Red Lake Elementary School receives 3 Stars from Gov. Pawlenty’s education Report Card

Just one of many awesome things happening at RLES

By Michael Barrett

Freelance Writer

       At Red Lake Elementary School this year, like the Ponemah School and currently taking place at the Middle and High School, they also had yet another building expansion project.

       Just last year they had opened the new Child Development Center for Headstart and Kindergarten students, but it wasn’t enough, as more classrooms were still needed.

       With the expansions, they now have two additional kindergarten rooms, two new Headstart classrooms, and two new rooms on the old elementary school section–which really isn’t that old of a building–which will accommodate second grades this year.

       But that isn’t all that’s happening at RLES this year, according to Principal Jean Whitefeather.

       “We’ve started a couple new incentive clubs for attendance–because attendance is important and they can’t learn if they’re not in school–and also No Child Left Behind requirements,” Whitefeather said.

       No Child Left Behind is part of what is adequate progress for the state and is based on attendance rates for different schools–elementary, middle and high schools.

       Attendance counts there, as well as in Title 1–which Whitefeather thought their budget was about $1.4 million. Being that Red Lake was a Title 1 school-wide project, attendance was really an issue for them.

       Whitefeather said at RLES they had pretty good attendance and usually ran at least above 90%–which was good. She said a lot of times they averaged about 94% in attendance per month.

       “But we still run into some truancy issues and things like that,” she added. “Usually we run pretty high, but we have to make sure that we’re running high and make sure we’re notifying parents, and things like that.”

       She said attendance was going to get even tougher because kids needed to be in school to learn, and they couldn’t do anything if kid’s weren’t there to do it.

       “We’re doing some incentives for that,” Whitefeather added. “Everyday I announce to the classrooms that have perfect attendance. Their names are placed on a big bulletin board in the elementary school–right next to the front office by the library.”

       That big sign says, “We’re bubbling over with perfect attendance”. Every class and teacher has a bubble with their name on it if they have perfect attendance, and it stays on the board all day.

       “We’ve started an incentive club for classes not to get any discipline slips,” she added. “If they didn’t get any discipline slips for the month, they get a movie of their choice and we’re giving them a pizza party in class.”

       Another change at RLES this year was the bus aides. Whitefeather said they had a lot of discussions about that topic throughout the community. So far they weren’t putting them back on yet, and when she first heard they had been cut, she was worried about it.

       “But it has not been as bad as I thought it was going to be,” she said. “We are seeing an increase in slips, and the bus drivers having to take responsibility of writing up those slips–they’ve done a good job of that for the most part. They’re not used to doing that; it used to be the responsibility of the bus aide.”

       Whitefeather said there was another meeting planned with Superintendent Desjarlait next week to discuss that issue further.

       “My dad was a bus driver for years–of course not in Red Lake–but my dad was a bus driver for years. Discipline, although there is a safety issue of driving, discipline is also a bus driver’s responsibility and students need to learn to acknowledge that.”

       In viewing it from that point of thought, she was absolutely right.

       She didn’t consider the loss of bus aides as a budget cut since that part of the aides’ contract was something above and beyond what they were supposed to do–they were compensated for that extra time. And as far as cuts within RLES, she said they haven’t experienced any severe ones yet.

       Although she did want a music specialist and a library specialist, she traded them off and settled for a library specialist because they needed to get a library going.

       “I wanted them all but couldn’t get them,” she said and laughed.

       But she did believe they would be looking at some cuts in the future.

       “We have it so nice here,” she stated. “I read these articles about Bemidji. A friend of mine’s kids, sixth grade, 34 sixth graders were in one classroom in Bemidji. For us, that would automatically be two classrooms. Our classrooms, I think the biggest one is 21 kids in a 5^th grade classroom. That is excellent. And a lot of mine are between 15-18 students–that’s excellent classroom size.”

       She credited the Board of Education with really trying to keep that in place for them–the ratio of students in a classroom.

       “Smaller classrooms mean more learning–it’s automatic,” she said.

       Thirty-five students in one room was a lot of kids.

       Whitefeather said it was reported that in Bemidji, there were three kindergarten classes with 27 kids in each room.

       “What do you do with 27, five-year-olds and one teacher?” she said. “We’re very fortunate that way. I think that’s the last thing the Board’s going to cut is having to make bigger class sizes because they understand the importance of smaller class sizes. That, I’m really thankful for.”

       She said she would be willing to give up some materials and supplies rather than have to resort to that because of finances.

       Another change was that their school Website was going to be updated and kept updated.

       “One other thing we tried this year was the new Parent-Teachers Conferences at the beginning of the school year,” she explained. “We had 87% turnout here at the elementary, which I think is awesome. You’ve met your teacher, you know that face, the teacher knows those parents...”

       She said they had a staff meeting last night and in doing that, it has opened communications between parents and teachers. It was the first time they ever had 87% of the parents in for conferences. She said there were almost 500 parents that came in during those two days.

       The current enrollment now is 585 students. At the end of last year, it was at 602. She expected their enrollment to go up yet like the previous year.

       “Space-wise, everyone had a room–next year however, might be a different story,” Whitefeather said.

       Other things happening at RLES, although it wasn’t new, was the Success For All Reading Program and the Roots Program.

       In discussing recent articles about students not having enough homework or having too much of it, she said she didn’t think RLES kids had too much homework. Every student in elementary school had twenty minutes of reading and one math assignment every night.

       “Reading, that can be creative,” she said. “The child can read to you, you read to the child, it can be a newspaper, a box of cereal–and so many other things you can incorporate into that, which you probably do in the home and just don’t think of it as a reading assignment.”

       Whitefeather said they were off to a really good start at RLES and that she felt really good about this year. She was very excited about RLES receiving 3 stars in Governor Pawlenty’s Department of Education Report Card for every school in Minnesota. Every school received such a report card based on their test scores.

       RLES received 3 stars–out of a possible 5 stars–in math and reading, higher than the 3 elementary schools out of Bemidji.

       “To me, eight years ago we were sort of the bottom of the barrel and way last,’ she said. “It was 3 of 5 stars so we have room to go–we already know that–but we’re getting there and it’s the whole community getting there.’

       She said it was very awesome.