School Improvement Plan

Highlight 3-5 strengths of your school and how those strengths foster belonging, wellbeing and learning.

Strong Partnerships with Families:

• Grade Level Surveys: We have reached out to every family at the start of the school year to gather information around their hopes, concerns and input as we work to best serve their students at CMMS.
• Cell Phones at School: We have engaged in a collaborative process around student use of personal internet connected devices. Staff have reported a drastic reduction in interruptions to learning and power struggles due to student cell phones and other internet connected devices. We attribute this success largely to our reciprocal communication and partnership with families.
• Family Tech University: In response to family requests over the years, we co-hosted a Family Tech University event with Maywood MS on Oct 10, 2024, that covered the following topics: digital citizenship SEL curriculum, monitoring software, Canvas observer accounts, and social media impacts. Teachers and administrators from CMMS and MMS led these sessions and we gathered feedback from those families in attendance. We hope to use this feedback to develop other family education events.
• PTSA: The principal or assistant principal attend monthly general meetings to give updates, answer questions and engage in dialogue on pressing issues and topics. Separately, the principal also meets monthly with PTSA leadership to align efforts to best support students and staff.

Belonging:

• Connecting Students: There is a school-wide effort to connect every student with either a club, activity or sport. We have ten active clubs that meet regularly and have consistent student participation. Additionally, we have partnered with the adjacent Timber Ridge retirement community in support of clubs and activities such as: Knit & Crochet Club, Timber Bridge Club, and Orchestra. We work early and often with impacted families to ensure their child can meet the deadlines and requirements for athletic participation. And we reduce barriers to participation with fee scholarships when necessary and providing transportation home. We have opened up pathways to begin music classes at any grade level to allow a more inclusive and fluid approach to their music involvement and learning.
• Belonging Partnerships: Many school groups have come together to support our school-wide goal of increasing belonging. These groups include: ASB, Equity Lead, Admin, Falcon Crew and our (newly created) Belonging Committee.
• Visible Signs of Belonging: We have added additional visible signs of belonging throughout our school such as a monthly bulletin board and screen displays with pictures and information honoring Heritage Months as well as and flags from around the world. Additionally, there are strong and consistent messages throughout the hallways and near classroom entrances supporting inclusivity and safe places for all.
• Honoring Heritage Months: Another outcome of this work has been honoring Heritage Months such as Hispanic Heritage, Filipino American Heritage, as well as Disability Employment Month. These are honored in a variety of ways, including Homeroom lessons delivered by teachers, ASB Falcon News interviews with staff and students, and morning announcements by student to highlight culture, celebrations and contributions.
• Interventions: We use screener data from our fall needs assessment and mySAEBRS to identify students who feel isolated and either unconnected or disconnected. Additionally, counselors conduct 1-minute meetings at the start of the school year to get to know each and every student. Counselors ensure students know who they are and their role as their school counselors in supporting all students. Information and data from the screeners and meetings are used to support students individually as well as their team of teachers throughout the school year. This data also drives the topics for future counselor homeroom lessons, as well as the topics for and students to be invited to lunch group interventions (e.g., stress, anxiety, friendship, etc.).

Student Voice, Involvement & Empowerment:

• Student Voice Opportunities: We strive to create multiple meaningful pathways for students to provide input and engage in decision-making at school. These include: Soar Homeroom Senate, Associated Student Body (ASB), Students’ Advisory to the Principal, and Win at Social student insight data.
• Opportunities to make positive peer and staff connections: We continually work to find ways to create positive connections for students with peers and staff through extracurriculars (clubs, sports & activities), Lunchtime Games, Falcon Crew Homeroom lessons for community building, and Falcon Crew student mentoring.

