9/9 Oakridge School Board meeting discusses combatting absences, future building projects, new resource for special ed students

By ANDREW GRIFFIN/for The Herald  —  On September 9, the Oakridge School Board held a meeting in which they discussed a future building project, plans to curb absenteeism and a new resource available to special ed students.

Early in the meeting, the council passed a resolution to approve Superintendent Dave McGrath as a signatory for the sale of a dilapidated building across the street from Oakridge High School. The building, which has served over the years as a bus barn and a wrestling room, was sold for $100,000 dollars. The project itself will double as a learning experience for students, with a CTE construction class being created to allow students to work directly with tradesmen to help in the construction of the new building.

“That money will be put into the Emergency Building Fund in the hopes that over the next three years or so we can save enough money to build a larger maintenance facility,” said McGrath. “We need a place to put a lot of our athletic gear instead of just out in the weather.” The sale for the building is expected to be completed on September 12.

It was also announced during the meeting that special education students in the Oakridge School District will be able to access services with a virtual speech language pathologist. The pathologist will be contracted through Lane ESD. Services will only be able to be accessed virtually, not in person. “We know that that’s not ideal,” said Director of Student Services Angelica Mountainspring-Wood. “Ideally, we’d have an SLP who’s here in the building with our students, so we still have that position posted.”

Lastly, Attendance Intervention Specialist Mark Osborn discussed strategies to prevent absenteeism for this year.  Frequent absences have been a prevalent concern for the district in previous years. “The year before 2016-2017 we had a chronic absenteeism rate of about 40%,” said Osborn. The district will now be rebranding the previous “Strike for Five” slogan for encouraging attendance to “Every Day Matters,” for which Osborn handed out yard signs printed with it for board members and announced plans to promote it at open houses.

Additionally, the district is promoting a raffle for students where if they only miss two days of school in September, they get to enter a drawing to win a free Xbox game console. Osborn says that prizes, big and little, are effective for encouraging attendance. “Really, we spend a thousand bucks on this. Giving kids stickers, Otter Pops, this and that improving attendance,” said Osborn. “It’s gonna go a mile. It’s as simple as showing you care, get after it, that’s all we’ve got to do, and we’ll get it done.”

McGrath is also on board with Osborn’s plan to encourage attendance. “This is a priority for us,” said McGrath. “Mark and I are driven on this. We’ve put a lot of energy behind it, and he’s worked very hard to get everybody on board with this. It’ll work. You can’t say it enough: they can’t learn anything if they’re not here.”