Welcome to our monthly gallery of best practices and tools from your Center for High School Success partner schools in Oregon and Washington. Below, your coaches have collected timely tools and featured practices from across our region to help support you, your team, and your 9th graders! Please reach out to your coach if you have any questions, feedback, on input.
January/February 2024

“An interaction is not an intervention.” Meridian High School 9GST, as highlighted in this recent news article.
As we launch 2024, many of us find ourselves pushing 9th grade supports on two fronts: intervening for a strong finish to S1/Tri2, AND planning strategic interventions and master schedule shifts for the future. This month, we highlight timely tools to support these short and long term planning needs.
CHSS and OSPI News:
We have two key reminders:
- Please ensure that your team members have all registered HERE for our upcoming CHSS Winter and Spring Collaboratives;
- As the legislature begins a short 60 day session this week, we are advocating for continued OSPI of 9GST work in your schools. It is essential to demonstrate to OSPI and your legislators that you are utilizing CURRENT funding by submitting your billing monthly to demonstrate current use. Please don’t wait until June to spend out of your current grant budget, as key decisions for future funding will have been made long before then.
Calendar
Demonstration School Visits: Read more and register here
February 27: Louisiana Demonstration School Learning Lab: Tara High School
March 20: Colorado Demonstration School Learning Lab: Poudre High School
Winter Collaboratives: Register here
Virtual Session A: Tuesday, February 6 & Wednesday, February 7, 2024 3:30-5:00 pm each day. Open to all. Participants will receive a link to the zoom session.
Whatcom County: Thursday, February 8, 2024, 8:00-2:30 pm. Exact Location TBD
Yakima, ESD 105, Thursday, February 8, 2024, 9:00-3:00 pm
Virtual Session B: Tuesday, February 13 & Thursday, February 15, 2024 3:30-5:00 pm each day. Open to all. Participants will receive a link to the zoom session.
Puget Sound: Thursday, February 15, 2024 8:00-2:30 pm. Exact Location TBD
SW Washington: Wednesday, February 28, 2024 8:00-2:30 pm. Exact Location TBD
Timely Tools

Example of Ending Semester 1 Strong: 9th Grade Knight Up
East Valley Spokane 9th Grade Success Team uses this planning tool to ensure they take every step to support students as the semester comes to a close.

Squalicum High School: A Tool for Ending Semester 1 Strong
This planning tool supports students as they prioritize and plan to end semester 1 strong. It could be used in advisory, seminar or in core courses. It could also be shared with families to support planning at home!
Looking Ahead: Horizon Planning Tool
The Horizon Considerations checklist captures some of the time sensitive strategies from the CHSS Roadmap and may assist your team with short and long term planning in service of 9th Grade Success.
Featured Practice
Long- and Short-Term Planning for Success: Create a Personalized and Supportive Environment for 9th Grade Students. This month we again highlight practices under our Comprehensive System of 9th Grade Supports driver on the CHSS Roadmap.

LONG-TERM PLANNING
At this critical time of the year, we are engaged in interventions to support a strong finish to the first semester or second trimester, AND we are engaging in planning and key decisions for next year. Below we highlight 3 critical Drivers from our CHSS Roadmap.
- Master Scheduling Toolkit: this resource provides an array of approaches, tools, and key consideration for utilizing the master scheduling process to leverage and prioritize 9th grade success.
- Personalization of the 9th Grade Environment: implementing 9th grade cohorts, seminars, houses, academies, or advisories all share a common goal of decreasing the size and complexity of high school for your students, and maximizing opportunities for individualized connection, awareness, and support from teachers and peers.
- Planning for Sustainable Meetings: providing common planning time, or grade level PLCs during the work day increases the opportunities for adults who work with 9th graders to sustainably discuss and support the over time
SHORT-TERM PLANNING
As you increase the intensity of your interventions at this time of the year, the checklist provides a menu of best practices from our highest-performing school teams:
- Use your data strategically to intervene in multiple ways: disaggregate by attendance, # of F/NCs, race/ethnicity, EL/ML, IEP, course %, course/class, teachers, departments, etc. to pull apart the underlying reasons for pass rates.
- Ensure that all IEP or 504-based accommodations or modifications are clearly communicated to all stakeholders
- Provide direct instruction to all 9th graders during the school day on how to prioritize their missing work and plan for a strong finish.
- Provide time DURING school for students to get this work done: this means utilizing and repurposing any of your available time: advisory, core classes, late arrival days, etc.
- Provide an array of OUTSIDE of school options for students, maximizing access points, especially for those with other commitments (work, family, sports): before school, after school, evening, Saturdays, etc.
- Communicate 9th Grade On Track goals, timelines, and interventions as the top priority to families, staff, and students to elevate the urgency and keep this top of mind through email, posters, translated family communications, reader boards, and countdowns to the finish
- Celebrate and recognize your efforts! Utilize an array of motivational activities and incentives to make your efforts feel like a big deal!
- Consider the use of Incompletes instead of F/NCs now to plan for credit repair/recovery in the next term
Previous SNAPTSHOTS
- Northwest CHSS Student Success SNAPSHOT DECEMBERAs we welcome our incoming 9th graders, we are excited to share some inspiring work from across our region, focusing on creating spaces of belonging for all students. To support your work this year, we have two important resources from OSPI to share:
- Northwest CHSS Student Success SNAPSHOT NovemberAs we welcome our incoming 9th graders, we are excited to share some inspiring work from across our region, focusing on creating spaces of belonging for all students. To support your work this year, we have two important resources from OSPI to share:
- Northwest CHSS Student Success SNAPSHOT OctoberAs we welcome our incoming 9th graders, we are excited to share some inspiring work from across our region, focusing on creating spaces of belonging for all students. To support your work this year, we have two important resources from OSPI to share:
- Northwest CHSS Student Success SNAPSHOT SeptemberAs we welcome our incoming 9th graders, we are excited to share some inspiring work from across our region, focusing on creating spaces of belonging for all students. To support your work this year, we have two important resources from OSPI to share:
- Northwest CHSS Student Success SNAPSHOT AugustAs we welcome our incoming 9th graders, we are excited to share some inspiring work from across our region, focusing on creating spaces of belonging for all students. To support your work this year, we have two important resources from OSPI to share: