• Category 2

    Selected in 2016

  • Grades: k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 6,700
    Student Enrollment: 560
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 0.4%
    White/Caucasian: 80%
    Hispanic: 9.7%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.6%
    Asian: 0.8%
    Native American: 1.6%
    Other: 6.9%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:24
    % Reduced Lunch: 47.4%
    % ELL Learners: 2.6%
    Founded: 1991
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Donna Hudson
  • CONTACT:
    171 Carlsborg Rd.
    Sequim, WA 98382
    360-582-3300
    dhudson@sequim.k12.wa.us
Greywolf Elementary
Sequim, WA
We developed a staff who believe ALL students can be successful academically and socially. All staff understand and embrace this belief.
Describe the most successful activity your school has initiated to strengthen ties to your community.
At Greywolf, we have a Parent Involvement Night once a month. We have a different topic each month and have surveyed our parents to find out that topics they are interested in learning about. This year we have offered the following topics: What is family involvement at Greywolf Elementary?, How to help your child be a better reader, Pre-Conference Front-loading, How to help your child with math.
After each session we survey attendees to see if they found the information valuable and what information they would like to see us present in the future. We offer food at these events and will try to offer family dinner as the year progresses.
These have been very popular this year. We have plans to begin offering some of our Parent Teacher Meetings adjacent to the Parent Involvement Nights to try to build a interconnectedness between these two important family connections.
Describe your philosophy of school change or improvement.
Most importantly, we developed a staff who believe ALL students can be successful academically and socially. Early in the improvement process, we identified staff who needed support to understand and embrace this belief. As a result, some of our original staff have moved on.
Together we believe:
• Reading, at grade level, by 3rd grade is the key to overall student academic success
• A celebratory, safe, fun climate is required
• Teaching highly aligned curricula with fidelity, produces equity and opportunity
• Staff and students set goals for appropriate growth
We review our teaching and learning cycles habitually, utilizing student data. We face our hard truths; we do not accept excuses, we look for solutions. We work hard to offer immediate, individual or group in-house professional development to make each teacher more effective. As a result of this attention to detail, our Title 1 and LAP programs offer almost surgical precision to the individual needs of ALL students.
What are your school’s top two goals for the next year?
We want to be a 90-90 school. We are currently and 82-82 school.

We want our kids to enjoy coming to school and leave with the skills they need to be on track for future success in careers or college.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
Every child. Every moment. Every day. At GWE, we work as a team for the success of all students. We don’t gauge adult impact on students by their job title. Student success starts when you walk into our building and meet our happy, caring office staff. Our counselor takes time to place students in the classroom that best meets their learning needs. Our custodians take great pride in the fact that our classrooms and facilities are clean and ready for student learning. We support all of the needs of our kids; including keeping them safe and active at recess, to making sure that they take two vegetables and a fruit at lunch time. Every student contact is an important one.
Our administrator and coaches have open door policies. We want to work collaboratively and it is always our goal to make decisions based on what is good for all students.
Our approaches not only benefit all students; but reach our entire school community including staff, parents, guest teachers and volunteers.
Describe the program or initiative that has had the greatest positive effect on student achievement, including closing achievement or opportunity gaps, if applicable.
At GWE, this would be our master schedule and the boost that it gives to our amazing Wolf Den program.
We believe that a child must be a strong reader in order to be a successful student. Our Wolf Den allows our identified students, at the primary level, to receive 2-3 hours of extra reading support each week. This is in addition to regular classroom reading instruction. Our coach, Krista Chatters, meets with each teacher every other week. She discusses the progress of the kids in the Wolf Den and receives new, updated reading information from the teacher. This two week teaching and learning cycle allows us to offer remediation for our students that is appropriate for their current, individual reading level. No time is wasted working on materials that are too easy or too hard for them. Over the last 4 years, 80% of our students leave 2nd grade reading at grade level.
Krista documents the information, sends it to the principal and it becomes part of team discussions on Monday.
Explain how Title I funds are used to support your improvement efforts.
We have a LAP Literacy Coach and a Title 1 Math teacher.
Our Literacy coach meets with teachers bi-weekly to discuss student reading levels. She uses this information to plan remediation for these students through the Wolf Den. In addition to this important work, she offers professional development and 1-1 support for our staff in the area of literacy. She also works with our ELA curricula to help our staff use the remediation guide effectively.
Our Title 1 math teacher meets with our staff in their classrooms and during planning time to identify and support students who struggle with the lessons and concepts taught. She works with students in the classroom, during the lesson, pulls student groups out for short work sessions on key concepts. She also offers a morning homework club two days a week to help students with homework issues before school begins.
We have 3 reading Wolf Den paras and one primary math para. Our Title 1 staff are key to our improvement efforts.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
We have two amazing coaches. Krista Chatters works at our building and Pam Landoni is a district coach. They have been our primary professional development teachers. We embraced the core standards early in our process and began teaching our staff the shifts four years ago. Early on, we looked to our student data, we took that data and found areas that our curricula was not teaching. We sought new curricula which was highly aligned. We then focused our PD on the field testing and implementing new curricula. Krista and Pam have been locked on to our PD for the last four years. We have surveyed our teachers and offered PD that they feel they need and we have established building goals for PD. This year we are only offering PD in math, ELA, and SEL. We meet as a staff, or in teams, to carry out this work. 1/2 day releases are also offered for our staff to receive individual PD opportunities.
Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
At GWE we use data for everything! Our Principal meets with our Counselor, Instructional Coach, Literacy Coach, Title 1 Math teacher and Students with Disabilities teachers every other week for 2 hours. Reading and math data is discussed. The team discusses systemic solutions to lagging data. We discuss and plan professional development for our staff in areas that our data directs us. These meetings have become the foundation for our academic growth and instructional improvement plan. Our principal also meets with our Building Council Grade Level representatives to discuss data and teacher needs.
In 2014, we began using the Indistar System to focus our data use. Indistar focuses on core functions and effective practices of successful schools. We have used this tool to assess our areas of effectiveness and also to evaluate areas that we feel we need to improve.
We embrace the "hard truths" of our data and work to improve our systems to help our students find academic success.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
At GWE, we have a culture of learning. We have become a community of learners who work hard; we embrace perseverance and help one another and our community. Over the last 5 years, we've reduced discipline referrals to less than 20 per year. Some of the ways we have achieved this culture: Our Counselor meets with students & teachers often teaching SEL skills such as our "Bucket Filler" program" We have a school wide behavior system based on Cooperation, Attitude, Respect/Responsibility, Effort and Safety. Students earn praise when they model CARES behaviors in the form of PAW Pride tickets.
Each month we have Student Recognition Assemblies where our students earn 1,000+ certificates for academic and behavioral standards. Examples of awards children earn would be improvement in their individual reading levels, math facts, typing skills, good behavior or improved use of the writing process.
We work very hard to cultivate a culture of respect in our staff and students.
Stats
  • Category 2

    Selected in 2016

  • Grades: k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 6,700
    Student Enrollment: 560
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 0.4%
    White/Caucasian: 80%
    Hispanic: 9.7%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.6%
    Asian: 0.8%
    Native American: 1.6%
    Other: 6.9%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:24
    % Reduced Lunch: 47.4%
    % ELL Learners: 2.6%
    Founded: 1991
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Donna Hudson
  • CONTACT:
    171 Carlsborg Rd.
    Sequim, WA 98382
    360-582-3300
    dhudson@sequim.k12.wa.us