Thursday, March 28, 2024

Brewster schools receive School of Distinction honors

Middle School achieves dramatic turnaround

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BREWSTER – Brewster High School and Brewster Middle School are among seven schools within the North Central Educational Service District (NCESD) area that have been awarded 2017 School of Distinction honors by the Center for Educational Effectiveness.
Brewster High School is a three-time repeat winner of the award over the past five years. It is the first such honor for the Middle School that beat its five-year goal to receive the accolade by a year and a half.
Each school is being recognized as one of the five percent highest improving schools in the State of Washington for increased English Language Arts (ELA)/Math achievement and Graduation Rate over the past five years.
Brewster High School principal Linda Dezellem said that an increased graduation rate was the principal achievement that won the award for her school this year. Regular attendance was a key part of the goal, so the school created incentives for students to show in the classroom.
Dezellem said that among the schools that received the School of Distinction award, Brewster High School and Middle School have the highest poverty rates, with both institutions above 90 percent.  
Averaged over five years, Brewster’s graduation rate has remained among the top five percent.
“It was at 93.3 percent last year,” said Dezellem said. “When we started this road of improvement we were at 60 percent or so.”
The award is especially meaningful for Brewster Middle School Principal, Greg Austin.
“For us to receive this is huge,  considering where we started three and a half years ago,” said Austin. “We are what is referred to as a priority school, a SIG school.”
SIG is an acronym for School Improvement Grant, a designation given to those schools that qualify for special sub grants because they identified as low-achievement schools.
“We were one of lowest performing schools in the State of Washington, the bottom five percent. That’s where we started,” said Austin. “Three and a half years later we in the top five percent for student growth.”
Austin admitted that while the school still has a way to go, “it shows you the direction we’re going in.”
The plan was to make the turnaround in five years and toward that effort, Austin left the classroom and took on the principal’s role. Now that the goal has been reached earlier than expected the next challenge is to get off the SIG list altogether, Austin said.
Austin said it was a total team effort between teachers, students and parents and required hours upon hours of communication, targeted learning and testing to raise student assessment levels.
The North Central Washington schools honored include:
• Brewster High School
• Brewster Middle School
• Grant Elementary, East Wenatchee
• Lake Roosevelt Jr-Sr High, Grand Coulee
• Moses Lake High School
• Oroville Middle-High School
 The North Central Educational Service District is a resource to the 29 districts within the Okanogan-Douglas-Chelan-Grant county service area, providing “professional and timely tools to meet the needs of individual schools and districts, and a reliable point of education-related information for the communities served,” an NCESD media release said. “The NCESD is a respected resource to other ESDs throughout Washington State.”
"We are so proud of our schools and the comprehensive focus on learning and student achievement,” said NCESD District Superintendent Dr. Michelle Price. “Our students are the future, and at the NCESD we see first-hand the level of commitment and dedication to teaching and learning so that our students can succeed.”
 

Brewster school, Distinct honors

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