Superintendent prepares for new school year

When Lind-Ritzville High School students return to school this September, they will be returning to a newly rebuilt building. However, that won’t be the only new feature the school has to offer.

Lind-Ritzville School Cooperative Superintendent Don Vanderholm is preparing for his second year in his position. He’s learning from his first year and is preparing to introduce some new programs in year two.

One such program is at the high school level. Vanderholm will by launching the College in High School program at LRHS, in partnership with Eastern Washington University and Central Washington University.

“We’re working with Eastern Washington University to have several of our teachers basically be adjunct professors through the college,” Vanderholm said. “College in High School has been around for a while. You just have to have your teachers have a master’s degree and have approval from the university department.”

College in High School allows students to take classes that provide both high school and college credits. Vanderholm says the school will offer five courses in 2019-20. That number will grow from there.

Vanderholm says he would like to get to the point where students can earn up to 90 college credits while still in high school. Earning 90 EWU credits would allow a student to begin study at EWU as a junior the year after they graduate high school.

The program differs from the Running Start program by having students stay in the high school classroom. Running Start has students take classes at the college campus.

LRHS had 13 students who took part in EWU’s Running Start program this year. Five more are already set to do it next year. Vanderholm says he’s excited to be able to offer students college credits without losing their presence in the classroom.

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“[Running Start] is a great program,” Vanderholm said. “It’s great for the kids. But at the high school, we also like to keep those kids here. They are a big part of our learning environment.”

The new program is part of Vanderholm’s focus on customizable learning, something that has been important to him since he came to the area a year ago.

“Sometimes schools can be really inflexible,” Vanderholm said. “And as a student, you have to do things a certain way. [It needs to be] what works for the individual learner. And there’s ways to do that. The state has a little-accessed competency based credit rule, where students can actually learn credits based on competency and not on seat time. So why not let that happen?”

Vanderholm says he hopes to build on some of the successes over the past year.

The Washington State Board of Education has recognized Lind Elementary for the 2018-19 school year. Lind Elementary is one of 216 schools across the state to be recognized.

The school was chosen for “narrowing the gap between the highest and lowest performing student groups.”

Vanderholm said that improvement was a result of a year-long focus on improving the English as a Second Language program. The school was under the leadership of Principal Cindy Deska, who will be moving to Ritzville Grade School this fall. Darrell Lembcke has been hired to take over Lind Elementary School and Lind-Ritzville Middle School.

Vanderholm says when ESL programs are effective, those students perform better in their other classes as well. He said that will remain a focus in all of the schools.

A year-long focus wasn’t unique to Lind Elementary. The high school also focused on ESL strategies, while Ritzville Grade School focused on math.

“We had a trainer come in and work with staff several Mondays during the year,” Vanderholm said. “It was all math strategies.”

Another tool Vanderholm plans to use is a set of surveys that were handed out to students, faculty and parents. Vanderholm gave school board members an overview of the survey’s results at the board meeting on June 24.

The survey measured student engagement and commitment through a wide range of questions. Vanderholm will go over the information with teachers and principals when they return for the new year.

Also at the meeting, Vanderholm announced that LRHS junior Jessica Heater has been selected to take part in the Western Aerospace Scholars “Phase 2,” which is the Summer Residency program.

Heater took part in WAS “Phase 1” beginning in November 2018. She completed lessons designed by NASA and the University of Washington.

According to a press release from WAS, “Phase Two is a six-day experience that will be held at The Museum of Flight in Seattle. In each session, four student teams cooperate to plan a human mission to Mars with support from professional engineers/scientists, university students and certificated educators. Additionally, participants receive briefings from aerospace professionals, tour engineering facilities and compete in hands-on engineering challenges.”

It was also announced at the school board meeting that next month’s meeting has been moved from July 22 to July 29.