Vision: a community of healthy families.

Mission stateMent To realize this vision, First Light provides a secure and loving program partnering with families to develop virtue, values and character, inspiring success in school and in life.

Values These serve as guidelines for our conduct and behavior as we work towards the vision:

n Each child is a unique and valuable person.

n Operating with love, respect, dignity, compassion, grace, integrity, honesty and humanity is essential to our success.

n All endeavors will be carried out with excellence. We strive for continuous improvement and development at all levels of the organization.

n First Light Early Education Center CAN be a valuable resource for the community and positively impact the lives of people in Sheridan and beyond.

366 E. Brundage St.P.O. Box 6351Sheridan, WY 82801tel: 307-673-0403fax: 307-673-0753www.firstlightsheridan.com

2019/2020 Recap

Let’s focus on Fun with Literacy!

*Please “like” and follow us on Facebook for up to date fun day reminders, activity pictures, and

educational resources.

C EN T ER

#letyourlightshine

Fun Days!

Favorite Team Day

“Awe, we LOVE First Light!”

Chancey NelsonButton Day

Hat Day

Christmas Present Day

Pajama & Movie DaySuperhero Day

Zoo Day

Engaging Play-based Learning

Dr. Seuss’ Birthday

Science with Stephanie Penrose

Share the Love Concert

Field Trips

A Visit from the Dentist

Foster Grandmas

Enrichment Activities

Music Enrichment with Volunteer pianist

Art Enrichment

Enrichment Through Serving Others

Food Drive for Food Assistance

Coloring Bags for Seniors at the HubHearts for Veterans at the VA Center

Family Fun Pop-in Nights

“The family pop-in was so much fun. He was so happy to, ‘play a game with my friend

lion.’ Even our family we sent pictures to said it that it was so cool his school does that,

and we agree.” Nicole Jahn

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2020 www.thesheridanpress.com THE SHERIDAN PRESS A3

SCORES : Dropping out of high school can negatively impact future health FROM 1

Ryan Schasteen, director of information technology for SCSD2, said the new Early Warning System will provide a more detailed pic-ture of what factors influ-ence graduation, beginning in sixth grade when a student’s first Graduation Related Analytic Data score is developed.

The national stu-dent information plat-form Infinite Campus records student data, removes identifying infor-mation and creates profiles of students who did or didn’t graduate. Counselors can then compare those standardized profiles to their own students to pro-duce a GRAD score. The score, measured between 50 and 150, indicates the likeli-hood of matriculating to the next grade level or graduat-ing, Schasteen said.

The profile is built using attendance records including tardiness and reasons for absence; behav-ior including reported inci-dents, whether a student was regularly an offender or victim, frequency of behavioral incidents and the nature of a behavior problem; curriculum, i.e. how well a student is per-forming in the classroom; and a stability score which takes into account the num-ber of addresses a student has held, number of school enrollments, engagement with their own education and family engagement through the parent portal.

The program’s predictive analytics produces a score that sorts students from high to low risk. Schasteen said he expects the high-risk students to be peo-ple counselors are already familiar with, but the stu-dents in the middle might be new to counselors. The goal with the warning sys-tem is to bring those stu-dents who need assistance out of the shadows, he said.

“Our goal in adopting this — No. 1 is to get a dif-ferent way of looking at

students that seems to take into account a lot of rele-vant data,” Schasteen said. “No. 2, it helps remove that burden from the counselors of keeping spreadsheets up.”

Education — including a high school diploma — is one of the top five social determinants of health in 2020, according to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Dropping out of high school can negatively impact future health by limiting employment options, wages and potentially leading to poverty. High school grad-uation is influenced by social, familial and insti-tutional conditions like high-quality teachers, according to the ODPHP.

Some might be skeptical of relying on predictive analytics, but Schasteen said schools aren’t sim-ply handing responsibility for a student’s future over to a computer. The infor-mation the early warn-ing system categorizes and weighs may simply shed light on what counsel-ors haven’t noticed before, he said. The program is updated nightly and iden-tifies critical opportunities for positive change in a stu-dent’s life, he said.

Counselors already

care deeply about their students and monitor sim-ilar factors through their own tracking methods. But it wasn’t organized in a central location and counselors spent consider-able administrative time organizing that data to determine which students meet the at-risk threshold, he said. SHS counselors trained on the new system Feb. 4 and the junior high is next.

“I think it’ll be a process of learning to trust the predictive analytics tool — hopefully trust it — to give data that is meaningful and actionable for students,” Schasteen said.

SHS Counselors Coty Nikont and Alyssa Yada said they are optimistic the program will make their jobs easier and allow for more face-to-face time with students.

Nikont said he sees the early warning system as an easily-accessible, central location for information he regularly collects any-way. It provides a better idea of how a student is performing academical-ly, but “it doesn’t replace that personal interaction,” Nikont said.

