Students in grades K-3 will be taking the Idaho Reading Indicator (IRI) starting May 10th as required by the Idaho State Department of Education. The IRI will be assessing students' early literacy skills.

Students in grades 3rd-8th will be taking the ELA and Math Idaho Standards Achievement Tests (ISATs) starting April 26th. These are state-wide tests in reading, language usage, and mathematics. Students in grades 5th and 8th have taken the Science ISAT. The school will not receive any data from the Science ISAT because it is a new assessment and the results will be used as baseline data for the state.

The results of the data are one piece of data collected at one point in time. As an educational organization, it is important that we gather other pieces of summative assessment data that tell the whole story of a child’s achievement. I point this out because I don’t believe that teachers, parents or students should make any changes to their usual routines to “prepare” for the tests. We believe that deep learning of content and authentic skills will naturally transfer to higher test performance and, thus, lead to greater academic achievement.

With that being said, we know we have experienced a few abnormal years and I want to take a second to talk a little bit about what these tests mean for our school moving forward. The tests results will be a part of our overall Idaho School Report Card, which can be found here. Alongside our EL Education School Designer, our staff will use the results to identify grade level standards that need to be addressed in the 2022-2023 school year curriculum and potentially other interventions that may be required on a student by student basis.

I hope that this gives you a better understanding of the purpose of the state-wide assessments. You can learn more about these assessments at the Idaho’s State Department of Education’s website.

There was an error on the school calendar. There will be school on Wednesday, May 4. Please see the flyer below for information on Bike to School Day.

National Teacher Appreciation Week is May 2 to May 6. The Parent CREW would like to celebrate the wonderful, hard working, caring teachers at PPCS by having a catered meal for our staff on May 4th. If we are able to collect enough donations, we would also like to send our staff on a summer adventure. Last year the Parent CREW was able to pay for our teaching staff to go white water rafting. Any contributions towards our effort would be greatly appreciated. Cash and checks (made to Mailina) can be dropped of at the PPCS office in an envelope labeled "Parent CREW'. If it is more convenient you can also send your donation directly to Amy Ball via Venmo.(@ballamye).

Run the Palouse has been changed to being a fall event, due to the many other events happening at the end of the school year. We think it'll be a great community-building way to start each new school year!

Due to Covid, PPCS had to suspend our Chinese program. PPCS renewing our Chinese program is linked to Moscow High School having a Chinese program. Moscow School District will be discussing renewal of their Chinese program at their April 27 Board meeting. If you feel that a Chinese program at the high school level is valuable to your students, you may want to consider sending communication to the MSD Board of Directors. In your communication, you would not be advocating for a program at PPCS, as we are not part of Moscow School District. By advocating for a high school program, however, you improve the chance of PPCS being able to have a Chinese program. Ken Faunce is the MSD Board Chair - kfaunce@
msd281.org

The Landscape committee is looking for volunteers to help in the long term vision and planning of the landscape at PPCS, as well as volunteers that would like to be added to a landscape work party e-mail list. If you would like to be a part of the long term vision of healthy roots and soils at PPCS or would have fun giving back to the school by getting dirty, weeding, moving materials, and planting, please email David Herbold at: davidherb@yahoo.com

Our current Parent Crew leaders are stepping down next year, so we're looking for one or two folks who are interested in leading the events that bring our parents and school together.

There are two parts to the role.

1. To inspire other PPCS parents to get involved in our school's events!

2. To coordinate and lead those events.

Some of the events that Parent Crew typically leads are:

• Back to School Picnic
• Walk to School Days
• Teacher Appreciation
• Book Sales
• Run the Palouse
• Middle School Dance
• CREW social events

Being a Parent Crew leader allows you to play an important and practical role at our school, one where you'll have the opportunity to create events for our kids and our community, and help the teachers and staff. If this sounds like something you are interested in, please contact ppcsparentcrew@gmail.com

Our school board’s Development Committee has been hard at work fundraising for our school, and are working on launching our annual appeal as the year draws to a close. We are very excited about the opportunity that this year’s annual appeal provides, but to get it off the ground we need someone with videography and editing skills and equipment to volunteer their time, work with some amazing kiddos, and contribute to the success of our fine school. Specifically we need help with filming and editing some student interviews. If you have the equipment and skills, and some free time in the next month, please reach out to our development committee at development@palouseprairieschool.org