Report: Elementary school showing improvements

Discipline issues at Lake Roosevelt Elementary School are going down, and students are performing better in English Language Arts and math, according to the principal.

Principal Lisa Lakin spoke to the Grand Coulee Dam Area School District board of directors March 11 about the elementary school, and presented a draft of an “Elementary School Improvement Plan.”

Lakin discussed the need to improve students scores in English Language Arts and math, but said that scores are going up.

“We have students that have already made, this year, two or three years growth in reading and math,” Lakin said. “We had a celebration before Christmas, and we had almost 100 kids that teachers identified as having made significant growth and have shown significant improvement in their scores.”

Lakin also stated that discipline issues, which have been a big topic in recent years, are being resolved.

“Speaking in general terms, discipline has been way down this year,” Lakin said. “I think there are a multitude of reasons for that: getting the right people in the right places has really helped; teachers, and what they’re doing in their classroom in getting kids engaged, because kids that are engaged do better; and Raider the dog! She’s been awesome.”

“I think this Harmony Program, this community building we’re doing every day, is making a big difference,” Lakin said.

The Harmony Program is a curriculum that started last year in grades K-6.

“It’s really just about building relationships between the teacher and their class, and also the classmates building relationships with each other,” Casey Clark, a counselor at the school, told The Star in September 2018.

“Similar to music or PE, there is Harmony time,” Clark continued. “The goal is to make it part of the fabric of what we do every day. There’s a lot of class meetings about specific topics, but they’re quick so that kids aren’t getting bored or losing interest. There’s a lot of good results.”

School Board Chairman Rich Black said that his impression after attending a recent small-schools conference is that “the general direction of public education in Washington is really less towards education, and more towards meeting the needs of the students where they live.”

“There is a lot of stuff about hope,” Black continued. “And also relationship building. You can’t do this stuff like math and English unless a kid has those other things under control. There’s a big push, and it’s an appropriate one I believe.”