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2022-23 Student Investment Account Annual Report

2022-23 Student Investment Account Annual Report This Student Investment Account Annual Report Questions template aims to help districts organize narrative responses to questions prior to submitting their Annual Report via SmartSheet. Please note that this template will not be submitted to the Oregon Department of Education; rather it is a tool to support grantees in compiling the necessary information that will need to be cut and paste into Smartsheet. Required Question Responses 1. What changes in behavior, actions, policies or practices have you observed related to SIA implementation during the 2021-22 school year? How do you see these changes contributing to the goals and outcomes in your SIA plan? (500 words or less) The mission of Sisters School District is to ensure every student is on a purposeful path, each student is connected and has a sense of belonging and is inspired to be creative and explorative. To foster this goal SIA supported us: (1) Hire additional staff to help reduce elementary class sizes through strategically increasing our K-5 teaching staff to increase student achievement and overall school climate. This intentional staffing increase allowed for greater individual student support throughout the pandemic. With a reduced teacher-to-student ratio, staff were able to enhance our ability to provide individualized academic support and build relationships that will ultimately grow their grit and resiliency. These additions certainly helped Sisters School District make progress towards the goals and outcomes desired through the SIA funding and processes. (2) Hire a full-time counselor for the elementary school. To enhance our ability to support students’ mental well-being through increased access to timely and high-quality support in the school. (3) We were able to add funds to our professional development to improve our practices to enhance our students’ ability around critical reading, active writing, independent thinking, organization and collaboration skills. (4) Hire staff to support our marginalized students, specifically our English Language Learners. These staff members help us connect with families as well as provide academic support to the students, increasing family involvement and supporting our equity work. 2. What barriers or challenges to SIA implementation have you experienced that are helpful for your community and/or state leaders to be aware of? What adjustments, if any, did you make to your SIA plan as a result of these challenges? (500 words or less) The beginning of 2021-2022 school year brought similar barriers, impediments, and challenges to traditional school operations and our SIA implementation as did the preceding year with the COVID restrictions. The year ended with a feeling of normalcy but the impact of masks and COVID protocol. While COVID Protocol was intended to keep staff and students from being infected, the energy required to create required process was all-consuming and social distancing, isolation, masking and required immunizations had a negative impact on our academic and community environment that caused stress, anxiety and we’re starting to hear of marital issues. 3. SIA implementation includes ongoing One of our successes from the 2021-22 school year regarding ongoing engagement with focal students and their families was our ability to continue lines of communication with our families through social media, superintendent and principal coffees, news letters, SIA Annual Report 2 Required Question Responses engagement with all students, focal students, families, staff, and community partners. How have relationships with or between those groups changed and/or been maintained throughout this academic year? Consider the Community Engagement Toolkit and where your efforts might land on the Levels of Community Engagement spectrum as you complete your response. (500 words or less) conferences, the use of Latino Advocates, Family Access Network, a connected board and a ton of teachers who live in the community. We also continued a variety of surveys to staff, students and parents that provided us with information from mental health issues, social issues, academic issues and things we’ve learned from the changes that were forced upon us. A continued challenge regarding family engagement was finding the right time, format, and manner to engage students and families from our focal populations. It is clear that no a single format or manner of engagement works for everyone. We will continue to offer and experiment with various methods and structures to engage our focal students, the families of focal students, and educators. 4. As you think about what guided your choices and prioritization efforts in this year of SIA implementation, what stands out? How will what you’ve learned this year impact future SIA implementation efforts? (500 words or less) Our mission is to ensure all students graduate through a community connected education that creates belonging, prepares and inspires. Our lens is our mission. To help students graduate, many aspects must be established for our students to successfully navigate twelve years of school. We know that strong relationships help students take chances, to engage challenging situations. Our goal is to challenge every student at one level above their zone of proximal development. This is accomplished by assessing students’ current level of academic understanding, have healthy student-teacher relationships and creating opportunities that ignite passion and motivation. That’s it! If it were only that simple. While our mission remains, the students seem to change so we researched and listened to the needs, hopes, and desires of our focal student population, our staff, parents and other community stakeholders. What became clear is the need for our students to have a stable learning environment where they can grow academically and socially, while the outside society is unstable, rapidly changing a divisive. We leverage our SIA funds to best support student’s social, emotional health as well as their academic needs.