“La bufanda!” and “El vestido!” they shout as their teacher instructs them to repeat after her.

These 10 boys and girls, all between the ages of 6 and 11, are a part of a growing program in the Issaquah School District. Foreign Language for Youth, or FLY as it is also known, is an after-school series that equips elementary school students with foundational language skills in Arabic, French, Spanish, Chinese and Mandarin. Featured in 15 of the state’s school districts, the program uses games, conversation and activities to engage young pupils who are otherwise not exposed to foreign languages until later in their school careers.

“Students are like sponges at this early age,” Konni Barlich, founder and director of FLY, said. “Their brains are so malleable that they just take in information.”

FLY is unaffiliated with any formal curriculum, although lessons are often held in a district’s schools to make for a more conducive learning environment. The students in one first-level Spanish course, for example, practiced their clothing vocabulary in an empty classroom after hours.

The teacher asked them to pretend they were shopping at a clothing boutique in Barcelona. To place something in their shopping basket, they would first have to order in Spanish. The student with the biggest pile of loot at the end of the game was named the winner.

“When you have these fun activities, kids don’t even realize they’re absorbing the information,” parent Anne Freeman said.

Freeman enrolled her son in the course at Cascade Ridge because she remembers struggling with languages as a young girl. Learning early on, she hoped, would better equip her son for the future.

“You have to be able to understand other cultures, it’s not just about language alone,” Freeman said.

Barlich first got the idea for FLY when her three children, now in their late 20s, were enrolled in elementary school. While volunteering in the classroom, she realized the students lacked any substantial foreign language curriculum.

“I was frustrated,” she recalled. “I thought, well that’s great, they make tortillas or whatever dish. But what I wanted is for them to actually learn the language.”

Talking to fellow parents revealed that she was not alone in her frustration. And so Barlich, a former nurse, took the initiative. In 1995, she opened FLY. In the coming years, she researched, grew and fine-tuned her curriculum, until she felt she’d developed a set of courses that was both engaging and effective.

Barlich admits that it can be difficult to retain students because the program isn’t formally recognized as a part of their school curriculum. Even one year of language, though, she said, is beneficial. Since the inception of FLY, she has witnessed a range of success stories. She has seen students graduate from the program, master several languages at once, even return to teach. Her own daughter, Karli Barlich, is one such success story.

Karli is now assistant director of the program after majoring in Spanish and honing her skills abroad for a year.

“It encourages cultural empathy,” Karli said of FLY. “We have native speakers teaching these classes and they get to learn all about their culture and their country.”

Karli can remember stepping into a taxi in Spain, after spending years studying the language and realizing how little of it she actually understood. It’s this understanding, that conversation and dialogue are the crux of any foreign language program, that has inspired FLY’s curriculum.

Karli added that peer pressure and the shame of making a mistake often discourages students from fully practicing a language. Starting children at an earlier age, when they’re still too young to be unsettled by peer pressure, gives them the building blocks to confidently study another language in the future.

In a region as diverse as the Pacific Northwest, Konni Barlich said, linguistic aptitude is becoming recognized as a critical skill-set.

“I think it is one of the most important things we teach our children today,” she said of foreign language.

Celina Kareiva is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.

The Issaquah district will now spend some time ramping up to implementation of the new system, according to Associate Superintendent Ron Thiele, as well as information released by the district.

The new teacher and principal evaluation system should be in place in time for the next school year.

In fall 2013, every Washington public school will be implementing a state-mandated system to evaluate the performance of teachers and principals.

According to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the vast majority of districts in the state do not use a research-based instructional framework to guide teacher evaluations.

The Issaquah School District is an exception and district officials decided they wanted to be a part of any coming changes.

“We decided we wanted to be on the forefront of that,” said Sara Niegowski, executive director of communications for the district.

The new teacher evaluation system was the choice of a selection committee consisting of district administrators and representatives of the Issaquah Education Association, the local teachers union.

Frameworks under consideration initially were studied in 13 districts, or consortiums of districts, from around the state, Thiele said.

Those initial studies earned past praise from Thiele, who said he fully supports strengthening teacher evaluations.

“It’s good for the districts, it’s good for the state, it’s good for the teachers,” he added.

In the end, local officials decided to go with what is known as the Charlotte Danielson framework, Thiele said, indicating there were several reasons for that choice.

