Wasson wins $131,000 grant to help minority, poor students
Details in the Wasson High School makeover plan project some lofty targets, including dramatically improving achievement scores, improving minority graduation rates and increasing minority student participation in honors classes.
The plan impressed the state enough for the school to win a $131,000 grant aimed at helping minority and poor students do better.
The Wasson grant made Colorado Springs School District 11 one of 11 statewide to get funding from the $1.7 million “Closing the Achievement Gap” pot authorized by the legislature. The new one-year grants are in addition to a three-year, $1.8 million pilot project announced in 2008 with six districts, none in the Pikes Peak region.
The D-11 board recently approved the plan to transform Wasson into a School of Innovation. State approval of its application for that special status is pending.
Innovation schools are given some of the management and budget freedoms afforded to private and charter so they can try new things.
The grant money will be used primarily on the Freshman Academy because about 60 percent of Wasson’s incoming ninth-graders are not proficient in reading, writing or math, according to the school’s grant application.
“We know that our incoming minority students are struggling from the start,” said Jessica Sharp, D-11 director of grants.
The district plans to hire a Freshman Academy coordinator and an additional interventionist to assist students, she said.
The grant also will pay for 20 teachers to receive training from the Los Angeles-based Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, which will send trainers to Colorado Springs, she said. Those teachers will then train other Wasson teachers in the concepts.
The task force that developed Wasson’s transformation plan gathered data and student input and indicated the school was not adequately integrating incoming students, especially those who were not considered high performers. Student surveys indicated a consistent concern about “preferential treatment” of top students.
The Freshman Academy will offer a more interdisciplinary approach in which each student will be assigned to a core team of four teachers. Ninth-graders also will be required to take a freshman seminar that will provide time to learn organizational skills and provide time for help with homework.
The school also is recruiting community mentors for the students, and has partnered with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to provide 25 mentors this year and 50 in 2011.
In addition, the school will add the Wasson Prep program, a two-week summer course to ease the transition from middle school to high school.
As part of its innovation plan, Wasson is also creating three upper-level academies that will specialize in the arts, law and leadership, and science/math.
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