October 21, 2022

        

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has had a great week. Today, we will be sending home report cards. With the completion of the first quarter this week, this is a good reminder to make sure PASS plan meetings are happening in a timely fashion. The last day to have a PASS plan meeting is on November 16. Any student that is at risk of failing a class must have a PASS plan on file in my office. This is a requirement. As I am typing this, I have had 19 forms turned into my office, we currently have 135 students earning at least 1 F or D-. Please get these scheduled soon. If it was your child, you would want some time to try and make a difference as a parent. 

I have talked to some friends in different schools around the state and the Midwest. What we are experiencing with some of our students, in regards to their view of education, is very similar. I think some of our students are still feeling the effects of the extended Covid summer. This has really played a role in our students mental health. It is important that we continue to reach out to these students, no matter how difficult of a time they may give us, and make that connection. They need to understand that we are here for them and want to see them succeed. 

Today, the Iowa Department of Education will be releasing the status of schools in regards to the ISASP. We will be listed as a targeted school for our students on IEPs for not making enough progress. I have not seen the specifics of this yet, but my gut tells me it will be for Math and ELA. With that being said, this is not the end of the world, or something we should be worried about. We have everything we need to fix this and become better in the process. We all work with some excellent educators who care about the students. We will need to examine how we do business, especially for those students on IEPs, and decide if what we are doing is making them better. 

I am going to have the high schools CIA group start looking at the various ISASP domains tested to see what areas we can work on now, that will help us in the spring. One of the ways that we all can make the difference is helping the students understand what this test is and how the state uses this test to rate schools. Last year, I had the counselors talk to the students who were not proficient in one or more areas and many of those students commented that they didn't try. These are the students we can make the biggest gains with if we can just get them to try. I would like you to discus this with your advisories, see what they tell you.

Link to Domains. This is part of the documents CIA will be going over to help determine where we need to spend our time to get the biggest gains. As you look at this spreadsheet, the cells in red mean the state average is better than ours. The cells in green, mean our data is better than the state average. There are several documents linked inside the data that gives you lots of information on what standards are under the domain, what percentage of the test comes from the domain, DOK (depth of knowledge), and what percentage of question at each DOK level. Again this is something CIA will be working on in the near future.

Remember, these are our goals this year. 

• In the spring of 2023, 77% of students in grades 9-11 will be at or above proficiency on the Reading portion of the ISASP.
• In the spring of 2023, 76.8% of students in grades 9-11 will be at or above proficiency on the Math portion of the ISASP.
• In the spring of 2023, 75.3% of students in grade 10 will be at or above proficiency on the Science portion of the ISASP.

This got a little longer than I intended. Have a great weekend! 

Mark

Assistant Principal's Happenings

I have been keeping track of errors from teachers for attendance as we continue to see an uptick in incorrect attendance.  Please make sure you are fixing attendance when students come in late.  If they are more than 5 minutes late they need to have a pass.  Right now, I am averaging about 10-15 errors a day that should have been corrected before the end of the day.  This includes not changing attendance and not taking attendance when students are gone.  My goal is to reduce the number of students that need to be removed from class to find out if they were in classes or not.  We are still seeing increased numbers of students that have chronic unexcused absences and I have already turned in 4 students to the County Attorney after one quarter.

I will be handing out notifications for tardies next week so students will know if they will need to stay during the early out.  Please remind your advisories of the new expectations that students will need to stay for those early out's when they reach 7 tardies in class.  If they do not serve them the time doubles and they will need to make it up during semester tests.  

On a more positive note, I was able to sit in on some great activities this past week.  If you missed out on Mr. Bahr's Election Day Debates, mark your calendars in the future as they go all out to make some great classroom memories.  I was also in Mrs. Wright's room during the marshmallow challenge.  It was great to see students' personalities on how they handle pressure in a timed situation that is actually low stakes but they still want to perform well.

Upcoming Activities

Friday, October 21

4:15 pm Freshmen Football @ Fort Dodge

7:00 pm Varsity Football @ Fort Dodge

Saturday, October 22

All-State Music Auditions @ LCHS

Tuesday, October 25

5:00 pm Speech Kickoff Ice Cream Social

7:30 pm MS/HS Orchestra Concert

Thursday, October 27

7:30 pm Indoor Marching Band Concert

Friday, October 28

TBD Varsity Football Playoffs

Saturday, November 5

NWI HS Honor Band Auditions - Sioux Center

Tuesday, November 8

Picture Retakes

Thursday, November 10

7:00 pm HS Musical - MS Auditorium

Friday, November 11

7:00 pm HS Musical - MS Auditorium

Saturday, November 12

2:00 pm HS Musical - MS Auditorium

Wednesday, November 16

Opus Honor Choir - Ames

Thursday, November 17

All State Music Festival - Ames

TBD - Girl Wrestling Tournament @ Sioux City North

4:30 pm Girl JV Basketball vs. Sheldon - Scrimmage

6:00 pm Girl Varsity Basketball vs. Sheldon - Scrimmage

Friday, November 18

All State Music Festival - Ames

Saturday, November 19

All State Music Festival - Ames

10:00 am Girl Wrestling Tournament @ Ridge View

Tuesday, November 22

5:30 pm Girl JV Basketball vs. Spencer

7:00 pm Girl Varsity Basketball vs. Spencer

Monday, November 28

3:30 pm JV/V Bowling vs. Sioux City North

6:00 pm Girl Freshmen Basketball vs. Sioux Center

6:00 pm Boy Freshmen Basketball vs. Sioux Center

6:00 pm Girl Wrestling @ Humboldt

Tuesday, November 29

3:45 pm Girl JV Basketball @ Unity Christian HS

5:00 pm Boy JV Basketball @ Unity Christian HS

6:00 pm Girl Varsity Basketball @ Unity Christian HS

7:30 pm Boy Varsity Basketball @ Unity Christian HS

Thursday, December 1

5:30 pm Boy Wrestling @ Bishop Heelan

Friday, December 2

4:00 pm Boy and Girl JV Basketball vs. SBL

4:30 pm Boy Wrestling @ Hinton

5:30 pm Girl Varsity Basketball vs. SBL

7:00 pm Boy Varsity Basketball vs. SBL

Saturday, December 3

TBD - Girl Wrestling @ Humboldt

9:00 am Girl Freshmen Basketball vs. SBL

10:15 am Boy Freshmen Basketball vs. SBL