For example, the district claimed there is solid evidence of a direct relationship between the use of the framework and improved student learning. Additionally, several other districts are using the framework.

Those districts include Bellevue and Brainbridge Island. As the implementation process moves forward, there could be opportunities for various districts to share resources and information, Thiele said.

Finally, the district already uses an older version of the Danielson system.

“That will help us in training our teachers and principals,” Thiele added.

In the past, a move toward a new evaluation framework gained the support of the Issaquah district teachers’ union.

The district’s current methods could use some toughening, said Phyllis Runyon, head of the Issaquah Education Association.

“You have to know the negatives before you can move forward,” she said.

There has been some speculation that the state’s move towards standardized teacher evaluations is somehow linked to the idea of teacher merit pay.

That is not at all the case, according to Thiele.

The state legislation creating the pilot programs and what eventually will be evaluation requirements make no mention of merit pay, he said. The issue also has not been a local consideration, Thiele maintained.

“It’s not part of the work we’re doing,” he said.

Reach reporter Tom Corrigan at 392-6434, ext. 241, or tcorrigan@isspress.com.

Snow continues to fall in the Puget Sound region, but some forecasts expect the majority of the snow to stop by about 1 p.m.

In Sammamish, snow continues to fall and a few inches are on the ground. While snow amounts are enough to be annoying, they are far less than the 6-14 inches predicted a few days ago.

Roads are slippery and officials recommend not driving unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Both school districts are closed, and neither has announced a decision about school tomorrow.

The city has kept its parks open, for people who want to enjoy the snow, but the parking lots have been closed, according to the city website. Officials say that in the past, people have driven into the parks to do doughnuts in the snow, which has damaged city property.

For details on the snowfall, including links to a map of which roads the city makes a priority for plowing, go here.

And don’t get too used to the snow. Forecasts call for rain Friday to wash it all away.

The committee held its last meeting Dec. 14, Niegowski said.

“We reached agreement on some major points,” said Patrick Murphy, district director of secondary education.

Murphy worked as a chairman or facilitator for the schedule committee.

He will gather the group’s basic ideas and turn them into a report for Superintendent Steve Rasmussen, Niegowski said. That report should appear in this month, Murphy said.

School officials began looking at uniform high school schedules as a means to better share school resources and make other aspects of the school day more efficient.

“We do believe we can do better than the current scheduling,” Murphy said.

Both Issaquah and Skyline high schools use a six-period day, while Liberty High School has an extended schedule.

“The existing six periods is not optimal,” said Kelly Munn, a Sammamish resident and parent representative to the committee.

Committee members put a lot of thought into changing to a seven-period day at all schools, Murphy said. But one concern was that the change would strain the district’s budget by up to $3 million.

According to its supporters, Liberty’s schedule allows the school to offer far more elective classes than the other two comprehensive high schools. Some Liberty parents and students feel the Liberty schedule is worth protecting.

“I’m still being open-minded about the whole process,” Karen Odegard, president of the Liberty PTA, said.

But Odegard also immediately added she hopes whatever new schedule ultimately emerges doesn’t cut Liberty students access to elective classes, arguing other schedules somewhat limit students to core courses.

While the committee doesn’t like the schedules at Skyline and Issaquah, the schedule committee also didn’t land in favor of Liberty’s schedule, Munn said. The committee came to the conclusion Liberty students don’t take full advantage of the added electives and might not put enough time into core classes, she said.

Murphy said he hopes the committee’s work can guide the district going forward, even if no recommendation on a uniform high school schedule resulted from that work. He expressed some regret the committee didn’t arrive at a common schedule.

“In some ways, it was kind of a disappointment,” Murphy said.

But he added a belief that the committee learned a lot, that at a minimum some ideas could be implemented at the building level.

Once Murphy reports to Rasmussen, the administration will make its own report — and most likely some recommendations — to the school board.

Reach reporter Tom Corrigan at 392-6434, ext. 241, or tcorrigan@isspress.com.

The Issaquah School District will ask district residents to do so this April. At its last meeting of 2011 on Dec. 14, the Issaquah School Board unanimously passed a resolution supporting a more than $219 million capital bond issue. If passed, the bond money will provide funding for various building projects and school upgrades around the district for the next eight years.

