With Labor Day weekend in the rearview mirror and the last traces of summer fading, Philomath students this week will be settling into new classrooms and routines.
For educators, it signals a new beginning and as the familiar rhythms of the back-to-school season take hold, the focus shifts to an enduring challenge — defining and measuring true student success.
The school district’s five principals were asked last week how they measure success, a question that could be interpreted in many different ways.
Steve Bell, longtime middle school principal, sees relationships, participation in activities and attendance as key measuring sticks.
“The core most important is the relationships and that students are happy and proud they go to this school,” Bell said. “We want our children to be happy, healthy and learning. That’s hard to quantitatively measure — it’s a lot of stories, a lot of conversations, it’s feedback from kids and families.”
Engagement in activities and regular attendance are ways to measure success through numbers.
“Do we have students participating in our programs?” Bell said, mentioning archery, theater, music and athletics as examples. “The other number we look at is attendance — are our kids showing up to school? … If they’re not coming to school, it’s finding out why and that helps us answer questions and sometimes adjust programs to meet those needs.”
Garth Gerot, who is beginning his second year as principal at Philomath Academy, envisions students with strong self-awareness and interpersonal skills.
“Having kids that really have a good sense of themselves, what they’re good at, what they need to work on,” Gerot said. “Students that are able to possess good social skills and kindness.”
Gerot wants Philomath Academy to develop leaders among its students.
“Another thing that we’re working on this year is to create some leadership opportunities within the student body,” he said, “and to be contributing citizens to the community.”
Philomath-Blodgett Elementary School Principal Eric Beasley takes a multi-tiered approach to measuring success from the numbers that are seen each year in the School Report Card to results experienced through various on-campus programs.
“There’s a lot of different ways that we measure different things,” Beasley said. “How kids feel, like meaningfully included and welcome, are harder to measure but they’re really important and I think sometimes we don’t do a great job of getting student voice and family voice.”
Beasley said surveying students and parents may provide valuable insight.
“Does your kid feel like they can ask for help? Do they have somebody they can go to when they’re having a hard day?” Beasley cited as examples. “Those are the kinds of measures that you can get from a survey and from conversations with people.”
Mark Henderson, beginning his fourth year as Philomath High School’s principal, said a lot of data is considered to try to reach conclusions on student success, including graduation rates and staying on track to earn a diploma.
“For example, we put a lot of effort into our freshmen because research has shown that if you can be on track to graduate after your freshman year … chances are really good that you’re going to graduate on time,” Henderson said, following up with specific examples of credits and how the school responds to those who do fall behind.
“Other things we look at are how much discipline are we responding to?” Henderson said. “How many bias incidents or racial incidents have we had each year? So we’re always working on that with kids and in fact, that’s one of our focuses this year … As we walk through classrooms as administrators, one of our instructional focuses is classroom culture.”
Abby Couture, in her ninth year as Clemens Primary School principal and the administrative lead for the district’s youngest students, takes stock of what she sees in the faces of the kids.
“I measure success by the kids wanting to come to school every day and being happy and proud of what they’re doing in school,” she said.
School begins Tuesday for second graders only at Philomath Elementary, sixth graders only at Philomath Middle School and ninth graders only at Philomath High. All students except grades K-1 then head to classes on Wednesday.
At Clemens Primary, student assessments are done Tuesday and Wednesday before students start coming in on Thursday (last names beginning with A-K) and Friday (last names beginning with L-Z). All CPS students begin attending full days on Sept. 8.
Following is a look at each school as the academic year begins:
Philomath High School
The biggest campus change at Philomath High this academic year will be bell-to-bell restrictions on personal electronic devices as mandated through an executive order from Gov. Tina Kotek.
“The biggest obvious change is the governor’s cellphone ban, which we’re all trying to adjust to,” Henderson said. It’s going to be a big adjustment for the kids.”
The executive order requires schools to prohibit K-12 students from using personal electronic devices during the entire school day, including lunch periods, breaks and time between classes.
“Parents are upset, kids are upset and we will work with them,” Henderson said. “We’re giving them some time to adjust to the policy before we start enacting consequences for violations. But in the end, it really is what’s best for kids. Social media and cellphones are just fueling the mental health crisis we have in our country.”
In classrooms, Daniel Mikula has joined the PHS staff as a new English teacher after the retirement of longtime educator Dave Dunham.
“He’s coming to us from Crescent Valley with a lot of high praise,” Henderson said. “I know the principal over at CV and he said that if he was starting a school today, Daniel would be his No. 1 pick.”
Mikula does have a Philomath connection — formerly working as a language arts teacher at Philomath Academy and pool director and swim coach at PHS.
The high school doesn’t have any major changes to its offerings, although Henderson did mention the addition of American sign language.
