Written by: Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic 

The Newberg School District submitted its Division 22 compliance report to the state and meets 51 of the 54 applicable standards put forth by the state for elementary and secondary schools.

Dropout Prevention and Credit Recovery Coordinator Mikaela Schamp presented a report to the school board at its Jan. 10 meeting, noting that Newberg is partially compliant in one standard and non-compliant in two others.

Schamp told the board the district is partially compliant with state guidelines for comprehensive guidance and counseling, which requires schools to have a program that both supports the academic, career, personal/social and community involvement development for every student and does so based on an Oregon Department of Education framework.

Schamp and district staff determined the district's program, created in 2012, meets the support requirements for most but not all students and isn't completely aligned with the ODE framework.

The district is convening a committee to update the program, but Superintendent Kym LeBlanc-Esparza noted that ODE is updating its framework to match the national model, so the committee will wait until ODE finishes that work before finalizing any changes.

"We have connections with those folks and we're convening our group right now," Assistant Superintendent Dave Parker said. "We'll take (the state's) draft and then create our own from that draft."

Newberg has been non-compliant in following the ODE's schedule for adoption of state-approved instruction materials in a few subjects for the past several years, but is making progress thanks to staff's ongoing efforts to transition to 21st century instruction and reach full digital conversion by 2018.

The district adopted a new, mostly digital language arts curriculum last year and is now compliant in that subject, but is still behind schedule for math and science.

The district plans to employ the same process it used for language arts to simultaneously select and purchase materials for math and science, which will also be mostly digital, over the next year and be ready for implementation by fall of 2018. Doing both subjects at once will also allow the curriculum to dovetail with other changes the district has been making around STEM instruction.

"Over 80 percent of school districts in the state of Oregon are out of compliance with this schedule because the adopted materials list hasn't even caught up with 21st century learning," LeBlanc-Esparza told the board. "A lot of folks are using online textbook materials, so technically it still shows the hard copy materials. There is some reason for them to give latitude for school districts in this as long as you can show you're doing the work."

The other area where Newberg is non-compliant is in physical education instruction time.

The state requires 150 minutes per week for elementary schools and 225 per week in middle school. Newberg has increased weekly elementary minutes from 72 to 96, but won't be able to reach the 150-minute mark without hiring more teachers.

"We have two problems, staffing and capacity," Parker said. "The staffing up to (the state) levels is about 1 FTE per building. That's six elementary and $80,000 per teacher, so almost $1.5 million in staffing."

In terms of capacity, Parker said gym time at buildings like Mabel Rush and Edwards are already completely booked, so to staff another teacher would mean holding any new P.E. classes somewhere else, like the lunchroom.

Solving the problem isn't as simple as adding in a few minutes for students to exercise each day, either, as the regulations require that the time include instruction from a teacher.

"The argument at the state level is if you were able to do that, in theory, you're taking an hour away of instruction away from other places," LeBlanc-Esparza said of simply adding in a few minutes of exercise daily. "So then what? Are we going to have them reading as they run?"

Schamp did highlight some areas where Newberg has just now come into compliance, including the requirement to have a district-wide media program. She credited district administrators Stafford Boyd and Luke Neff for their creativity in using instructional facilitators to implement a new digital media and citizenship curriculum across the district.

"It was neat to go from a place where we didn't think we'd ever be compliant with that to having some really innovative things," Schamp said.

The district also updated language in its child abuse reporting policy to reach full compliance.

ODE recently began requiring schools to track the percentage of students who take a full schedule to replace a previous requirement of providing 130 hours per credit in high school.

Schamp reported that Newberg made major strides over the past year and now well exceeds the minimum requirement, which is 85 percent of all students for the current school year and 90 percent next year. The standard will top out at 92.5 percent in 2018-2019, but changes at Newberg High School this year boosted the district's overall rate to 93 percent. At the high school itself, 81 percent of students now have full schedules.

The problem at NHS has been that its block schedule means a student can earn 32 credits in four years, but because they needs just 26 to graduate, many have drastically reduced the course loads during their senior year.

Schamp said administrators and counselors stepped up their efforts to better monitor student schedules and track their activities, which resulted in a jump from 80 to 93 percent.

"That really is a highly concerted effort by folks to make sure kids are meaningfully engaged and getting credit for work experience, concurrent enrollment or whatever it is, making sure we've tracked it and know what our kids are doing," LeBlanc-Esparza added. "We weren't really good at some of our record keeping and some of this in the past."