Nikont and Yada said a student with a high potential for graduation could still be at risk, and the system might fail to

reflect all the factors influ-encing a student with low potential, or the protective factors that could help them. Neither Yada nor Nikont found many sur-prises with who the system identified as at-risk stu-dents.

Schasteen said he hopes counselors can use infor-mation from the early warning system to work with students and teachers to determine appropriate interventions, rather than “sitting in their office maintaining spreadsheets,” he said.

Infinite Campus has been the established student information system at SHS for more than 10 years. Schasteen said he is confi-dent Infinite Campus has helped prepare educators for inputting quality data reliably and consistently, including taking daily attendance, tracking behav-ior and maintaining tran-script information.

“We’re just letting the computer do the hard cal-culation part that helps us figure out — out of the nearly 1,000 students at the high school — who are the ones that really need the help of the school team in order to get to that end goal of graduating,” Schasteen said. “Then they get to spend their time working with that student. That’s what’s exciting.”

Developing the system has required some trial and error on a national scale before officially rolling out the program, Schasteen

said. Infinite Campus found that starting a GRAD score before sixth grade didn’t produce reliable results, for example. The program will be fine-tuned over years of use, com-paring predictive data to true results.

Counselors are not expected to default to the system — it informs the work counselors do with-out directing their actions. Overall, the program will hopefully prompt coun-selors to get to know their students better if they don’t already, Schasteen said. It may also reduce the get-to-know-you time for new ninth-graders because they will be coming into high school with a GRAD score counselors can work from.

“It all drives relation-ships,” Schasteen said.

Some personal traits have been shown to influence graduation rates that the early warning system does not track, like factors con-nected to violence and safe-ty issues at school includ-ing sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and ethnicity.

The average LGBTQ high school student hears 26 anti-LGBTQ slurs per day, according to 2013 data from the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network. One quarter of LGBTQ students have expe-rienced physical assault because of their sexual ori-entation and more than one quarter drop out of school as a result of harassment.

Being the subject of phys-

ical or verbal abuse and low self esteem is linked to higher dropout rates. The ODPHP claims high school graduation is critical to improving population health, financial security and reducing premature death.

American Indian/Alaska Native youth have the highest dropout rate of all ethnic groups, next to Hispanic youth, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2009, students from fam-ilies in the lowest 20% of incomes were five times more likely to drop out of high school than the top 20%, according to the American Psychological Association.

Yada said the stability score addresses some fac-tors that correlate with behavior and mental health. Nikont said coun-selors closely monitor mental health but any recorded information about a student’s mental health or other private informa-tion is stored in a confi-dential location on Infinite Campus.

While Nikont said he would like to see the system expand so more teachers and staff can ben-efit from it, confidential information should remain so. Nikont said the school hasn’t decided if and how the program will be used to communicate about stu-dents with parents but that decision will likely fall to the district.

Tools like the early warning system will likely assist counselors in their efforts to support students throughout their academ-ic journey, though most school officials believe they will not replace the value of relationships and human compassion in aca-demic success.

COURTESY PHOTO | RYAN SCHASTEEN

Each student has their own GRAD Score History graph, displaying how their GRAD score has changed over the last 7 days, 30 days, or 12 months based on the range selected, Schasteen said.

The Healthy People 2020 Social Determinants of Health from the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion 1. Economic stability2. Education3. Health and health care4. Neighborhood and built environment5. Social and community context

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2020 www.thesheridanpress.com THE SHERIDAN PRESS A3

SCORES : Dropping out of high school can negatively impact future health FROM 1

Ryan Schasteen, director of information technology for SCSD2, said the new Early Warning System will provide a more detailed pic-ture of what factors influ-ence graduation, beginning in sixth grade when a student’s first Graduation Related Analytic Data score is developed.

The national stu-dent information plat-form Infinite Campus records student data, removes identifying infor-mation and creates profiles of students who did or didn’t graduate. Counselors can then compare those standardized profiles to their own students to pro-duce a GRAD score. The score, measured between 50 and 150, indicates the likeli-hood of matriculating to the next grade level or graduat-ing, Schasteen said.

The profile is built using attendance records including tardiness and reasons for absence; behav-ior including reported inci-dents, whether a student was regularly an offender or victim, frequency of behavioral incidents and the nature of a behavior problem; curriculum, i.e. how well a student is per-forming in the classroom; and a stability score which takes into account the num-ber of addresses a student has held, number of school enrollments, engagement with their own education and family engagement through the parent portal.

The program’s predictive analytics produces a score that sorts students from high to low risk. Schasteen said he expects the high-risk students to be peo-ple counselors are already familiar with, but the stu-dents in the middle might be new to counselors. The goal with the warning sys-tem is to bring those stu-dents who need assistance out of the shadows, he said.

