Lawndale Tribune AND lAwNDAle News The Weekly Newspaper of Lawndale Herald Publications - Inglewood, Hawthorne, Lawndale, El Segundo, Torrance & Manhattan Beach Community Newspapers Since 1911 - Circulation 30,000 - Readership 60,000 (310) 322-1830 - March 20, 2014 Lawndale Cougars Beat Cardinals Lawndale High’s Noe Tapia swings at a pitch during last Friday’s non-league game against Hawthorne. The Cougars topped the Cardinals 9-7. The Cardinals host Culver City in a non-league game Friday at 3:15 p.m. Photo by Joe Snyder. Jefferson Elementary Showing Gains By Dylan Little Jefferson Elementary School Principal Wendy Ostensen addressed the Hawthorne School Board during the March 12 meeting to share the campus’ progress in addressing last year’s problems as well as what she is focusing on improving this year. Jefferson is doing better than ever, as this year saw the school reach its Academic Performance Index (API) goal of 800 or more with a score of 801. The school has been in the 790s for years and Ostensen made it a school-wide goal to reach 800. While overjoyed with the score, the success also meant Ostensen would have to honor an agreement she made to be “slimed” (think Nickelodeon’s Double Dare) if the school met its goal. Despite the impending slime, Ostensen said she was excited to hear the school’s score. “Over the years the school has been making extremely positive, yet steady growth,” said Ostensen. “In 2013, we reached our goal of 800 points. I was just so excited--it was a very happy moment.” One factor in the API score increase was focusing on improvements to Jefferson’s third and fifth grade classrooms. This year saw scores in the two grades surge in their California Standards Test (CST) scores, with each group showing at least a five percentage point gain in students that were proficient or advanced in both the subjects of English Language Arts and Math. “Last year when I was up here, I mentioned some of the challenges we had ahead of us and our school was focusing on our third grade and our fifth grade student achievement because we had experienced some negativity and impacts there the year before,” said Ostensen. “I’m happy to report than in these subject areas, as well has fourth grade Mathematics, we have made significant progress.” However, not every area saw improvements. Second grade, which was once the best performing in the Hawthorne School District, saw a year of declines while the third and fifth graders were improving. Second grade English Language Arts scores dropped from 75 percent proficient or advanced to 65 percent, while second grade Math scores dropped from 74 percent proficient or advanced to 58 percent. “Every year, we have different challenges in different areas,” said Ostensen. “The year before, our second grade had the highest California Standards results in the district. In looking at [these results], we were very concerned. We have the same instructional staff, but a different group of kids.” The latest benchmarks for these students show that they are recovering from an anemic year thanks to targeted support from math and literacy coaches, after-school classes, additional professional development and new teaching strategies shared with their teachers. “Clearly it is working in our second grade,” said Ostensen. “If you compare the newest benchmark results in 2012-2013 to 2013- 2014, you can see we are making progress. There’s an upward trend.” Another section of students Ostensen spent the year focusing on is Jefferson’s English learners. She thought that by increasing the resources available to their teachers (including collaborative time with the school’s literacy coach), their performance would improve. She explained how Jefferson approaches the problem from a number of angles. “Our teachers collaborate with our special project teacher, who is extremely knowledgeable about our English learners’ designation and their placement for their program,” said Ostensen. “We provide our teachers with impactful visuals . . . and give them English learner support materials. We provide after-school classes to our targeted students.” For the most part these measures have been successful, with all grades except third increasing the number of proficient or advanced students by 10 percentage points or more. Ostensen already has a plan in place to help her third grade students see similar gains. “We are making significant progress,” she said. “We do have a little bit of a lag in third grade, so we are providing two months of after-school classes for those kids.” Overall, the Board was extremely pleased with Ostensen’s presentation and Jefferson’s progress. Board member Luciano Aguilar said he has heard many stellar reports from parents at the school. “I want to congratulate you for everything you do out there,” said Aguilar. “All the parents that I run into have nothing but good things to say.” Lastly, the Board congratulated Tyler Dixon, a fifth grader at Zela Davis Elementary School, on finishing first in Hawthorne’s eighth district-wide spelling bee. The competition was open to the winners of each school site’s spelling bee--in total, 20 students between the grades of four and six sought to be crowned spelling bee champion. The competition was held at Ramona Elementary and after eight rounds, Dixon was the last speller standing. Assistant Superintendent of Education Service Brian Markarian said that while consisting of “many heated rounds,” this year didn’t see the top two face off for round after round. “We normally have two contestants that go back and forth, but in this round we had four contestants and three of them happened to misspell words,” said Markarian. Dixon will go on to represent Hawthorne in the Los Angeles County Spelling Bee in Alhambra on March 26. Markarian wished Dixon good luck in showing Los Angeles County what the students in Hawthorne can do. “We want to wish him the absolute best in that competition,” said Markarian. • Inside This Issue Calendar...............................3 Classifieds............................3 Hawthorne Happenings....3 Food.......................................5 Legals............................. 2,6,7 Pets........................................4 Sports....................................8 Weekend Forecast Friday Mostly Sunny 65˚/55˚ Saturday Mostly Sunny 64˚/54˚ Sunday Partly Cloudy 64˚/55˚
Lawndale 03_20_14
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