| Superintendent's
welcome letter
Cottonwood School District’s enrollment for 2016-2017 is up two students from a year ago. We ended week one with 406 students K-12. Our enrollment at the start of 2015-2016 school year was 404 students. We started the year in the elementary with 203 students and 204 at the junior/senior high. We have an increase in open enrolled students. Last year we had 51 students from surrounding schools, at the start of this year we have 53. Our elementary open house was well attended with approximately 73% of our parents in attendance. Our cooks Cara and Deanna served approximately 260 meals. Our elementary staff will be hosting a math night for parents only on September 26th from 6:30 - 7:30 pm. A general presentation will be held in the gym from 6:30 - 7:00 p.m. with individual classrooms open from 7:00 - 7:30 p.m. Our high school volleyball and football teams are off to a great start and our junior high football and girl’s basketball teams started their season last week. Cross county track is in its 2nd year as a volunteer program with 4 volunteer coaches and parental support behind the program. Volleyball started the year with 26 students, football 24, and cross country 17. Student organizations FFA and BPA along with Knowledge Bowl are gearing up to have meetings and start their year. Knowledge Bowl has scheduled junior high and high school meets. Prairie is offering 10 dual credit courses this year. Dual credit courses are those that students take for high school credit as well as having the option to take for college credit. The courses include US History, US Government, Economics, Psychology, Calculus, Math 137, Math 147, Speech, Natural Science and Statistics. You can get more information from Prairie Jr/Sr High School by calling 208-962-3901 and talking with Suzi Quintal, Counselor. Our staff will continue to work on curriculum alignment K-12 and work toward end of course assessments. The first couple of weeks students are STAR and MAP testing and working on our own local assessments. We take this opportunity to welcome a new special education teacher, Mrs. Michelle Bledsoe. She lived most of her married life in Moscow. She taught special education for 11 years, preschool through 8, mostly K-3 in the Moscow School District. She has been married to Todd for 26 years and has 4 children. She moved to Grangeville a year ago to be closer to family. She substituted in that district last year. Michelle will be working with our elementary staff and students. Della Gehring will be on board this upcoming year working in our jr/sr high school library. Della is a 1977 graduate of Prairie High School and grew up about a quarter mile from the high school. She attended North Idaho College and LCSC where she received a business management degree. Cara Uhlenkott was a substitute last year in both of our school office buildings. Cara comes on board this year one day a week as an Administrative and Counseling Assistant. The State Board of Education added money for increased support for College and Career Readiness. Cara will work with both Suzi Quintal, Counselor and Cheri Holthaus, Administrative Assistant. Taylor Schaeffer is moving from a part-time position as a Gear-Up tutor to a full time paraprofessional working with Tori DeCaria in the special education department. Taylor will be a great support to our special service staff and students. Taylor is also excited to be the new assistant track coach for the Junior High. Lois Lamont will retire after 23 years as an elementary library paraprofessional. Lois has served elementary children by finding books they loved to read and by following their likes and dislikes with book authors. She most often read the books before she gave them to the children. Lois worked with the teachers to help students increase their reading level by offering books to students that fit their level. Lois will be missed. We wish her the best in her new endeavor. Maureen Munger is a new face at Prairie Elementary working as a paraprofessional in the classrooms. Maureen has subbed at both the elementary and high schools. She has worked with teachers, custodians, and cooks. Coming on board and working in the elementary as our part of our custodial staff is Christine Temes. Christine has worked in hospitals and hotels maintaining offices, hotel rooms and occupied space. You will see Christine after 2;00 p.m. daily, during Christmas and Spring breaks, and during the summer months. We welcome aboard Christine. We are looking forward to a great year. If any community member is interested in being on an email list from the schools, please contact Lynn Rehder at rehderl@sd242.org or Carrie Nygaard at nygaardc@sd242.org. |
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