Siletz Valley Charter School has plans to expand.

At the Lincoln County School District Board of Directors meeting Feb. 14, Van Peters, Siletz Valley Charter School director, received unanimous approval from the board to continue its work on the kindergarten-through-eighth grades and presented information on plans to make “an early college academy charter high school” for grades nine through 12. The board has not yet decided on the high school portion of the presentation.

K-8 a success

The success of the kindergarten-through-eighth school is part of the reason to expand, Peters said. The students are consistently coming in at state averages or above and a 92-percent attendance rate.

“That’s not bad for the school in the district with probably the highest poverty rate and highest minority rate,” Peters said.

They’ve put $100,000 into repairs of the physical school during the last two years and would keep the high school on the same property, Peters said.

“I think we’ve proven to the district we can provide a good school,” he added.

Expanding to a high school

A year and a half ago, Siletz Valley started applying for grants from the Oregon Department of Education and Antioch University Seattle. The high school hopes to create an early college environment particularly geared toward Native American students but open to students countywide.

Peters said the school has already applied to the Oregon School Activities Association to join the Valco West sports league 1A bracket for football, volleyball, baseball, basketball and cheerleading. Plans include music courses and other electives.

“We’ve been pretty active, taking a look at what we really want the kids to have,” Peters said. “The staff is really excited and the community is excited.”

The high school has been inactive in Siletz since 1982, Peters said.

“When you shut down a high school, you take the guts out of the community,” he told the board.

The high school plan had originally talked about phasing in one grade per year, but because of grant obligations, the current charter school would start up with all four years at once.

Peters estimates approximately 100 students will attend the school with 25 coming from the current credit-recovery program, 25 coming from current school dropouts in the area and 50 moving up from eighth grade.

Part of the draw to the school will be its focus on early college work, allowing students to take both college-credit and high-school-credit classes to get ahead.

‘OSU K-12 Online’

Peters and the charter school steering committee have been working with a program developed by Oregon State University – “OSU (Oregon State University) K-12 Online” – that would allow the charter school to offer not only in-person classes but also online curriculum.

Tryna Luten, of the K-12 Online program, attended the board meeting and talked about the hybrid program envisioned by the steering committee and K-12 Online.

“By the end of grade 12, a student could already have completed the first few years of college,” she said.

The K-12 Online program, developed by Extended Campus at OSU, offers online courses for middle-school and high-school students to “supplement the gaps in local program offerings.”

Extended Campus will develop and deliver courses specifically designed for Native American students as part of the Siletz program, to help them graduate, meet college enrollment requirements and also incorporate Native American history and cultural aspects.

“The Siletz Valley Early College Academy will pay half the cost for the 40 classes, which are being developed over the next 18 months and will be delivered beginning in September,” according to Travis Cobb, of the K-12 Online program. “After these additions, the OSU K-12 Online program will contain almost all the classes needed for a student to get a high school diploma in Oregon. Educators say the program may also offer a model for other Native American tribes that may wish to use this program.”

The program teaches a lot of self-discipline and initiative, but also provides interaction and group projects. Students do not just stare at a computer and read about course topics, she said. Teachers are required to check in with students and many of the online teachers will offer in-person versions of the same class for those who learn better “face to face.”

The program meets all national, state and Native American content standards as set by national Native education benchmarks.

The program expects to also provide partnerships with forestry resources and Hatfield Marine Science Center, Peters said.

The board is expected to consider the proposal for the new charter school at its next meeting on Feb. 28 at Newport High School at 7 p.m.

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Education News. Tags: Antioch University Seattle, baseball, basketball, College, Education News, Extended Campus, football, Grant, Hatfield Marine Science Center, Lincoln County School District Board of Directors, Newport High School, Online courses, online curriculum, online program, online teachers, Oregon, Oregon Department of Education, Oregon School Activities Association, Oregon State University, Siletz Valley, Siletz Valley Charter School, Siletz Valley Early College Academy, Student, Travis Cobb, Van Peters, Volleyball, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.