• Category 2

    Selected in 2016

  • Grades: pre k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 81
    Student Enrollment: 325
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 1%
    White/Caucasian: 72%
    Hispanic: 25%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 1%
    Native American: 1%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:16
    % Reduced Lunch: 73%
    % ELL Learners: 10%
    Founded: 1968
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Wayne Tuttle
  • CONTACT:
    452 Texas Street
    Evansville, WY 82636
    307-253-6400
    wayne_tuttle@natronaschools.org
Evansville Elementary
Evansville, WY
Evansville Elementary believes a strong relationship between home and school is essential for student success.
Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
Our Title I funds have allowed us to increase parent engagement. Evansville Elementary believes a strong relationship between home and school is essential for student success. One event we ask all parents to participate in is “Power of an Hour.” Each family is encouraged to spend at least one hour in their child’s classroom to observe and we usually get over 85% participation. These observations have allowed our parents to better understand how we teach math and have provided them with tools to help their children at home.

We also develop highly engaging family nights each month to get parents and students to learn about the work we do at school. Five years ago, we had about 10 parents attending family nights. Now we range in attendance between 150-300 stakeholders for each of these events and they help us create those connections that support students.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
We are beginning to use our newly built greenhouse to engage students in more hands-on STEM instruction. This greenhouse was a vision of the school and community partners such as
the Casper Community Greenhouse, Sinclair Oil, our PTO and many other community businesses.
We look forward to using the greenhouse to teach students about healthy eating habits, plant life and providing opportunities for problem-solving and critical thinking. Many staff members are diligently working to help students become Junior Master Gardeners.
Our commitment to continuous improvement and searching for best practices allows us to continue our high levels of student achievement. We continue to pursue ways to increase our reading achievement as we celebrate our successes in math.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
Looping is strategy used at Evansville to enhance student achievement. Teachers have students in their class for two years. This strategy allows for the development of strong relationships with both students and parents. The teachers become strong advocates for students while they are at Evansville and many continue to support them as they travel on to middle school and high school. These relationships honor the whole child and allow us to reach them where they are. The relationship between home and school is a two-year relationship and the coordination for success between teachers and parents makes a huge difference.
Explain how Title I funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
Title I has been used to provide preschool. Our preschool supports some of our most at-risk students & gives them a great start on their learning journey. Our preschool teacher collaborates with kindergarten teachers in order to work hard on preparation for kindergarten and to create a smooth transition. Evansville’s preschool focuses on the development of the child through play, socialization and academics. Additionally, a significant focus is engaging our parents in the educational process.

Tutor support for our at-risk students is another strategy that has paid big dividends. Title I dollars are used to fund three tutor positions and to bring our total tutor number to five and a half. This support allows us to create intervention and enrichment time at every grade level for 30 minutes a day. The tutors work with students in the areas of math, reading and writing. Title I support creates opportunities for us to have more responsive interventions to the needs of our students.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
Professional development is another strategy that is helping us obtain big results for our students. Evansville has committed for years to developing our philosophy of constructivist math instruction. This began with working with a consultant to get a solid foundation. Evansville has engaged in peer observation and continual professional development. Just this last year we re-engaged consultants from Math Learning Center to help all staff. As we continue into the future, we will focus on lesson study to help our ongoing professional development and the depth of analysis of our instruction.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
We seek to refine our knowledge of and our strategies for assessing the Common Core State Standards. Our teachers are constantly monitoring student progress through our quality assessments, which include district, Number Corner and Bridges assessments. Our Math committee also analyzes, on an ongoing basis, students’ progress toward the mastery of standards. Based on these analyses, the math committee then sets school-wide goals to improve student achievement.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
We focus on developing a strong school culture with high expectations. We focus our efforts with students on attendance & citizenship. Our attendance was at an all time high last year. We consistently emphasize to students the importance of being in school to create solid learning & work habits. One way we use Title I to support those high expectations is professional development for teachers at the Ron Clark Academy (RCA) in Atlanta, Georgia. RCA is a school that teaches children who face similar challenges as the students who attend Evansville. One of the ideas we brought back and implemented from RCA is implementing grade level teams which compete each year in order to earn the Eagle Cup which is given at the end of each year to the winning grade level. Each of the teams is referred to by the year that the students will graduate from high school. We speak of the grade levels as graduating classes because we want to instill the idea that we expect all of our students to graduate.
Stats
  • Category 2

    Selected in 2016

  • Grades: pre k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 81
    Student Enrollment: 325
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 1%
    White/Caucasian: 72%
    Hispanic: 25%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0%
    Asian: 1%
    Native American: 1%
    Other: 0%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:16
    % Reduced Lunch: 73%
    % ELL Learners: 10%
    Founded: 1968
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Wayne Tuttle
  • CONTACT:
    452 Texas Street
    Evansville, WY 82636
    307-253-6400
    wayne_tuttle@natronaschools.org