Europe: Bavaria Mr. Robert J Nicholson, Principal Unit 28041 APO, AE 09112 Document Generated On March 25, 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Description of the School 2 School's Purpose 4 Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement 5 Additional Information 6
Introduction Every school has its own story to tell. The context in which teaching and learning takes place influences the processes and procedures by which the school makes decisions around curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The context also impacts the way a school stays faithful to its vision. Many factors contribute to the overall narrative such as an identification of stakeholders, a description of stakeholder engagement, the trends and issues affecting the school, and the kinds of programs and services that a school implements to support student learning. The purpose of the Executive Summary (ES) is to provide a school with an opportunity to describe in narrative form the strengths and challenges it encounters. By doing so, the public and members of the school community will have a more complete picture of how the school perceives itself and the process of self-reflection for continuous improvement. This summary is structured for the school to reflect on how it provides teaching and learning on a day to day basis. Page 1
Description of the School Describe the school's size, community/communities, location, and changes it has experienced in the last three years. Include demographic information about the students, staff, and community at large. What unique features and challenges are associated with the community/communities the school serves? As part of the Defense Dependents School system, (VHS) was established on Rose Barracks as a Middle/High School in 1983. In 2007 VHS underwent a major expansion construction phase and became what is currently. The following year when Netzaberg Middle School opened, all of the middle school students relocated, and Vilseck became a grade 9 through 12 high school. The largest student enrollment for VHS came in 2010 when there were over 600 students. The enrollment for SY 2014/2015 is 475 students. The break down by grade level is: freshman class, 134; sophomore class, 138; junior class, 109; and the senior class, 94 students. VHS currently has sixty-five full time professional staff members this number includes two administrators, one school secretary, one registrar, one counseling clerk, one attendance/discipline clerk, one supply clerk, one administration officer, one educational technologist, three high school counselors, a school psychologist, a school nurse, four special education teachers, a speech pathologist, three Army JROTC instructors, thirty-eight classroom teachers, and five special education aides. The education level of our teaching staff is also amazing: two hold Educational Specialist Degrees, thirty-nine have earned Master's Degrees, ten hold Bachelor degrees, and one has an Associate's Degree. Two of our staff members have earned National Board Certifications. faces all of the challenges of a stateside high school as well as the added pressures of downrange deployments of our military and civilian parents. Approximately 354 of our students are dependents of Active Duty Army, three are dependents of Air Force members, 70 students are dependents of Army Civilians, and 47 students' parents are active reservists, DOD civilians, or DOD contractors. Most of our students have dealt with the stress of having a parent deployed and being separated numerous times from a parent. During these times, students often look to the school for academic, psychological, emotional, and behavioral support. Most of our students have dealt with the stress during these deployments of being separated numerous times from a parent and they look to the school to accommodate academic, psychological, emotional, and behavioral issues that arise. Based on these needs, our school has established a structured support system in which every student has access to interventions from a wide variety of providers. These providers include three school counselors, one psychologist, one embedded behavioral health counselor, and an Adolescent Support and Counseling Services (ASACS) counselor. Within this support structure are also several student organizations: Student Government, School Advisory Council (SAC), nurse, Student 2 Student (S2S), and the Student Support Team (SST). The administration and school leaders are responsive to the issues brought forth by the students and parents in School Advisory Committee (SAC), the PASS (Parent and Student Success), the Student Council, Booster Club, and informally with others throughout the year. One area where we have achieved significant success is the effective use of seminar, and after listening to the students and parents express their needs, the administration and staff collaborated for a viable solution. As a result, we changed the time and structures of seminar so that it is now in the morning instead of the afternoon. Our faculty and counselors continuously monitor the needs and placement of students within each seminar classes. VHS is the social hub of the community. Not only do parents and students attend our school events, but the entire community attends our athletic games, talent shows, art galleries, and musical concerts. We work as partners with the Garrison Teen Center, Club Beyond group, the Child and Youth Services (CYS), and Girl and Boy Scout troops and 2nd Calvary Regiment. We have many parents and sponsors who support our after school tutoring, serve as club and sport coaches, and volunteer within the classrooms and sporting events. We are here to serve our military children as well as to provide a quality education and positive environment for our students. Page 2
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School's Purpose Provide the school's purpose statement and ancillary content such as mission, vision, values, and/or beliefs. Describe how the school embodies its purpose through its program offerings and expectations for students. The main focus of (VHS) is student success. While reviewing our vision this school year, the staff decided we needed to modify it to better reflect what we believe. Based on this, the staff voted to rewrite our Vision Statement to: The vision of is to Engage, Educate, and Empower for student success. The use of the term, E3 (E to the third power) or E cubed, offers the students, community, and staff a mnemonic device to assist with remembering the vision. Our new vision may be in its infancy as an official statement, but it is not a new concept within our school community. Additionally, we rewrote our goal statement this year to align with our true goal of achieving student success. Our goal is now stated as: Through the use of critical thinking skills, all students at will be college/career ready. Further, our entire faculty is focusing lessons based on Dufour's Four Essential Questions: 1. What is it that we want all students to know? 2. How will we know if our students are learning? 3. How will we respond when students do not learn? 