Other bonds are expiring, so district taxpayers are in for a tax cut. Without the bond, residents will see their tax rate drop to $4.05 per thousand dollars of assessed value. If the bond is approved, tax rates will go to $4.42 — meaning the bond represents essentially a 37 cent tax increase.

Besides major projects proposed for Sunny Hills, Skyline, Issaquah Valley Elementary School, Issaquah Middle School and Liberty High School, the bond measure will fund district-wide improvements on carpet ($1.5 million) and security systems ($4.8 million), among other projects.

If passed, the district will spend $27.11 million to rebuild Sunny Hills Elementary School, which currently has 11 of 31 classrooms meeting in portables, according to the board’s approved bond proposal. The Skyline stadium upgrade will receive nearly $6.5 million, among other smaller improvements to the school facility.

The district will spend $1.3 million to install an artificial turf football field and rubber track at Pine Lake Middle School and will also put $95,000 toward converting the school’s photography darkroom into a video lab, according to the bond document. Pacific Cascade Middle School will also get $1.3 million for a new football field and track.

The district would also spend $2.1 million at Beaver Lake Middle School to install a new football field and track, add a covered play area ($350,000) and replace the current vinyl wall covering ($165,000).

The bond will also help replace roofing, skylights and flooring at Endeavour Elementary School. Discovery Elementary School will get about $443,000 to replace skylights and flooring.

The board voted in October to put the question on the ballot. At that point, board member Chad Magendanz voted against the issue.

Magendanz, elected board president Dec. 14, said despite his earlier vote, the bond issue has his total support. Magendanz said his earlier “no” vote was the result of a procedural issue, that he felt the board should have put off the final vote on floating the bond until a later meeting.

Replacing departing board member Jan Colbrese, board member Anne Moore had been sworn into office just a short time before the vote on a resolution supporting the bond. But Moore noted she served on the bond committee that came up with the original bond proposal. With that in mind, she said she is very familiar with the bond issue and, despite her newness to the board, was very comfortable voting to support the bond.

Kelly Munn, of Sammamish, is a co-chairwoman of Volunteers for Issaquah Schools, which will run the bond campaign. The school board initially planned to put the bond issue on a February ballot. Munn said her committee began to meet weekly in August to discuss the bond measure.

After about a year of conducting self-evaluations, writing papers and compiling lesson plans and in-class video, 23 teachers representing all grade levels received National Board Certification, the National Board for Teaching Standards announced Dec. 7. They are among the 6,200 teachers around the country who earned the certification — considered the highest level of certification for a teacher — in 2011.

The Lake Washington School District saw 10 Sammamish teachers become board-certified, according to a press release. In all, 36 Lake Washington teachers achieved National Board Certification.

Of the 24 Issaquah School District teachers who received the certification, 13 of them teach Sammamish students.

The teachers are:

Eastlake High School — Kalle Andres, English language arts/adolescence and young adulthood; Tyrell Hardtke, science/adolescence and young adulthood; Sherilynn Skiba, mathematics/adolescence and young adulthood; John Stratton, mathematics/adolescence and young adulthood; Cassie Wesson-Mast, mathematics/adolescence and young adulthood.

Inglewood Junior High School — Gerald Lenocker, social studies – history/adolescence and young adulthood; Eric Sambrano, mathematics/early adolescence; Heather Tracy, physical education/early adolescence through young adulthood.

McAuliffe Elementary School — Anna Jaross, literacy: reading-language arts/early and middle childhood.

Smith Elementary School — Kathy Hiles, generalist/middle childhood

Skyline High School — Cari Crane, social studies; Elizabeth Lund, language arts; Marisa Reinsch, math; Tracy Schellberg, P.E.

Pacific Cascade Middle School — Heather Weider, humanities; Kathryn Rice, science.

Beaver Lake Middle School — Catherine Johnson, science.

Discovery Elementary School — Abigail Ferguson, second grade; Allison Lehr, fourth grade.

Endeavour Elementary School — Callie Nordell, third grade.

Creekside Elementary School — Neal Pollock, fifth grade, Kathryn Tasa, kindergarten.

The 23 local teachers, along with 922 others around the state gave Washington the second-most new board-certified teachers, according to the district press releases. North Carolina had the most.

