Soap Lake school district plans for grant money

SOAP LAKE — Soap Lake School District administrators are almost

finished outlining their recommendations for a school improvement

grant.

“We’re still working on different areas,” says Soap Lake School

District Superintendent Dan McDonald. “We’re clarifying some areas

and getting it laid out.”

The Soap Lake School District is one of 50 around the state

eligible to receive up to $2 million in federal funds for school

improvement.

The U.S. Department of Education will provide $7.2 million to

Washington education officials to distribute around the state.

“It’s a process of continuing what we’re trying to accomplish here

and what the BERC report recommended,” says McDonald. “The things

we have in the grant are focused on those.”

The BERC Group is an independent evaluation, research and

consulting firm aimed at utilizing data to improve schools that

completed an “academic audit” last month.

McDonald says the BERC report focused around four areas including

distributing leadership, improving communication with the

community, improving curriculum and standards as well as ensuring

“we have a strong human resource management focus to improve

getting quality educators when people retire or move on,” says

McDonald. “Those are what I’d call the most focused pieces.”

Soap Lake is on a list federally known as “persistently

lowest-achieving schools,” according to the Office of the

Superintendent of Public Instruction, and are ranked using reading

and math scores from the past two years as well as graduation rates

and Adequate Yearly Progress as outlined by the No Child Left

Behind Act.

Four districts with schools on the persistently lowest-achieving

list were designated for required action by the State Board of

Education. The designation guarantees funding for those schools

grants.

The districts include Morton, Onalaska, Renton and Soap Lake.

“Schools were identified using both academic performance of all

students and improvement trends over the past three years,” said

Tonya Middling, Director of Project Management of District and

School Improvement and Accountability at the Office of

Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Eligible schools can receive between $500,000 and $2 million for

three years, depending on the availability of funds.

McDonald says the school district will seek between $250,000 and

$550,000 in grant funds.

“We talked about extended learning as another area that was a big

emphasis,” McDonald says. “We’re looking at improving student

achievement and looking at extended learning opportunities for the

district.”

Summer school, extending school year are some of the options,

according to McDonald.

“I

think we’ll have to look and see what fits the Soap Lake district

best. Maybe we’re talking about an online school,” says McDonald.

“We’re going to push to dream big and that everything we’re doing

is going to benefit all kids. It bodes well for some very exciting

things to occur as we work to improve student achievement and make

sure our instructional focus is strong and make sure everybody can

learn.”

McDonald says the recommendations will be presented to the school

board on Feb. 28.

Applications for the grants are due to OSPI by March 4.