North Wasco County School District Superintendent Carolyn Bernal
THE DALLES — At last Thursday’s North Wasco County School board meeting, Superintendent Carolyn Bernal presented the district’s Division 22 compliance report.
Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) 581-022-2305: District Assurances of Compliance with Public School Standards requires Oregon school district superintendents to report to their community on the district’s status with respect to all of the Standards for Public Elementary and Secondary Schools by Nov. 1 of each year.
“What you need to remember is that this is not reporting compliance on this year, this is actually reporting our compliance for the [20]22-23 school year, which was last year,” she said.
North Wasco County was found to be in compliance with all but three Division 22 standards. Two of the areas where they were found lacking were in the 581-022-2263 Physical Education Requirements for elementary and middle grades.
According to Bernal, the district worked collaboratively with the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) to create a plan for the elementary schools to come into compliance for the 2023-24 school year, with a corrective plan already submitted to ODE.
The district also collaborated with the middle school to ensure students are receiving the correct number of minutes of physical education instruction per week. According to the presentation, the required minutes of instruction had previously been 225 minutes per week of instruction but had since been adjusted during the last legislative session, with the new requirement being 150 minutes per week.
According to Bernal, the district will be in compliance in both areas for the 2023-24 school year.
The district was also found not compliant in the 581-022-2440, Teacher Training Related to Dyslexia standard.
“We have three elementary schools, each school is supposed to have a teacher who is trained in dyslexia. During the 2022-23 school year, two of our schools had a trained teacher,” Bernal said. “So we are ensuring that a designated teacher at the third school receives this training to bring us back into compliance.”
With a motion made by Director John Nelson, seconded by Director Judy Richardson, the board voted unanimously to approve the Division 22 standards as presented.
In other business, Richardson presented the board goals for the 2023-24 school year.
According to the board motion for action item document, the school board met for work session on Oct. 17, where they discussed developing board goals for the upcoming school year.
“Prior to our goal setting, the full board participated in some training with Vince Adams from the Oregon School Board Association (OSBA),” Richardson said. “During that training we learned two things, one is the single shared belief that all students can and will learn measurably impacts student outcomes in a positive way … the second thing we learned with Vince Adams is when board goals align with the superintendent and the district goals, students achievement benefits.”
The goals presented were to review student achievement data, update and each sign board operating agreements and complete a board self-assessment system of the OSBA. Each goal was broken down into specifics, how they would be measured, action and relevancy, and when they would be completed by. Richardson also broke down how each goal is in line with the collaborative governance between the principles of the district schools, the board self-assessment, the characteristics of a high performing board and the district strategic goals.
With a motion made by Director Jose Aparicio and seconded by Nelson, the board goals for the 2023-24 school year were unanimously approved.
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