce disparities and increase academic achievement. Secondly, based on feedback from our students, families, and staff, it was clear that our students, like many across Oregon, are in desperate need of additional mental, social, and emotional support and care. With that in mind, a portion of our SIA funds will be used to bolster our ability to provide quality counseling and mental health support for our students. PART THREE: COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND INPUT Describe your approach to community engagement. (250 words or less). Ensure your response includes: · Who you engaged · Frequency / occurrence · How you ensured engagement of staff and each of the focal student groups and their families · Key information you collected · Who you partnered with in the engagement efforts A sincere desire to engage the voices of all. As a community we have much to be proud of in Sisters. Through the Sisters Country Community visioning process, it was obvious that our schools are a large pride point for our community. By most traditional measures, we have one of the strongest school districts in the state. We believe that a comprehensive education grounded in the community’s core values is key to the success of all students in Sisters Country. In addition to the Sisters Country Community Vision process, the Sisters School District started to engage the community around creating a new mission and vision for our schools. This process included 12 meetings with diverse stakeholder groups (2 student meetings, 1 Latino focus group, 1 veteran group, 3 staff meetings, 1 age Friendly Sisters, 1 targeting community leaders and 3 with the general community) to get feedback on the community’s core values and the district’s role in relation to those values and supporting our students. A community stake holder group was assembled to help navigate through this feedback. Our team heard loud and clear what we were doing well and what could use additional attention. It was an inspiring process to listen to the hopes and dreams our community holds for our children. Through nine meetings, the ultimate goal of this 15 member group has been to refine this feedback into core values, and a mission and vision. This 36 hours of work lead us to some lofty ideals. We circled back four times to engage our staff to refine the ideas of Belong, Prepare, and Inspire. Additionally, we had two more Latino family nights, we visited an additional six classroom-three middle school and three high school had an additional online survey, surveyed families that utilized our Family Access Network, and held six Superintendent “Coffees” to get more feedback. This has been great work resulting in a strategic plan that will guide the district as we move forward into the next three to five years. This Strategic Plan is a living document, designed to be updated on an annual basis as the district strives to enhance teaching and learning and strengthen our connection with our students and community. The Strategic Plan will be the driving force behind future decisions made by the district as we work to execute our plan to support our community, staff and students. Self-Assessment of Community Engagement Please share a self-assessment about the quality and nature of your engagement of focal students, families and the staff more broadly. If the goal is meaningful, authentic and ongoing community engagement, where are you at in that process? What barriers, if any, were experienced and how might you anticipate and resolve these issues in future engagement? (500 words or less) We are certainly proud of our ongoing efforts to engage our stakeholders in the improvement of our school system. With that in mind, there are still a number of improvements in our engagement efforts that we would seek to implement as we move forward. The greatest gap in regards to community engagement for our district is receiving a proportionate level of input from our students and families from historically marginalized demographic groups. For example, the percentage of parents who completed our parent survey through the Family Access Network was not proportionate to the percentage of our Free and Reduced families we have in our district. As we seek to improve our future engagement of stakeholders, we hope to maintain and cultivate a number of partnerships to better reach key focal groups. For our students and families battling homelessness and poverty, our district will continue to partner with the Family Access Network (FAN) Advocates. Our Special Education (SPED) department and Individual Education Plan (IEP) case managers will be integral for helping to personally connect with our families of Individual Education Plan (IEP) students. In reflection, we feel we made a strong effort in engaging the community. What relationships and/or partnerships will you cultivate to improve future engagement? (150 words or less) As we seek to improve our future engagement of stakeholders, we hope to maintain and cultivate a number of partnerships to better reach key focal groups. For our students and families battling homelessness and poverty, our district will continue to partner with the Family Access Network (FAN) Advocates. Our Latino Community Liason will continue their outreach and support of our Latino Family Nights to get continued and better feedback from our Latino Community. Special Education (SPED) department and Individual Education Plan (IEP) case managers will be integral for helping to personally connect with our families of IEP students. In addition, we will continue and strengthen our district’s relationship with certified and classified association representatives in order to be responsive to the needs of staff. What resources would enhance your engagement efforts? How can ODE support your continuous improvement? (150 words or less) Like many issues in public education, the greatest resource needed is time. Our scarcity of time is the biggest barrier we face in properly enhancing our engagement efforts. Fortunately, due to our district’s “Strategic Plan” initiative we had already been receiving feedback from students, parents, and staff. While we will be refining our engagement strategies each year, a strong foundation for authentic engagement has been established. The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) can support the further refinements of our engagement processes through continuing to provide resources and examples of best practices taking place throughout the state. Who was Engaged? (Preloaded boxes on application) How did you engage your community? A sincere desire to engage all of the Sisters School District’s community stakeholders has been at the heart of our work for several years now. Even prior to the Student Success Act, our district embarked on collecting community input to develop a new Sisters School District Strategic Plan.