Washington has the fourth-highest overall number of teachers who are National Board Certified, with 6,242. The state employs 59,681 teachers, according to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

During their application process, teachers spend an average of about 400 hours putting together a two-piece package, the Issaquah School District said. First they compile a portfolio of lesson plans, student work samples and a video of live classroom teaching, which demonstrate the teacher’s effect on student learning. The second piece is a written assessment, which measures the teacher’s mastery and overall knowledge of their particular subject area, classroom practices and curriculum design. The national panel of teachers must approve the application. Otherwise they return it for further development.

Depending on the district, a teacher may receive $1,500 to $3,000 in grants to pay for the National Board Certification, the Issaquah School District said. And based on a state measure to respond to a federally mandated report in 2008, teachers receive a $5,000 pay increase.

Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com.

She knew she did better than the “B-” reflected in the rundown on the online grade book. But she quickly realized that “B-” was one of six grades she received for the assignment from teacher Sarah Rainwater.

“I didn’t like seeing that in the grade book,” said McIlwain, now a sophomore.

McIlwain, in turn, spent much of her freshman year studying a little harder for writing tests and working a paper’s thesis a little longer, she said.

Rainwater is one of an increasing number of teachers in the Issaquah and Lake Washington school districts turning to standards-based grading systems to more efficiently and accurately gauge their students’ aptitude.

They’re changing from a 100-point, percentage-based grading scale to a 4-point one similar to that used in elementary school classrooms. More than that, teachers are breaking a grade up into components to give students a better idea of which areas might need work.

From math teachers to science and English teachers, more and more are changing their grading methods to get students more involved in their own progress through high school, as well as to more closely align with district and state standards. It helps teachers distinguish between a student’s motivation and ability.

And teachers said they’re already seeing results.

“This is a huge deal for someone,” said Rainwater, who is in her second year teaching freshman humanities at Skyline. “Being able to separate these two things is creating a paradigm shift.”

In the classrooms of those teachers using the new method, it’s easier for students to take initiative and improve on an area of academic weakness. Instead of handing back a test with the final overall grade of, say 80/100, at the top, it’s broken down into respective skill areas, such as “Thesis,” “Evidence,” “Analysis,” “Style,” “Organization,” and “Introduction and conclusion.” Each area has its own grade and is entered into the grade book as such. Even if a student sees their “A-“ at the top, Rainwater said many of them tend to dwell on the “C” they got in a particular area and inevitably work to improve it for next time or for a test retake.

“It gets more buy-in from them, in terms of, “oh, I know specifically what I can work on,’” said Brian Arnot, math teacher at Pacific Cascade Middle School. “The purely percentage-based scale is not good for students. It does not encourage a struggling learner to achieve and work hard. You throw a few ‘zeroes’ in and a few ‘Fs,’ you’re not going to recover.”

In the new system, those students have a greater chance of digging themselves out by the end of a semester, Arnot and Rainwater said. It allows students to retake or re-assess certain things.

“Even the struggling student can be encouraged,” Arnot said.

And it mostly happens without the teacher having to track down each student and suggest they study the part they bombed on the test.

McIlwain doesn’t have any teachers this year who grade like Rainwater. But she took Rainwater’s performance-tracking system to heart last year and has been able to self-direct on certain assignments as a sophomore.

“It’s really helpful to see what I need to work on,” McIlwain said. “I’ve been able to take things I haven’t been as good at … and work on it this year.”

Rainwater provided a specific example of the new grading model. Her honors world studies class conducted in-class discussions Oct. 3 for a grade. Instead of a student getting simply a 39 out of 40 for “Discussion-Economic Systems,” the grade is entered as 10 of 10 on “evidence,” 10 of 10 on “analysis,” 10 of 10 on “style” and 9 of 10 on “thesis.” Within the new 4-point system, the grades are entered as 4, 4, 4, and 3.5. All are still above standard, but a student intent on perfecting her grade might work harder on her thesis for her next paper.

“It forces students to reflect on their ability and what specifically they need to do to grow,” said Rainwater.

While some individual teachers have run ahead of the pack with the emerging grading system, it’s is part of a larger trend to help educators at every level make the K-12 experience as seamless and successful — according to state and district standards — as possible for every student, said Kathryn Reith, director of communications for the Lake Washington School District.

“Standardized grading is really part of a whole system,” Reith said. “It gives whole schools and whole districts the same language and understanding.”

