Plenty new as school year starts

New teachers, schedules, classmates and lockers aren’t all that’s unfamiliar to students in the Edmonds School District this year.

There also are new graduation requirements, a computer system for parent access and emergency storage sheds going up, among other things.

Here’s what families will see this year:

• By year-end, parents of secondary students should be able to check their children’s grades, assignment and attendance online, as well as change medical and personal information online.

Teachers are being asked to put grades into an electronic grade book as soon as the bandwidth is available at their specific site, said Ken Limon, assistant superintendent for secondary schools.

“Hopefully by the end of the year we’ll have all teachers using it at the secondary level,” he said.

• Graduation Performance Tasks, or samples of student work, will be gathered for the first time at district high schools. The samples will be a graduation requirement for students in the class of 2009, this year’s sophomores, but students will start working on them this year, Limon said.

The samples aren’t tied to any one course.

“We want to make sure (students) get a chance to do those (samples) in multiple ways,” he said. “(For example), if I didn’t get my investigation graduation performance tasks done in freshman earth science, I might do it as a sophomore in biology. One (sample) is an investigation, one is analysis and one is a career exploration.”

Eventually the samples will be reviewed by a teacher and if they pass muster will go into the student’s graduation portfolio.

Students can collect their samples with an electronic storage system called eFolio.

“They wouldn’t have to collect (work) as a hard copy — they could collect video clips of themselves performing in a play or singing a song, any number of things as a demonstration of having gained skills,” Limon said.

The program also can gather writing assignments, lab reports and other samples, Limon said.

• Hundreds of elementary students started school in safer buildings this week. That’s because eight elementary schools received seismic upgrades this summer: Brier, College Place, Lynnwood, Hilltop, Oak Heights, Edmonds, Sherwood and Woodway.

The upgrades reinforced the buildings to better withstand a major earthquake. While students likely won’t see a difference, the buildings are safer, said Edward Peters, the district’s capital projects director.

“Many of our buildings were constructed prior to current seismic codes,” he said. “We’ve reduced the likelihood that the building might collapse while the kids were in it and provided for a safe exit out of the building.”

The work was funded by a 2004 capital levy. Seismic upgrades on more buildings will start next summer.

• For the first year, emergency storage shelters are being built at every school in the district. Schools are gathering food, water and equipment in case of a major disaster. The lockable shelters, similar to a heavy-duty garden shed, will hold those materials.

The district hopes to have the shelters built by January 2007, Peters said. The money is coming from the 2006 capital projects bond.

• For five or six years, district seniors have been required to finish a culminating project to graduate. This is the first year the district is trying to align all high schools to do the project the same way. The goal is to have them on the same page by 2008.

• The district will work with teachers this year to design new math strategies for use in 2007-08 at middle and high schools.

“We’ve got 87 percent of our kids meeting standard in reading, 84 in writing and 56 percent in math,” Limon said, referring to this year’s preliminary scores on the WASL, or Washington Assessment of Student Learning.

(The final scores were set to be released today, Sept. 8, after the Enterprise deadline.)

“We want to use some of the same strategies we’ve used in reading and writing in math,” Limon said.

In addition to bringing teachers together to plan, that could mean buying more math instructional materials for use next year, Limon said.

• The state has new requirements in high school social studies, so the district will be looking to buy materials for grades eight through 12 for 2007-08.

“(We) need to do the preliminary work (this year) to make sure we’re getting the best materials and aligning our curriculum,” Limon said.

• There are a number of new staff at district schools. New principals include Chris Lindblom, Lynnwood Elementary; Cindy Marum, Brier Elementary and Christine Avery, Meadowdale Middle School.

Lynne Behrendt, formerly interim principal at Beverly Elementary, is now the permanent principal. Charlotte Beyer, formerly interim principal at Woodway Elementary, is now permanent.

Interim principal Mary Freitas starts this fall at Terrace Park K-8 and interim principal Todd Christensen is the new Edmonds Homeschool Resource Center Interim Principal.