Long-time administrator has new assignment

With nine years in the Sisters School District and 25 years in the teaching profession, Sisters Elementary School's new principal Mark Stewart's career has gone full circle. Stewart started his teaching career as an elementary school special-education teacher in Redmond in 1989, and he is now revisiting the world of elementary education from a whole new perspective.

Since 1989, Stewart has taught and coached at the elementary, middle and high school levels. With his appointment to SES, he has also been an administrator at all three levels.

"It is an adjustment," said Stewart, "All three levels are a little different.

"I feel good about what we are doing here. There were some really great things in place when I came in to Sisters elementary," continued Stewart, "We're a team as a staff. We try to approach our vision as a team."

Due to the drastic budget cuts in the district over the last four years, SES had been running without a full-time principal since the fall of 2011. The administrative duties were handled by lead teacher Barbara Kamrath along with her teaching duties, and Superintendent Jim Golden acted as the interim principal.

Last school year, responding to vocal parent concerns, Golden committed to have a full-time elementary principal on staff for the 2013-2014 school year.

"The issues voiced by the parents came down to communication," said Stewart, "We needed to communicate better. Now all of our teachers are sending home weekly newsletters and we are sending home monthly math and reading letters that focus on: What's going on? What are we teaching? What is our focus?

"I haven't had a single parent complaint yet this year," concluded Stewart.

Stewart is not new to the Sisters education scene. After teaching at a variety of levels in Redmond, the Prineville native moved into administration in the Sisters School District as vice principal at Sisters High School in 2005. Five years later, he took over as principal at Sisters Middle School for three years before coming to Sisters Elementary School for the 2013-2014 school year.

There have been lots of changes in approach, funding, teaching philosophy and academic team-building since Stewart was first an elementary school teacher.

"One of my focuses is getting social-emotional learning and mental health support at the elementary school," said Stewart, "We feed our kids, we make sure they have coats, but we miss the social-emotional piece. I truly believe, if we do a good job here, the effect trickles up to the middle and high school."

In recent years, there has been a nationwide push for accountability for progress at the school level and at the individual teacher level.

"To be accountable for student growth you have to have data," said Stewart, "We now use 'Dibbles' to check on reading progress and 'aimsweb' to check our math progress and to identify the need for early intervention for struggling students."

Mark continued, "We have also moved all of our core (reading and math) to the morning. All math classes and all reading classes are at the same time. This has shown to give us significant improvement in test scores.

"However, one of the things that I heard last spring from parents was 'Sisters Elementary is only concerned about test scores. The fun and excitement about school is gone.' My vision is that no kid leaves Sisters elementary without a love for learning. No kid should be saying 'I hate school.'"

To that end, the staff has implemented a variety of learning activities in the afternoon that engage the students and stimulate their imaginations and add back the element of fun.

In another innovative move based in recent educational research data, Stewart has applied for a $75,000 grant to implement preschool and kindergarten (P-K) as a grade level.

"Research has shown that the P-K level is where you are going to close the achievement gap, not at the middle school or at the high school," said Stewart, "If we can do a good job at the elementary school it trickles up."