So when a student changes a grade or a school, their teacher can look at them and say ‘oh this is where you’re at,’ and provide appropriate guidance or instruction.

Rainwater and Arnot acknowledged the system, at first, might seem confusing to parents keeping tabs on their child’s academic performance amid varying grading schemes in different subject areas. But so far, they each have noticed parents have fewer questions about how their student can improve with their schoolwork.

“The parents don’t have as many questions for me now,” said Rainwater.

In a time of ever-changing and increasing standards, educators in Sammamish schools are working to identify what is an adequate level of understanding of a subject for a student in each grade level and how to measure whether a student has met that level.

“In our district, we’ve done all the work at the elementary (level),” said Reith. “We’re doing the work right now at middle schools.”

And it’s inevitable that high schools in Lake Washington will adopt the system in the near future, she said. It’s just a matter of working to put it in place.

“It really requires a lot of work and for everybody to know it really well,” Reith said.

While McIlwain didn’t exactly like seeing that “B-“ on the “Thesis” portion of her six-part grade, that’s precisely what teachers are banking on for the new system to work — dissatisfaction with a low grade. Regardless of the impact that “B-“ has on the overall “A” McIlwain got on the paper, it drives her to get better.

“I believe that’s the reason I’m a better writer, because I knew that’s exactly what I needed to work on,” McIlwain said.

Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com.

At first, Caitlin McIlwain got a little nervous when she saw a lower-than-desired grade on her first world studies paper as a freshman at Skyline High School.

She knew she did better than the “B-” reflected in the rundown on the online grade book. But she quickly realized that “B-” was one of six grades she received for the assignment from teacher Sarah Rainwater.

“I didn’t like seeing that in the grade book,” said McIlwain, now a sophomore.

McIlwain, in turn, spent much of her freshman year studying a little harder for writing tests and working a paper’s thesis a little longer, she said.

Rainwater is one of an increasing number of teachers in the Issaquah and Lake Washington school districts turning to standards-based grading systems to more efficiently and accurately gauge their students’ aptitude.

They’re changing from a 100-point, percentage-based grading scale to a 4-point one similar to that used in elementary school classrooms. More than that, teachers are breaking a grade up into components to give students a better idea of which areas might need work.

From math teachers to science and English teachers, more and more are changing their grading methods to get students more involved in their own progress through high school, as well as to more closely align with district and state standards. It helps teachers distinguish between a student’s motivation and ability.

And teachers said they’re already seeing results.

“This is a huge deal for someone,” said Rainwater, who is in her second year teaching freshman humanities at Skyline. “Being able to separate these two things is creating a paradigm shift.”

In the classrooms of those teachers using the new method, it’s easier for students to take initiative and improve on an area of academic weakness. Instead of handing back a test with the final overall grade of, say 80/100, at the top, it’s broken down into respective skill areas, such as “Thesis,” “Evidence,” “Analysis,” “Style,” “Organization,” and “Introduction and conclusion.” Each area has its own grade and is entered into the grade book as such. Even if a student sees their “A-“ at the top, Rainwater said many of them tend to dwell on the “C” they got in a particular area and inevitably work to improve it for next time or for a test retake.

“It gets more buy-in from them, in terms of, “oh, I know specifically what I can work on,’” said Brian Arnot, math teacher at Pacific Cascade Middle School. “The purely percentage-based scale is not good for students. It does not encourage a struggling learner to achieve and work hard. You throw a few ‘zeroes’ in and a few ‘Fs,’ you’re not going to recover.”

In the new system, those students have a greater chance of digging themselves out by the end of a semester, Arnot and Rainwater said. It allows students to retake or re-assess certain things.

“Even the struggling student can be encouraged,” Arnot said.

And it mostly happens without the teacher having to track down each student and suggest they study the part they bombed on the test.

McIlwain doesn’t have any teachers this year who grade like Rainwater. But she took Rainwater’s performance-tracking system to heart last year and has been able to self-direct on certain assignments as a sophomore.

“It’s really helpful to see what I need to work on,” McIlwain said. “I’ve been able to take things I haven’t been as good at … and work on it this year.”