“Scott Card, who is our German teacher, is teaching that this year and so we’re hoping to grow that a little bit,” Henderson said.
Henderson didn’t have enrollment numbers readily available last week but said the high school had about 11 new freshmen and about a half-dozen new sophomores. As a result, he expects enrollment to be up slightly.
Philomath Academy
Philomath Academy, which is located in the school district office on Applegate Street in front of the elementary school, added a new classroom.
“We’ve increased a lot of different seating options in the classrooms,” Gerot said. “We have like three stand-up desks and extra tables where students can sit around and collaborate and work on projects.”
The extra space is all part of a plan to bring more students into the building.
“The majority of our students are going to be coming in person to receive instruction every day,” Gerot said. “It’s really about engaging kids in person.”
Gerot said the school’s push revolves around three goals, which were developed out of a spring survey of students:
- “Deepening real-world, project-based learning while expanding community partnerships.”
- “Ensuring that we have some real consistency and we’re constantly challenging best practices.”
- “Elevating student voice and shaping school culture and increasing student agency and autonomy in their learning.”
Another focal point for the academy involves students that may struggle with trying to figure out what they want to do beyond high school.
“We’ve worked out a schedule that we’re able to provide career exploration, looking at different pathways, recognizing individual student aptitude and things to make them be successful,” Gerot said.
Staffing changes include the additions of Terrence Sims in special education (shared with PHS) and Jeremy Nelson with instructional support (shared with PES).
Philomath Middle School
Bell mentioned a new science curriculum adopted last year that brings new options when it comes to instructional materials but said the school really wants to just continue to improve and work through its existing programs.
“Most of our teaching staff is all returning, all of our licensed staff has been here for a couple of years so that’s a really good feeling of consistency and keeping our positive culture going,” Bell said.
The middle school does have a few instructional assistants that have gone from part-time to full-time. Administratively, Bell is in his 24th year at Philomath, 18th as the principal. Jamon Ellingson is beginning his third year as the assistant principal.
Enrollment at the middle school has solid numbers heading into this fall’s classes. As of last week, the school had 348 registered — 102 in the sixth, 120 in the seventh and 126 in the eighth. The fifth grade that moved up to middle school is among the smallest classes in the district but Muddy Creek Charter School students coming in boosted the numbers a bit.
Philomath Elementary School
The elementary school’s enrollment looks strong heading into this fall, Beasley said, with 397 as of last week. PES is currently closed to interdistrict transfer students.
The school has seen a few staff changes in classrooms. Susan Hobbs comes in as a second grade teacher, moving over from Clemens Primary where she taught first grade. Alicia Moran goes from the second to fifth grade. The school also had a handful of new faces among the classified staff and in addition, librarian Sam Woods transferred from the high school to middle school.
Mike McDonough returns as assistant principal.
As far as learning materials, Beasley said four teachers are piloting a new math curriculum called Reveal.
“It has a strong, traditional side but it also has hands-on and differentiated learnings so teachers can use both with lessons,” Beasley said.
Beasley anticipates having some of the math materials available to peruse at fall conferences to collect parent input before taking it to the School Board for adoption.
Blodgett Elementary School
Blodgett Elementary, which is a K-4 school, has 25 students registered.
“They’ve upticked a little bit,” said Beasley, who doubles as principal at both elementary schools. “They had a bigger group come into our fifth grade (from Blodgett) — there were 10 that came in.”
Blodgett has two classes at the rural school — one with kindergarteners, first and second graders and another with third and fourth graders.
“So that’s kind of their structure and they do have a couple of slots for interdistrict transfers,” Beasley said.
Elaine Hall and Diane Priewe return as the full-time classroom teachers.
Clemens Primary School
Clemens will be adding more physical education into the day of its students, Couture said, which is in response to a state mandate but also something that she said the school is excited to offer.
Another change involves more focus on foundational literacy skills.
“The state of Oregon, they really put a lot of funding into early literacy, and so we have coaches for our certified and classified staff, as well as me, the administrator, that are going to work with us all year and really bolster our literacy instruction so that we can do the best we can for our students,” Couture said.
New teachers include Kyra Crawford (kindergarten) and Katie Russell (special programs). Crawford has moved into a full-time role after working last year as a student teacher. Russell will be leading a “highly-structured classroom for students that aren’t quite ready to be mainstreamed into the classroom all day … and find success so they can push into the classrooms more and more as the school year goes on,” Couture said.
Enrollment appears to be up a little bit from last year, Couture said.
Philomath School District
The school district has upgraded its technology in the areas of safety and security. In addition, staff members are transitioning to new high-functioning Chromebooks and many classrooms will have Newline 85-inch interactive whiteboards, a high-tech touchscreen tool with enhanced visuals, that replace projection units.
Susan Halliday is beginning her sixth year as the superintendent of schools.