Instruction & Inclusive Practices:

• Professional Development: Continued training at district and building level on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to increase engagement, access and relevancy for students of all backgrounds. This is modeled in professional development for adults in the building as a support and to increase fidelity of implementation.
• Teacher Leadership: We have created a culture of strong certificated (teacher, counselor & specialists) leadership, teaming and systems for our Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). Leaders consistently work to put student needs first and support our school-wide improvement efforts.
• Collaboration: Staff collaborate with their content departments and also at the grade level to ensure student learning needs are met and efforts are aligned across the school. We have created a climate of collaboration between all layers and departments including general education with special education and others.
• Shared Beliefs: School-wide core beliefs ground our work “Community, Collaboration & Growth Mindset”. Additionally, there is a shared belief that although inclusion efforts can be challenging, it is the right work for students and the greater community.

Behavior Support:

• Behavior Systems: Strong behavior systems are in place including school-wide Problem-Solving Process, Tier 1 team, Tier 2 Support Team, and PBIS implementation. Referral data is shared with Grade Level teams and Leadership Team to best create interventions, and lessons to effectively teach pro-social behavior and address concerns. We are working on helping students express their needs more appropriately, honoring that all behavior is communication.
• Behavior Lessons: Behavior lessons grounded in school-wide expectations and built for student engagement are taught every week in Soar Homeroom by teachers, counselors and administrators. A new addition to the 2024-25 SY are monthly lessons led by the principal and assistant principal for all students focused on teaching school-wide expectations such as how we treat others, intent vs. impact, safety, etc.
• Student Recognition: We have retooled our recognition systems to honor more students more often for positive behaviors. We are working to grow our recognition routines and practices to support positive behaviors across all grades and student groups.

Based on your data and observations, describe 2-3 of the challenges you hope to address through school improvement? Be sure to address areas of gap closure.

• Challenge #1 BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students and students with disabilities (SWD) at CMMS are disproportionally represented in lower achievement scores in ELA and Math as indicated by SBA and i-Ready data. This is our most pressing challenge, and we are leaning into the work of closing these gaps for our students.
• Challenge #2 Attendance rates among BIPOC students and students with disabilities (SWD) at CMMS are disproportionately represented in chronic absenteeism. This is another important priority for us to address. We know when students are at school, we can help them make big gains in their learning.
• Challenge #3 The expectations and landscape for teachers has changed quickly in a few short years. It is imperative that we hire and train teachers who are well equipped to implement research-based instructional strategies and intervention within the general education setting. The third challenge we believe is a need for additional professional development focused on providing tier 2 academic interventions within the classroom.

Describe 2-3 opportunities in the coming years your school can leverage for this school improvement plan and to address disproportionality?

• Opportunity #1 To best address the challenges listed above we have an opportunity to learn and implement tiered interventions with greater fidelity. This includes academic, behavioral, attendance interventions at the Tier 1, 2 & 3 levels. A strong and robust tiered system also helps to decrease behavioral corrective action and special education referrals for BIPOC students to further address disproportionality in these areas.
• Opportunity #2 The 2024-25 SY is the second year whereby teachers are coached and evaluated with the revised Student Growth Goal (SGGs). While SGGs have existed for some time, the new expectation includes critical attributes describing cognitive and emotional engagement of students as well as input and feedback from students and families. This is a lift for schools, but it is the right work to connect students and families to school in meaningful ways. We are continuing to engage in this work alongside teaching staff.
• Opportunity #3 Through our learning from staff, family and student feedback we must deepen our focus on Tier 1 academic and behavior interventions while also beginning to explore and pilot promising Tier 2 academic and behavior interventions.

Based on previous School Improvement Planning & Tiered Fidelity Inventories, describe 1-2 systems, structures or practices recently introduced or expanded that shows promise for student achievement and will be continued? What impact are you observing? What data are you using to monitor impact?

• Grade Level Family Surveys: These surveys allow the school team (largely teachers) to gather important information about students directly from families at the start of the school year. This establishes an early link between school and home and provides teachers with a better foundation on which to plan learning, predict learner variability and build in academic and behavior supports early. Additionally, teachers use student achievement data and student and family input to create goals and monitor growth through a unit of study during the school year.
• MTSS System: At CMMS, teachers collaborate at least monthly with Grade Level Teams to implement interventions for students who may be experiencing academic or behavioral challenges. We have developed school-wide practices among teams to ensure we share information, track interventions and document successes. This is supported with a pre-Grade Level Mtg checklist that assists the team leader in preparing for an effective and productive Grade Level Meeting. When teacher teams need further support, they call upon the expertise of the Tier 2 Support team. Teams monitor the success of interventions through grade level data collection sheets and Tier 2 Support Team minutes.