Rainwater provided a specific example of the new grading model. Her honors world studies class conducted in-class discussions Oct. 3 for a grade. Instead of a student getting simply a 39 out of 40 for “Discussion-Economic Systems,” the grade is entered as 10 of 10 on “evidence,” 10 of 10 on “analysis,” 10 of 10 on “style” and 9 of 10 on “thesis.” Within the new 4-point system, the grades are entered as 4, 4, 4, and 3.5. All are still above standard, but a student intent on perfecting her grade might work harder on her thesis for her next paper.

“It forces students to reflect on their ability and what specifically they need to do to grow,” said Rainwater.

While some individual teachers have run ahead of the pack with the emerging grading system, it’s is part of a larger trend to help educators at every level make the K-12 experience as seamless and successful — according to state and district standards — as possible for every student, said Kathryn Reith, director of communications for the Lake Washington School District.

“Standardized grading is really part of a whole system,” Reith said. “It gives whole schools and whole districts the same language and understanding.”

So when a student changes a grade or a school, their teacher can look at them and say ‘oh this is where you’re at,’ and provide appropriate guidance or instruction.

Rainwater and Arnot acknowledged the system, at first, might seem confusing to parents keeping tabs on their child’s academic performance amid varying grading schemes in different subject areas. But so far, they each have noticed parents have fewer questions about how their student can improve with their schoolwork.

“The parents don’t have as many questions for me now,” said Rainwater.

In a time of ever-changing and increasing standards, educators in Sammamish schools are working to identify what is an adequate level of understanding of a subject for a student in each grade level and how to measure whether a student has met that level.

“In our district, we’ve done all the work at the elementary (level),” said Reith. “We’re doing the work right now at middle schools.”

And it’s inevitable that high schools in Lake Washington will adopt the system in the near future, she said. It’s just a matter of working to put it in place.

“It really requires a lot of work and for everybody to know it really well,” Reith said.

While McIlwain didn’t exactly like seeing that “B-“ on the “Thesis” portion of her six-part grade, that’s precisely what teachers are banking on for the new system to work — dissatisfaction with a low grade. Regardless of the impact that “B-“ has on the overall “A” McIlwain got on the paper, it drives her to get better.

“I believe that’s the reason I’m a better writer, because I knew that’s exactly what I needed to work on,” McIlwain said.

Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com.

Still, those running the bond campaign are starting to put the groundwork for it in place.

In the meantime, the Issaquah School Board approved the ballot language for the measure at its regular meeting Nov. 9.

The question asks voters to approve the sale of bonds to support various capital improvement projects in the district. The projects listed in the actual ballot include the rebuilding of Clark Elementary and Issaquah Middle schools. The language also addresses the relocation and expansion of Tiger Mountain Community High School.

Those projects are the largest, and possibly most controversial, included in the bond package. In the original bond program proposed by Superintendent Steve Rasmussen, the total cost of the interrelated projects was given as $86 million.

The ballot language also mentions improving “districtwide heating/ventilation, space and security; make usability improvements to curricular/athletic fields and stadiums; and make other improvements.”

Athletic field improvements proposed for Skyline, Issaquah and Liberty high schools, along with artificial turf and new rubberized running tracks for district middle schools, is another plan likely to draw some criticism.

Kelly Munn is a co-chair of Volunteers for Issaquah Schools, which will run the bond campaign. The school board initially planned to put the bond issue on a February ballot; VIS asked them to postpone the public vote until April, allowing the committee more time to sell the issue.

Munn said her committee began to meet weekly in August.

“Right now, we are still in the building mode,” she said.

They are looking for volunteers to take on various tasks, such as organizing the printing and distribution of yard signs or campaign buttons. Munn said an important need is for someone to identify a teacher and a PTA representative from every building in the district, representatives willing to help promote the bond.

Munn said the committee also is trying to set a budget for the coming campaign. Planners have decided on their basic strategy, a decision that increased the price of the campaign.

The committee first considered what’s known as a “stealth campaign,” one aimed at people who promoters are certain will vote in favor of the issue and making sure those people cast their ballots, Munn said. An alternative approach attempts to sell the issue to the public as a whole. Despite the fact it is the more expensive — and probably the more difficult — of the two options, planners decided to go with the broad-based approach.

While the district cannot directly take sides in the campaign, school officials can provide information. Executive director of communications for the district, Sara Niegowski said she would place a link to bond information on the district’s website by the end of the month.

Reach reporter Tom Corrigan at 392-6434, ext. 241, or tcorrigan@isspress.com.

