• Category 1

    Selected in 2018

  • Grades: k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 17
    Student Enrollment: 500
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 1%
    White/Caucasian: 74%
    Hispanic: 11%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 1%
    Asian: 1%
    Native American: 1%
    Other: 11%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:19
    % Reduced Lunch: 32%
    % ELL Learners: 2.6%
    Founded: 1961
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Bobbi Snider
  • CONTACT:
    18715 80th ST East
    Bonney Lake, WA 98391
    253-891-4450
    bobbi_snider@sumnersd.org
Bonney Lake Elementary School
Bonney Lake, WA
At Bonney Lake Elementary we believe in teaching the whole child.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
Our school understands the importance of parent partnerships. Parents are an integral part of our MTSS. Our staff has a strong partnership with our parent teacher association and is highly involved in creating opportunities for students in relation to student learning. We have a two-way communication system between families and teacher through an intervention notebook. Students bring an intervention notebook home to their parents. The parents then work with their child and reflect in the notebook on their child’s work. The child returns the notebook the next day to their intervention teacher.

Another opportunity we have for parent involvement is our building wide program to celebrate and acknowledge student achievement. Students earn viking pride cards for academic growth and character development. When a student earns a viking pride card the student and the principal make a phone call home to discuss the student’s achievement.

Our school has been very successful with our Title 1 family nights. We pair the academic focus with a highly engaging activity for families.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
Each year our school participates in a community event called "Beautify Bonney Lake." During this event families are encouraged to partner with the school to "beautify" the school grounds and other areas within the Bonney Lake Community. Materials and supplies are donated by local businesses and families work to complete landscape projects around the school campus.

In addition to Beautify Bonney Lake, we have also initiated a sock drive donating over 2,500 socks to our local city family resource center and over 5,000 cans of food to the local food bank. Vikings at Bonney Lake Elementary understand the importance of community partnerships and serving our community!
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
The foundation for change in our building was through data analysis and the realization that our intervention model was not aligned with the core curriculum. As a building leadership team, we thoughtfully planned interventions to pre teach and reteach the core curriculum through supplemental materials directly tied to the scope, sequence and philosophy of CKLA.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?

What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
The catalyst for our student growth was the school-wide focus on best practices tied to our Title 1 plan, specifically matching the most highly-qualified instructor to students with the greatest need. Our intervention model is continually being analyzed through fidelity checks on explicit instruction. Our team committed to all students learning the “code” in primary and accuracy and fluency in intermediate grades. In 2016 our school district adopted Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) and our school made it a priority to align intervention with core instruction.

Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
Our district provides equitable access to a rigorous, standards-based education with a focus on eliminating disparities among all groups of students to meet or exceed state and district standards. It is our community and district goal that every student graduates on time and is career or college ready. We accomplish this by:

Implementing standards-based curriculum across each grade and course
Implementing a balanced range of national, state and local assessments
Extending learning opportunities for struggling and highly-capable students
Integrating technology into courses and activities
Making connections between content areas and career pathways
Providing ongoing professional learning opportunities for staff
Ensuring quality instruction
Explain how ESEA federal funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
Certificated and Classified staffing for ELA intervention
Professional Development
Para-educator and certificated substitutes for data meetings
Additional para staffing for intensive intervention needed
Release days for staff to attend Anita Archer training
Fluency games and timers to support our goal of students reading with accuracy and fluency.
Family Engagement Event, where families participated in a celebration of reading throughout the evening via a camping theme.

Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
Our school’s model for instruction is Anita Archer’s Explicit Instruction. Our school has received extensive professional development on the 16 elements of explicit instruction. This professional development includes classified and certificated staff.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Each Wednesday our instructional teams meet to analyze student data during their PLC Meeting. As a district, we use the four essential PLC questions to guide our work through a cycle of inquiry. Question 1 - What is it we want our students to learn? Question 2 - How will we know if our students are learning? Question 3 - How will we respond when students do not learn? Question 4 - How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who are proficient? At our school we have really focused on question 3 and have tied that into our intervention model.

Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
At Bonney Lake Elementary we believe in working together every day for every child. In order to do this we need to have a strong shared leadership model. We have teacher leaders at each grade level as well as a Math Support Leader, Literacy Support Leader and Instructional Technology Leader. Each leader has a responsibility within our building to support student learning. The administration works in collaboration with teacher leaders to provide professional development that matches the needs of the building. The relationships show mutual respect and share a desire for a focus on achievement.

At Bonney Lake Elementary we believe in teaching the whole child. We believe that educating students through social emotional learning is just as important as educating a child’s intellect. Each morning students are greeted by their name in a morning assembly where students are honored by their teacher for following our school-wide expectations. Teachers are continually assessing their student/teacher relationships and take time to establish, maintain and restore relationships as needed using common relationship strategies.

Stats
  • Category 1

    Selected in 2018

  • Grades: k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 17
    Student Enrollment: 500
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 1%
    White/Caucasian: 74%
    Hispanic: 11%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 1%
    Asian: 1%
    Native American: 1%
    Other: 11%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:19
    % Reduced Lunch: 32%
    % ELL Learners: 2.6%
    Founded: 1961
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Bobbi Snider
  • CONTACT:
    18715 80th ST East
    Bonney Lake, WA 98391
    253-891-4450
    bobbi_snider@sumnersd.org