WRAP lays out plan for upcoming year

WASHINGTON - Staff in the Washington Community School District plan to go back to the physical school buildings next month. That includes students in the Washington Regional Alternative Program (WRAP) held at the Kirkwood Regional Center.

Veta Thode, curriculum director for the district, said the 9th- to 12th-grade students in the program are considered Washington High School students. The only difference is they attend a program offered by the district to better meet their learning needs.

The district contracts with the WACO, Highland and Keota school districts. About 25 students per year attend the program with the majority of them being 11th- and 12th-graders, she said.

'Most schools give priority to upperclassmen so they can do credit recovery,” she said.

To sign up, students must meet with a school counselor to be referred into the program.

'It's basically an independent study, but a couple of the classes are teacher lead,” she said. For this reason, the counselor has to be sure the student will be able to succeed in this setting.

If the program will not work, the student is referred back to their home district where a new plan will be developed. For those accepted, Thode said there is a meeting with the parent and student to go over how the program will work.

Because the students are in the district, all policies apply to the students in WRAP as well. This spring, that meant transitioning to at-home learning.

'When the district went virtual, they went to virtual as well,” she said.

Initially, a small problem arose because the WRAP students did not all have access to laptops the way the students within the high school did. However, the district was able to secure Chromebooks for everyone to take home and use for the remainder of the semester.

Thode said some of the school work was already started with textbooks and packets the students were able to take home. A system was developed in order to allow students to drop off that homework to their teachers. 'There were some things that had to be submitted, so we had a process in place that they would drop it off in a container then it would get scanned to the teacher,” she said. The teacher would then grade the material and email the student with comments.

The WRAP students were on a pass/fail system as were all students in the district.

Looking forward to the fall, Thode said, she hopes things will be able to return to the building, but if not, a plan is being developed. Expectations and how the semester will operate virtually will be clearly laid out.

'We're going to make sure that we have all those things very clearly outlined for students,” she said. This will apply to the students in the program who are not within the Washington Community School District as well.

After speaking with students and reviewing the progress of the last semester, Thode said there was definite need for improvement should the district have to go virtual again.

'Our results were not as great with course completion,” she said.

Students work best when the staff is physically with them because aside from coursework, they work to build trusting relationships as they help the students prepare for the future, she said.

'They tried to do that virtually, and it is just not the same,” she said.

WRAP staff will be meeting to seek a solution to better connect with students if the building needs to close.