One School

One Team

One Purpose - Student Success

Bill Eagle from our local ESD (educational service district) provided training on writing student learning goals at our last early release professional development.

• This month’s OK Corral, Okanogan County superintendents meeting, we met at Paschal Sherman Indian School. We heard about the history of the school, their current vision and goals, and met to discuss current education issues impacting our region.
  
  
• Okanogan North Pod Crisis meeting with first responders was held this week. We discussed the format of our flipchart documents and common language. We have scheduled a tabletop drill for a wildfire event for May 10th at Tonasket.
  
  
• The bi-annual Okanogan County Emergency Management meeting was held on Thursday in Okanogan. We discussed spring runoff, air quality, search and rescue, Okanogan County Alert System, the prediction for a hot summer and other emergency management issues. The district is looking into installing an air quality sensor that ties into a web-based system that is accessible to the public. The closest air quality sensors right now are in Oroville and Omak.
  

• High School junior, Lillian Rounds, has been accepted into the College Horizons summer program for Native American students. College Horizons is a pre-college program for Native American high school students open to current sophomores and juniors. Each summer, students work with college counselors and college admissions officers in a five-day "crash course." The individualized program helps students select colleges suitable for them to apply to, get admitted to, and receive adequate financial aid. Congratulations! “The application process took me about 3 months because I had to have recommendations by a teacher and a counselor. Each recommendation form asked a large amount of questions about my personality, attitude, and my educational background. Every day I would check their website to see if they had released any results. Around March 17th, they announced that results would be out by the end of March. It was Monday, March 25th, when I received the e-mail saying I was accepted. This is a HUGE opportunity not just for me, but also for my family. So many Native students do not have this opportunity. This means a lot to me because I have always wanted to show my family and community that I am capable of anything no matter what the statistics say. This program has statistics showing that of the 2,800 attendees, 99% of them have been admitted into a college and 85% of them have graduated in four-to-five years. The Native American high school graduation rate is 51%. Of those, approximately 5% proceed directly to four-year colleges and only 10% of those students graduate in four years.” ~ Lillian Rounds
  
  
• Tonasket High School students Kaylee Bobadilla and Lily Reavis, from our HS ASB Leadership Class, were selected by the American Legion Auxiliary Unit 82 to have their Americanism essays submitted to the Western Division American Legion Auxiliary essay competition. This includes the states of WA, AK, CA, HI, ID, NV, NM, OR and UT. There are 5 divisions with 7 categories and 35 winners. They are waiting to hear if they make it out of their division contest to move onto the National American Legion Auxiliary competition. Final overall winners will be announced in August 2019 at the National American Legion Auxiliary convention. Both students received a check for $50 and a certificate.
  

The school board held the April 10 board meeting in the Pine Creek area at the home of Barbara Green. We appreciate Barbara opening her home for this meeting. Three community members attended the meeting. The board and guests had a one-hour conversation about school and community issues.

The next PSE labor management meeting will be next Wednesday and the next TEA labor management meeting will be on April 24th.

• April enrollment is 1,079.83. We are down three students from last month.
  
  
• We received a donation of band instruments and other items from a non-profit called Northwest Instruments for Charity established by a Lakeside High School student, Bryent Takayama. Its general mission is to help spread music instruction and support to under-funded communities. Tonasket was listed and they have been working with Mr. Eric Stiles, the band teacher, and made the first big delivery on April 8th. The initial plan was February (but the snowstorm prevented them from traveling).
  
  The following instruments were brought on April 8:

1. 2 flutes (practically new and beautiful too!)

2. 1 brand new saxophone (with extra reeds and new mouthpiece)

3. 2 coronets

4. 2 trumpets

5. 8 recorders

6. 2 clarinets

7. 1 ukulele

8. digital tuners, metronomes for the instruments

9. 2 music stands

Email: smccullough@tonasket.wednet.edu
Website: http://www.tonasket.wednet.edu
Location: 35 DO Hwy 20 E
Phone: 509-486-2126