Executive Summary
Mountain Home High School Mountain Home School District #193
Mr. Sam G Gunderson, Principal 300 South 11th East Street Mountain Home, ID 83647-3299
Document Generated On October 17, 2016
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1
Description of the School
2
School's Purpose
3
Notable Achievements and Areas of Improvement
5
Additional Information
7
Executive Summary Mountain Home High School
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.
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Executive Summary Mountain Home High School
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?
Mountain Home High School Executive Summary
Mission Statement: Mountain Home High School Graduates - Prepared to Build Their Future.
Values for Life: RespectDignity Integrity CharacterResponsibility
Philosophy: -To prepare students for employability, responsible participation in their community, and effectively living in a changing society. -To encourage and support the development of tolerant, productive, and creative individuals. -To develop a sense of worth in order to function successfully as individuals and in group interactions.
Student Demographics: Total Students: 984Male: 49.5%Female: 50.4% African American: 3.6%American Indian: 1.6%Asian: 1.5% Caucasian: 69.2 %Hispanic: 22%Pacific Islander: .9%
Overview Located 40 miles southeast of Boise at the eastern end of Idaho's fabulous "Treasure Valley", Mountain Home High School enjoys a rural setting, while being able to utilize the many resources available in the surrounding urban school districts. As the only traditional, four year high school in Mountain Home, Idaho and the largest high school in Elmore County, Mountain Home High School serves 978 students.
Students at Mountain Home High School include the children of families currently stationed at nearby Mountain Home Air Force Base. In servicing the Air Force community's students, Mountain Home High School experiences approximately a 10% turnover in students annually. While contributing to the overall diversity and exposing students to a variety of cultures, it does present a challenge in providing for the continuity of education for students who transfer in each year. Students have multiple opportunities for involvement at Mountain Home High School. Currently, the school boasts over 25 clubs and extra-curricular activities and offers many interscholastic athletics through its affiliations with the 4A SIC conference and Idaho High School Activities Association.
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Executive Summary Mountain Home High School
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.
Though Mountain Home High School is a four star school, as determined by the Idaho State Department of Education, MHHS continues to work diligently to identify student achievement gaps, and provide remediation and differentiation as appropriate to increase student performance. In revising the District Strategic Plan, it was determined the needs of Hispanic and low socioeconomic students were not being well met. Because of this reflection, considerable focus has been placed in these areas during professional development. Last year, staff was fortunate to be revisited by Manny Scott - one of the inspirations for The Freedom Writers. Through his powerful presentation, staff was reminded of the challenges students face outside of school and the important and supportive role they have in helping students overcome these obstacles. Additionally, staff have worked to better understand students of poverty through professional development workshops and book studies focused on Ruby Payne's "A Framework for Understanding Poverty".
In combination with these trainings and the focus on underserved populations, Mountain Home High School will participate in the Hispanic Youth Symposium for the third year in a row. This event targets our Hispanic population with the goal of providing them with the resources necessary to reach their full potential and become the next generation of leaders. It is through these workshops and experiences that MHHS has focused on strengthening relationships with students to encourage many of these students to be the first in their family to graduate from high school and attend some form of postsecondary training. Over the last year, we have also been able to develop a Future Hispanic Leaders of America club. These students have been able to attend numerous leadership workshops and have also been able to develop a strong presence within our school. For example, they held enrichment activities for our student body throughout the year including performing a dance and providing food at our assembly on Cinco De Mayo.
Another area of concentration is the continued emphasis on creating a college going culture. To this end, the senior project is evolving into a more meaningful process. In the redesign, seniors will create a portfolio representing the knowledge and skills necessary to pursue their chosen career. Utilizing Naviance to investigate their chosen college and career options, students will collect items such as career interest inventories, plans of study, college / trade school application, and resumes for inclusion in their project.