“Kids don’t just learn science, they do science,” said Joanne Griesemer, a curriculum specialist for the Issaquah School District.

Griesemer was referring to the district’s new science curriculum and said she has been happily busy over the past few months helping implement that curriculum.

Photo by Liz Yanev Miles Cady, a fourth grader in Liz Yanev’s class at Creekside, works on an investigation to find out what happens when rocks rub against each other. Photo by Liz Yanev

During the past spring and summer, the Issaquah School Foundation, in partnership with the local PTSA, put on various fundraisers and took in roughly $438,000 toward replacing the district’s kindergarten through fifth-grade science materials.

The fundraisers included having students dressed as mad scientists soliciting donations at various locations.

District officials pledged to match the foundation’s efforts with $700,000. The end result was the purchase of $1.1 million in new science materials. That includes everything from textbooks and workbooks to models, measuring instruments and so on.

Every elementary school in the district has received at least some of those items.

“I am so proud of our community’s support of the new science curriculum,” Superintendent Steve Rasmussen said. “World innovation is not slowing down just because state funding for public education is. We need to prepare our students to be competitive right now, and our community stepped up to that challenge.”

A committee of teachers, school administrators and parents helped select the new curriculum. According to Griesemer and others, the materials focus on three distinct areas or domains of scientific inquiry: life or biology; physical sciences; and earth and space sciences.

Students will tackle each topic in three ways: learning a certain system, making scientific inquiries and studying practical applications of scientific concepts.

The domains carry over from year to year.

For example, in kindergarten, students learn the basics of how a plant grows.

By the time they reach fourth grade, students are building their own miniature ecosystems, complete with plants, small fish and insects.

“You can see how ideas develop throughout their education, how the ideas get more complex,” Griesemer said.

Creekside fourth-graders in Liz Yanev’s classroom recently worked on projects as they learned about how moving water, ice and wind break down rock, transport materials and build up the earth’s surface.

Creekside currently has the kit for teaching earth-changing surfaces.

Yanev said she has already noticed students tend to be more engaged in their work with the new curriculum.

“Definitely the kids are engaged. They’re excited about science,” said Yanev. “They’re making personal connections.”

As of late October, Griesemer said the district had instituted the new curriculum at each of its elementary schools, but new materials still were arriving and teacher training still was continuing at special sessions in a portable classroom at Clark Elementary School.

When all new items are in the schools, some 680 boxes of fresh materials will have been delivered to the classrooms of approximately 450 district teachers. But that’s not the end of the travels for plenty of those materials.

In order to keep costs down, Griesemer said different sections of different domains would be taught at various schools on a rotating basis. For example, teachers will send the materials now being used at Creekside to study ecosystems off to a different school later this year. And, of course, Creekside will receive materials about other topics now being used at other schools.

Griesemer said this is the first time that Issaquah schools have used a rotating curriculum, at least on this large a scale. She said plenty of coordination will be needed.

“It’s a little like managing a circus,” she said.

Besides the physical movement of materials from one building to another, Griesemer and others also are working to ensure teachers are as familiar with the materials as possible. Curriculum suppliers and publishing sales reps provide that training along with district staff members.

“Teachers are teaching it with more fidelity. That’s really big for us,” said Yanev. “There’s more guidance on it, with teacher manuals.”

Why was a new science curriculum needed and why now? Griesemer said the answer goes back to the state adoption of new science standards in 2009. Issaquah officials had a new science curriculum on their adoption list, but the state’s action meant it had to happen more quickly. However, one major hurdle jumped in the way of the new curriculum, namely the slicing of $1.4 million in state funding from the budget at the mid-point of the last school year.

With that reduction, school administrators said the district could no longer afford to implement an entire new curriculum. They might have been able to go ahead with putting only the life science domain in place. That was when the schools foundation and the PTA stepped up to the plate.

While she’s not sure about other teachers, Yanev said she spends more time than she used to preparing for a unit and compiling student notebooks for science lessons. It’s tough to balance it amid an ever-increasing workload, but she seemed satisfied with the results she’s seeing in the classroom. It’s more interactive and hands-on and has a good mix of visuals and physical activities, she said.

“It’s worth it because of how the kids are responding to it,” Yanev said.

Reach reporter Tom Corrigan at 392-6434, ext. 241, or tcorrigan@isspress.com.