What proactive steps is your school taking through this school improvement plan to disrupt predictable patterns, actively dismantle institutional racism, and address the disproportionality in academic achievement among students of different backgrounds?

• Inclusive Practices: In the past year certificated staff have been deepening their learning and recently creating a professional goal aligned to the Culturally Responsive Universal Design for Learning CAST Guidelines. The goal is to honor what the students bring to the classroom, reduce barriers to learning, boost flexible thinking, create more accessible entry points to learning, provide choice and allow students to demonstrate their learning in myriad ways that build upon their assets and strengths.
• Less Restrictive Services: CMMS has had a commitment to inclusion since before our schools founding when our Core Planning Team engaged in the OSPI Inclusionary Practices Project (IPP). In the spring of 2024, we received district support to audit services for all students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). This allowed us to fine-tune our scheduling and increase the rigor for students with disabilities based on data and research-based practices. This model has also allowed our Special Education teachers and case managers to collaborate on a larger scale with all general education teachers, as well as other support staff.
• Alignment of SGG to Closing Gaps: At the start of the school year, the administrative leadership team explicitly asked teachers to align their evaluation student growth goals (SGGs) with focusing on student groups who have been furthest from educational justice in our school system, including BIPOC students especially students of Black and Hispanic backgrounds and students with disabilities. It is important to note the intersectionality of these groups as well. Administrators also carefully create and monitor their own SGGs to support gap closing, model and share this work and impacts with certificated teaching staff.
• Student Voice: We have increased the avenues for students to provide feedback to teachers, admin and school programming in general. Additionally, teachers are using student achievement data, student and family input, to create goals and monitor growth through a unit of study during the school year. This is supported by the new SGG rubrics language and expectations on which teachers have been, and will continue to be, coached and evaluated with.
• Increase Tier 1 Support for Students: We have strengthened school-wide Tier 1 supports around behavior expectations. This has included adding monthly admin and counseling led lessons addressing important topics such as school expectations, the power of words, impact vs. intent, treating others with dignity, ways to report concerns, etc. We have all students work through scenarios to explore what they can say or do if they hear a racist comment or if someone is unkind to another person. We have engaged in the Culturally Responsive Tiered Fidelity Inventory that captured many of these efforts we have built in recent years to support school wide expectations and success.
• Increase Tier 2 Supports for Students: We have engaged in more dynamic and data-based scheduling for intervention classes including Study Skills. This allows us to serve a greater number of students based on need. We have increased the expectation of the student coordinator to come alongside grade level teams in more visible and impactful ways to support student growth and success.
• Belonging Efforts: CMMS has recently formed a Belonging Committee that has ushered in a stronger focus on celebrating students, staff and families of various cultural backgrounds and other differences (e.g., ability, national origin, native language, etc.). We have increased our visible belonging signs around the school as well as weekly homeroom lessons to focus on identity and emotional safety at school, online and in the classroom.
• Equity in Programming: We have discovered that students of BIPOC backgrounds are not accessing advanced pathways at the same rate as their White peers. Starting in 2023-24 SY, the counseling team works with incoming 6^th grade families to encourage BIPOC families to enroll in advanced pathways if their child meets, or is close to meeting, the learning recommendations. Additionally, counselors meet with rising 7^th and 8^th graders of BIPOC background who meet, or almost meet, learning recommendations to move from on-level English Language Arts (ELA) to advance ELA.
• Disrupting Discriminatory Remarks: Students have been trained on the Equitable Code of Student Conduct found within the Student Handbook. Themes from this emerge within homeroom lessons throughout the school year. CMMS staff has participated in the following trainings to support our students with diverse backgrounds and also to learn how to disrupt discriminatory language when it arises: Courageous Conversations, Speak Up Trainings Parts 1 & 2, LGBTQIA+ Training Parts 1 & 2, De-escalation training.