MHHS is also in its third year of implementing AVID - a program designed to target the academic "middle" students with a desire to go to college. We have made great strides in growing our AVID program. We need to continue to grow program by taking it school wide. This year will be our second year taking our students on college visits! There is a lot of excitement around that for our students and our staff. We have also added the AVID 11 elective which will be a dual credit course through Boise State University using the book Becoming a Learner. To help facilitate a "college going" atmosphere, we are placing college pennants throughout our school and every staff member has placards' on their doors that illustrate which colleges they attended. We have been very fortunate that our district administration has made a serious commitment to sending staff to Summer Institute Training every year. Ultimately, this has helped develop a strong AVID culture within our school.
Mountain Home High School has also created partnerships with the local Education Workforce Development Committee and Treasure Valley Education Partnership to provide additional resources and opportunities to students in their post-secondary options pursuit. Through these partnerships, MHHS has become part of the FAFSA Frenzy competition (competing against four other schools for the highest FAFSA completion percentage), Idaho College Application Week (one week dedicated to senior college application completion), and an improved local college and career fair. Page 3 © 2016 Advance Education, Inc. All rights reserved unless otherwise granted by written agreement.
Executive Summary Mountain Home High School
To address the increasing importance of technology education, MHHS has increased the accessibility and utilization of technology in the classroom. Through the addition of three new computer labs (2 mobile, 1 permanent) this year, teachers and students have more access to technology to compliment the way they teach and learn. To better utilize available technology in the classroom, staff have been provided with two professional development days and class through Northwest Nazarene University this fall to learn about different products and programs available and how to integrate these various programs into their instruction. MHHS has also implemented Blackboard Communication technology to improve the way it disseminates information to stakeholders. Through the program, staff can deliver important information via email, phone, or text message to parents, students, and staff from a simple, user friendly platform, ultimately increasing overall stakeholder communication.
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Executive Summary Mountain Home High School
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.
Strentghs:
One program that has been very successful is our Student of the Month Program. By creating a Student of the Month Program, Mountain Home High School celebrates individual achievement by creating a culture of learning that values academic success, involvement, character and values, as well as highlights awareness of student contributions to the Mountain Home community. The program is not meant to be a popularity contest, but a tool to recognize students that are showing growth towards their potential. This may have been always present or if students are starting to make changes towards these important traits. It is important to recognize students that are learning from mistakes and taking steps to change them.
The student of the Month Program was made possible by our newly developed Academic Recognition Committee. One of the areas that we felt we need to improve on was celebrating our academic success. The Academic Recognition Committee has truly allowed us to do this. This committee created programs that include Student of the Month, Academic Letterman, and Honor Roll. Not only do these programs help to bring well deserved recognition to our students, the committee also publishes this information on our school website, local news paper, and also on a poster in our hallway.
This past year, our SAT scores were higher than the state and national average. This is a tremendous indicator that our staff is getting our students college ready.
Component
Mountain Home High School
Evidence-based reading and writing514
Idaho Average 509
National Average 498
Math
491
490
486
Total
1002
999
984
Something else that we are very proud of is the scholarships our seniors have earned. For the 2015-2016 school year, our seniors were honored with over $670,000 in Scholarship money.
Our dual credit offerings are a considerable strength at MHHS. During the 2015-2016 school year, our seniors earned 540 DC Credits that they were able to take to their post-secondary experience. For the 2016-2017 school year, we are expecting over 800 Dual Credits to be earned. In many cases, our students have been able to leave Mountain Home High School with their first two years of college completed.
Areas of Improvement:
-Improve Extracurricular Participation Rate -Improve ISAT Scores -Improve Failure Rate -Increase communication with all stakeholders that helps to explain, clarify, and create (as needed) the mission and vision of the school and Page 5 © 2016 Advance Education, Inc. All rights reserved unless otherwise granted by written agreement.
Executive Summary Mountain Home High School
activities within the school. -Create an all-inclusive leadership team to guide data driven decisions and program implementation. -Create a facilities committee to explore, prioritize, and implement a 5 year plan to address infrastructure, technology, and curricular resources. -Provide specific training and resources to teachers that allows them to modify or guide curriculum and teaching, based on a needs assessment and student assessment data.
In closing, we look forward to meeting these new goals head on and are excited to use a collaborative effort reach these goals.
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Executive Summary Mountain Home High School
Additional Information
Provide any additional information you would like to share with the public and community that were not prompted in the previous sections.
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