The 2018 ESD 105 Annual Report offers a quick 4-page overview of our services and activities with the schools of south central Washington, plus data on our region’s demographics and the agency’s operations.
Take a look and download the PDF here!
How we helped make greater things happen for others in our classrooms during 2017
- ESD 105 introduced a new computer science initiative in September 2017 to help students gain interest and preparation in our state’s high-market STEM career fields. Launched through a locally funded grant, this work is offering robotics trainings, connecting teachers to classroom videoconference instruction with computer science professionals from Microsoft Philanthropies, and training elementary teachers in classroom lessons from the Code.org website. ESD 105 now also has the state’s largest TechStart cadre, a Facebook venture that provides virtual reality equipment and curriculum to schools.
- Class sessions began Sept. 5, 2017, at Newbridge Learning Academy, a partnership with area schools that helps serve both the academic and behavioral needs of K-5 students with severe emotional and social challenges. The students in the school at Fruitvale Boulevard in Yakima work to progress in their personal behavior management through a research-founded system that constantly assesses their capabilities for respect, responsibility, and safety, all aimed to help them successfully transition back into their home classrooms.
- The ESD 105 Regional Science Cooperative completed pilot work and approved implementation of the “Push, Pull, Go” kit of activities that help kindergarten students learn how things move. Teachers began piloting seven other new elementary science kits during the fall of 2017 for potential region-wide use starting in 2018-2019: Weather and Sky (kindergarten), Exploring Organisms (1st grade), Sky Watchers (1st grade), Light and Sound Waves (1st grade), Ecosystem Diversity (2nd grade), Earth Materials (2nd grade), and Matter (2nd grade).
- Our South Central Region Information Service Center added the Royal School District to the cooperative of schools using the Skyward student records software, resulting in SCRISC’s sixth consecutive year that one new school has made the conversion. SCRISC’s cooperative has now grown to 40 organizations, including 37 school districts and two ESDs using the Skyward finance software, and 33 school districts and one ESD using the Skyward student software.
- ESD 105 and Enterprise for Progress In the Community rebranded its Head Start partnership operations with a logo and facility signage for the newly named “Seedlings Center for Early Learning.” The logo’s design symbolizes Head Start’s promotion of education and health, with a nod to the agriculture industry that is linked with the many families who are associated with the programs at all 10 sites in the Yakima area and the Migrant Head Start sites in Bridgeport and East Wenatchee.
- Our School Safety Operations and Coordination Center revamped its service options to offer schools a slate of different package plans and even individual options that now allow schools of all sizes to acquire resources fitted to their own needs, replacing the co-op format that was introduced a few years ago. The SSOCC’s new setup includes a Foundation Package (providing services to help schools take control of their safety programs and procedures), a Fortress Package (adding to Fortress by bringing the SSOCC’s staff as direct participants in a school’s safety team), and a listing of à la carte options for individual services.
- Some of the latest physical improvements at the ESD 105 facilities to enhance trainings and meetings included the installation of new projectors in all of our presentation rooms, as well as ceiling-mounted speakers in the lower level of the Perez Student Success Center.
- Our Special Education programs added Right Response trainings throughout our region to assist school staff members who assist students of all ages who have significant disruptive behavioral issues.
- In connection with our Language Acquisition programs, ESD 105 brought noted “Brain Rules” author Dr. John Medina to Yakima’s Eisenhower High School Auditorium on Oct. 7, 2017, for a morning series of presentations examining how brain research findings inform us about how children acquire and process language information.
