Blaine School District

Blaine High School Shines Bright!

In addition to three consecutive years of acknowledgment from Newsweek, specific to those High School recognized as being in the top 1200 across the Nation, the Blaine School District recently learned that U.S. News and World Report has named Blaine High School as one of 461 recipients of "Silver Medal" status. The process used for identification of "Gold" (100),"Silver"(461) and "Bronze" (1189) medal schools involved consideration of the academic performance level of students in relationship to state wide averages, the academic performance level of less advantaged students, and college readiness performance. The final factor(college readiness) is directly associated with the number of students that are enrolled in and completing Advance Placement (AP) courses and related assessments. We are proud of our programs in the Blaine School District and applaud all staff and students for their commitment to the highest level of academic accountability. Nicely done Borderites!

Long Range Planning Process Continues

The Blaine School District Board of Directors has initiated a Long Range Planning process, which is to be completed during the current school year. The final product is intended to assure for both program and facility goals at least five years out, and will serve to guide our program decision making process into the future.

It has been the School Board's intent to actively involve both parents and patrons in this Long Range Planning process. To that end, we have now completed four community forums. One forum was held in Blaine, two took place in the Birch Bay area, and the final forum was held in Pt. Roberts.

A Steering Committee, comprised of students, staff , parent and community members, will now work with the input collected from the community forums, and develop an overall plan, to be reviewed (February 22), and ultimately approved (March 22), by the Board of Directors.

Please watch for additional information regarding this process on the Blaine School District website. Thank you in advance for your continued interest in, and support for, the quality education of students in our collective communities

2009 WASL Scores Show Year-To-Year Growth At Multiple Levels

Once again in 2009, the Blaine School District experienced substantial gains in student performance on the WASL

at a significant number of grade levels, when compared to prior year results. In addition, students in the District are performing at or above State of Washington averages in 15 of 19 combined grade level and content areas being tested.

(click for additional detail)

The percentage of students meeting standard in reading increased at Grade 3, and also at Grade 6, by 17 and 14 points respectively, with gains were also posted at Grades 4, 5, 8 and 10.

The percentage of students meeting standard in math increased at Grade 5, and at Grade 6, each improving by 10 points, with gains also posted at Grades 3 and 8.

While the percentage of students meeting standard in writing did not increase substantially, overall scores remain consistently strong at the three grade levels (4-7-10) that participate in this portion of the state assessment.

Most noteworthy in the content area of science was a 22 percentage point gain at the 8th grade level.

With respect to Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), there are four specific areas, district-wide, where we did not see students reach state and federal performance targets for 2009-10. Special education students did not meet the prescribed targets in reading or math at both the Elementary School and Middle School levels. While the District as a whole met AYP at the High School level, Blaine High School students specifically missed the AYP prescribed targets, in the content area of math, in the “All”, “White”, and “Low Income” categories. It should be noted that these results could change when the scores of those students retesting this month (August) are calculated into the overall summary.

Additional AYP information can be accessed on the Blaine School District Web Site @ www.blainesd.org.

Across the District, our teachers, support staff and administrators continue to work extremely hard to provide students with the highest level of quality instruction. Our two year emphasis on math instruction, K-12, is showing solid results, with particular significance seen in the gains being made at the earlier grade levels. We are indeed experiencing success in building a solid foundation for future student growth in math.

As we transition to a new state assessment system in the 2009-10 school year, we remain confident that the high quality instructional programs that our students are experiencing will continue to be validated by common, mandated measures of academic performance.

Community Information