4. How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who are proficient? We are beginning to see positive results with this approach and hope to refine it further to help students achieve success. Weekly, a student eligibility list is provided to the staff that identifies those students not achieving academic success. Based on this indicator, our staff has implemented some strategies to assist these struggling students. Our newly formed freshman academy meets as a team to discuss their students and to work on strategies to assist the freshmen. Some of these are: lunch enrichment, after school tutoring, realigning seminar schedules, and parent conferences with counselors in attendance. The team also enlisted the assistance of our upper classes to bring math tutors into the seminars to assist with one-on-one tutoring. The sophomores who are on the eligibility list are monitored by the entire counselling staff. They meet with these students, provide support, email parents, schedule parent/teacher conferences, and assign after school tutoring as necessary. The junior class has all of the same interventions available to them, but we also include the Assistant Principal in the review process. Those seniors in academic distress meet weekly with the Principal, who encourages these students. We offer after school tutoring in the areas of math, science, language arts, and SAT/ACT. In an effort to celebrate the hard work and efforts of our students, each quarter we celebrate with an Honor Roll assembly for our A and A/B students and their parents. Students who are identified as having issues precluding them from being successful are referred to our Student Services Team. Most of these referrals come from staff members who feel that there are issues that need to be addressed above the classroom level. This team meets monthly to discuss these referred students and to find ways to assist the students to work through the issues interfering with their success. Our staff has implemented a wide variety of after school activities to ensure our students are engaged. We not only have all of the major sports opportunities available to our students, we also offer drama, robotics, JROTC rifle competition, JROTC drill team, Future Educators Association, student government, Free2Be, chess club, SAT/ACT tutoring, culinary arts, International Student Leadership Institute, All- Europe Honor Band and Choir, Creative Connections, STEMposium, Model US Senate, and US Senate Youth Program. Our goal is to create an environment for students which will enable them to develop into productive citizens who have a well-rounded education inclusive of all cultures, beliefs, and society members, so that the global society is truly a better place for us all. Page 4
Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement Describe the school's notable achievements and areas of improvement in the last three years. Additionally, describe areas for improvement that the school is striving to achieve in the next three years. (VHS) continuously stresses the importance of student success. Over the last three years, our school has maintained a 100% senior graduation rate. This rate is even more impressive when you learn during SY 13-14, 60% of our students' transcripts indicated that was the second, third, or fourth high school that they had attended. Based on the last three years of data, approximately 56.3% of our seniors go on to four year universities, 17.6 % attend two year colleges, 10 % attend technical schools, 7.3% seek careers in the military, and 8% listed other as their career goal. Our students have also averaged 2.2 million dollars in awarded scholarships over the past three years. One set of data that we use weekly is our student D and F grade list. We monitor this list for adding students to our after school tutoring/homework program, lunch enrichment, and class placement. We began monitoring this data last school year using SY 2012-2013 as our baseline data. When making a comparison between SY 12-13 to SY 13-14, we decreased our overall number of students with one D or F by a total of 25.8% during the first semester and 4.3% during the second semester. When comparing the same data for the first semester SY 13-14 to first semester SY 14-15, we show a slight increase of 0.2% for the VHS. We maintain a strong partnership with the military units stationed here at Rose Barracks. Our local military and civilian unit supports our career practicum program with jobs in the following areas: culinary arts, postal support, fitness, library services, vehicle mechanics, legal, social services, veterinary services, pre-school, and school-to-work programs. Our Junior Officer Training Corps (JROTC) battalion is one of the best in the European Theater. From 2010-2014, JROCT have earned the designation of Honor Unit with Distinctions for the last four years. These student cadets have also logged over 12,000 community volunteer hours during this same time period. Members of this unit have been offered and accepted scholarships to all four of the military academies. Our counselors sponsor a Student to Student (S2S) program that meets and greets all of our new students. There are currently 30 students actively involved in this program where they ensure that new students are escorted to all of their classes the first three or four days after arrival. They also act as guides and mentors during this transition period. This program has been so successful that our local Child Youth Services (CYS) requested that our students work with students who arrive during the summer recess. continues to push for student achievement in all subject areas; however, several major areas of concern have been identified for improvement. Our students have not been consistently encouraged to take higher level classes and therefore our Advanced Placement Potential scores have been low. The students have also historically scored low on the SAT and ACT. We have worked to improve these scores by offering more Advanced Placement classes and requiring students who are identified with the PSAT potential scores to enroll in at least one AP course, unless their parents choose not to enroll in the course. During this school year a review of the school goals adopted by our staff during the 2011-2012 school year revealed that they were not an authentic reflection of our school's true focus. The entire staff met and determined we must have goals reflective of the work we began three years ago based on the success of all students. The data we used for this determination include our D and F list, scores from SAT, Advanced Placement, Student Reading Inventory, local assessments, and classroom assessments. In October, a meeting was held that included all department chairs, parents, and student leaders to discuss options for determining what our new authentic goal should be. This process continued into our monthly staff meeting when the committee suggestions were introduced to our school staff. Once the staff added their input, we were able to write a goal that was truly what our school is working toward to ensure student success. This process also resulted in an improved school vision and logo that match the purpose and direction of VHS. Page 5
Additional Information Provide any additional information you would like to share with the public and community that were not prompted in the previous sections. NA Page 6