Grant will help fund WASL prep classes at EVHS
Beginning in late January, East Valley High School will offer new two-hour blocks of classes for juniors who need help passing the Washington Assessment for Student Learning.
With a $74,000 grant from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, EVHS will be able to pay for staff and materials for three math-science blocks and two English/social studies blocks, targeted for members of the class of 2008 needing assistance with WASL testing.
“This is for our juniors who demonstrated in the past with the WASL that they needed additional help,” said Mark Purvine, EVHS assistant principal of curriculum. “These are targeted to be smaller class sizes, 15 students per block. The students will get a lot more individualized instruction.”
He said EVHS submitted a grant request and was notified Nov. 30 about the awarding of the $74,000 Washington State Innovative Remediation Program grant.
“We looked at the WASL (scores) and classroom grades. This will be for those students who will benefit from targeted instruction using instruction modules for reading, writing, and math with an integrated approach, WASL-style prompts, good background and practice.”
The grant money will pay for staffing, with some of the funds set aside for materials.
“It allows additional teachers to run these blocks – three additional for math/science and two in English/social studies. These are two-hour blocks that are new. Our program is a six-period day, so we don’t have anything like this normally.”
The funds and new blocks also open up the opportunity for the school to offer some single-hour English and math classes for 10th-graders, with those courses also smaller in class size and with a WASL module-base, Purvine said. He plans three such English and five math classes for 10th-grade students.
“We do hope to sustain the program over time in some measure,” Purvine added.
Students’ artwork to be featured
Two artistic students in the East Valley School District will soon see their work printed on posters and bookmarks after winning in the district’s “Read A Book A Week” 2006-07 poster contest.
The students who designed the winning entries are Kati Smasne, a fifth-grade student from Otis Orchards Elementary, and Ariel Reynolds, a seventh-grade student from Mountain View Middle School.