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.
March 2024
The theme of this season is … advocacy!
We advocate for our 9th graders in so many ways, including in our classrooms, buildings, districts and our state. We advocate for individual students who need an adult to speak up for them and for groups of students who need interventions designed to meet their specific needs. When we work together to do this, the outcomes are great for our 9th graders. Lately our advocacy has gotten some really positive attention! After checking out all of your amazing colleagues from 4 of our in-person Winter Collaboratives, read all about your impactful advocacy below!

At our Collaborative in Vancouver, we welcomed participants from Castle Rock, Evergreen, Henrietta Lacks, Heritage, Kelso, Legacy, Mountain View, and Union!
In Tacoma, along with hosts at Foss HS, we worked with Renton, Lindbergh, Hazen, Mount Tahoma, and Port Angeles!
Up in Bellingham, we brought together 9GST members from Bellingham, Squalicum, Ferndale, Cascade, Lynden, Nooksack Valley, Mariner, and Meridian!
Finally, in Yakima we had an amazing time with team members from East Valley, Kittitas, Prosser, Royal, Selah, Toppenish, Wahluke, and White Swan!
CHSS (in the) News:
In this article, Lynden High School sees double-digit jump in freshman passing classes, highlighting the impact of 9th Grade Success work and a CHSS partnership.
Stand for Children Washington State Director Kia Franklin and CHSS Northwest Region Director Henterson Carlisle make the case for Ninth Grade Success funding at the state level in this op-ed piece, Investing in Ninth Grade Success: A Crucial Step Towards Equitable Education.
Stanwood-Camano, Mukilteo, and Everett school districts have seen strong success thanks to the Ninth Grade Success Initiative. Learn more in this article, Funding at risk for program that keeps Everett ninth graders on track.
Washington State OSPI Update:
We are incredibly excited to share that the final state budget includes $3 million for the Ninth Grade Success Initiative. This is fantastic news, and will make a meaningful difference in the educational trajectories of thousands of Washington’s students.
Thank you to each of you for your advocacy and hard work – from signing petitions, emailing lawmakers, testifying in committee, or participating in media interviews, your voices made a difference in securing this funding. To all the educators, administrators, and district leaders within our network – thank you! The outcomes of your work speak for themselves, and are the best advocacy tool for this funding.
Calendar
Demonstration School Visits: Read more and register here
March 12: Louisiana Demonstration Learning Lab: Tara High School
March 20: Colorado Demonstration School Learning Lab: Poudre High School
Washington Spring Collaboratives: Register here
SW Washington: Wednesday, April 24 8:00-2:30pm. Exact Location TBD
Skagit County: Thursday, April 25, 8:00-2:30pm. Exact Location TBD
Moses Lake: Wednesday, May 1, 8:30-3:00pm. Exact Location TBD
Yakima, ESD 105: Thursday, May 2, 8:30-3:00pm. Location: ESD 105
Virtual Session A: Tuesday, May 7 & Wednesday, May 8, 3:30-5:00 pm each day. Open to all. Participants will receive a link to the zoom session.
Whatcom County: Wednesday, May 15, 8:00-2:30pm. Exact Location TBD
Puget Sound: Thursday, May 16, 8:00-2:30pm. Exact Location TBD
Oregon Spring Collaboratives:
Portland Region: Wednesday, April 24, 8:00-2:30 pm, Exact Location TBD
Southern Oregon: Friday, May 10, 8:30am-3:30pm, Exact Location TBD
Lincoln County: Wednesday, May 22, 8:30 – 3:30pm, Exact Location TBD
Linn-Benton Lincoln County ESDand Albany School District: Date and Location TBD
Timely Tools

Master Scheduling
As schools design their master schedules for the 24-25 school year, we urge you to consider these two tools. The Master Scheduling Slide Deck and the Master Scheduling Video.

Self-Regulation During School Support Periods
One popular and effective intervention structure highlighted in our recent collaboratives was walking to help: during school, supporting students to go to specific classes for help during an intervention period (advisory, homeroom, etc.), and this amazing tool, called “Flextime” that we saw in action at our recent CHSS demonstration site visit at Camelback HS in Arizona is specifically designed to help with scheduling, monitoring, and is amazing in its practicality, efficiency, and cost.

Best Pedagogy for Teaching Competencies
This pdf outlines how to teach a competency. You will recognize it from the Winter Collabs. We remind you that there are lessons, research and tools ready for you to use at https://www.cccframework.org/resources/. Consider spending time in your team meetings learning and planning.
Featured Practice
Across the CHSS Northwest region, over 400 educators came together for the CHSS Winter Collaboratives!

KEY RESOURCES FROM OUR COLLABORATIVES
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.
In Washington, we completed our series: Interventions 201 which is all about building effective and efficient group interventions. We reminded ourselves of the importance of creating belonging (one way is through regular check-ins) and really knowing our students (through empathy interviews) and rooted ourselves in the competencies that teach the skills almost all 9th graders need, starting with Self Regulation. Then we began the hard work of grouping students for effective and efficient group interventions through the use of qualitative and quantitative data. Throughout, we followed the Intervention Decision Making Guide.
Each team shared successful strategies and interventions currently in place. And while there were more strategies than we can capture here, we will share some popular tools/resources:
- Kelso Connection Student Form
- Kelso Connection Staff Form
- EHS 1F Action Plan
- Lynden Adaptive Student Survey around Belonging
In Oregon, we focused on guaranteeing results through small cycle implementation focused on qualitative students data. The two main sources of qualitative data used to take small actions and or design effective interventions came from the Relational Trust Inventory and the CCC Self Regulation assessment.
Some successful strategies that have been shared are:
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: