Cheney School District volunteer numbers are up

Numbers for volunteers, community involvement and highly capable students are up around the Cheney School District, according to a pair of reports given to the school board at its regular meeting Jan. 14.

Jessica Deutsch, district volunteer services coordinator, reported that community partnerships through two programs, PACE (Partners Advancing Character Education) and Give 5 have increased over the past year. Twenty-eight West Plains businesses have partnered with both Cheney and Medical Lake School districts through PACE since the program expanded to the area from Spokane Valley last year.

Some businesses team with local schools to highlight a PACE character trait each month. Parents and students have become involved through a variety of initiatives at their schools.

December’s trait was “caring,” and students, parents and staff at Snowdon and Windsor elementary schools demonstrated this through their “Sock Drives” last month. Sunset has a weekly PACE announcement that includes a famous quote about that month’s trait, and Betz has worked with business partners as well as Cheney High School football players and cheerleaders in their monthly awards.

“Each school has made PACE their own within their school,” Deutsch told the board.

The Give 5 program, where volunteers are asked to give five hours of their time at school per year, has grown from 75 mentors at the end of 2013 to 108 through the end of December 2014, with mentors giving 1-2 hours per week from October to May at all three school levels.

Three residence halls – Brewster, Morrison and Streeter – at Eastern Washington University have formed partnerships with three Cheney schools while the university’s Community Engagement Office, in partnership with Communities in Schools, has placed a volunteer mentor coordinator at each school. The coordinator also helps recruit student volunteers on campus.

Volunteers have been working as classroom assistants, tutors and chaperones for special events. They have also worked collecting clothing donations, assembling weekend food kits and in PTO/PTA fundraising efforts.

“Quite a few community members are participating in mentoring and volunteer activities,” Deutsch said. “Volunteerism in the Cheney School District has grown.”

As has the success of the district’s highly capable students program, according to a report by Associate Superintendent Sean Dotson. Using the Northwest Education Association’s MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) assessment testing to measure students, Dotson said 69 percent of highly capable students met or exceeded their growth goals for 2013-2014 in reading while 73 percent showed similar progress in math.

Median grade point averages for highly capable students also remained high: 3.88 GPA at Cheney Middle School, 3.90 at Westwood Middle School and 3.70 at the high school.

“All of them well above a 3.5,” Dotson said.

Opportunities for the more than 400 students identified as highly capable are available at all three levels. They range from instructional coaches to help meet individual needs in elementary schools to special elective and accelerated courses at the middle schools to honors, Advance Placement and Running Start options at the high school, with the options continuing to grow.

“We are now offering Running Start courses at the high school so students don’t have to go off campus,” Dotson said.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].