“Our goal in adopting this — No. 1 is to get a dif-ferent way of looking at

students that seems to take into account a lot of rele-vant data,” Schasteen said. “No. 2, it helps remove that burden from the counselors of keeping spreadsheets up.”

Education — including a high school diploma — is one of the top five social determinants of health in 2020, according to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Dropping out of high school can negatively impact future health by limiting employment options, wages and potentially leading to poverty. High school grad-uation is influenced by social, familial and insti-tutional conditions like high-quality teachers, according to the ODPHP.

Some might be skeptical of relying on predictive analytics, but Schasteen said schools aren’t sim-ply handing responsibility for a student’s future over to a computer. The infor-mation the early warn-ing system categorizes and weighs may simply shed light on what counsel-ors haven’t noticed before, he said. The program is updated nightly and iden-tifies critical opportunities for positive change in a stu-dent’s life, he said.

Counselors already

care deeply about their students and monitor sim-ilar factors through their own tracking methods. But it wasn’t organized in a central location and counselors spent consider-able administrative time organizing that data to determine which students meet the at-risk threshold, he said. SHS counselors trained on the new system Feb. 4 and the junior high is next.

“I think it’ll be a process of learning to trust the predictive analytics tool — hopefully trust it — to give data that is meaningful and actionable for students,” Schasteen said.

SHS Counselors Coty Nikont and Alyssa Yada said they are optimistic the program will make their jobs easier and allow for more face-to-face time with students.

Nikont said he sees the early warning system as an easily-accessible, central location for information he regularly collects any-way. It provides a better idea of how a student is performing academical-ly, but “it doesn’t replace that personal interaction,” Nikont said.

Nikont and Yada said a student with a high potential for graduation could still be at risk, and the system might fail to

reflect all the factors influ-encing a student with low potential, or the protective factors that could help them. Neither Yada nor Nikont found many sur-prises with who the system identified as at-risk stu-dents.

Schasteen said he hopes counselors can use infor-mation from the early warning system to work with students and teachers to determine appropriate interventions, rather than “sitting in their office maintaining spreadsheets,” he said.

Infinite Campus has been the established student information system at SHS for more than 10 years. Schasteen said he is confi-dent Infinite Campus has helped prepare educators for inputting quality data reliably and consistently, including taking daily attendance, tracking behav-ior and maintaining tran-script information.

“We’re just letting the computer do the hard cal-culation part that helps us figure out — out of the nearly 1,000 students at the high school — who are the ones that really need the help of the school team in order to get to that end goal of graduating,” Schasteen said. “Then they get to spend their time working with that student. That’s what’s exciting.”

Developing the system has required some trial and error on a national scale before officially rolling out the program, Schasteen

said. Infinite Campus found that starting a GRAD score before sixth grade didn’t produce reliable results, for example. The program will be fine-tuned over years of use, com-paring predictive data to true results.

Counselors are not expected to default to the system — it informs the work counselors do with-out directing their actions. Overall, the program will hopefully prompt coun-selors to get to know their students better if they don’t already, Schasteen said. It may also reduce the get-to-know-you time for new ninth-graders because they will be coming into high school with a GRAD score counselors can work from.

“It all drives relation-ships,” Schasteen said.

Some personal traits have been shown to influence graduation rates that the early warning system does not track, like factors con-nected to violence and safe-ty issues at school includ-ing sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and ethnicity.

The average LGBTQ high school student hears 26 anti-LGBTQ slurs per day, according to 2013 data from the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network. One quarter of LGBTQ students have expe-rienced physical assault because of their sexual ori-entation and more than one quarter drop out of school as a result of harassment.

Being the subject of phys-

ical or verbal abuse and low self esteem is linked to higher dropout rates. The ODPHP claims high school graduation is critical to improving population health, financial security and reducing premature death.

American Indian/Alaska Native youth have the highest dropout rate of all ethnic groups, next to Hispanic youth, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2009, students from fam-ilies in the lowest 20% of incomes were five times more likely to drop out of high school than the top 20%, according to the American Psychological Association.

Yada said the stability score addresses some fac-tors that correlate with behavior and mental health. Nikont said coun-selors closely monitor mental health but any recorded information about a student’s mental health or other private informa-tion is stored in a confi-dential location on Infinite Campus.

While Nikont said he would like to see the system expand so more teachers and staff can ben-efit from it, confidential information should remain so. Nikont said the school hasn’t decided if and how the program will be used to communicate about stu-dents with parents but that decision will likely fall to the district.

Tools like the early warning system will likely assist counselors in their efforts to support students throughout their academ-ic journey, though most school officials believe they will not replace the value of relationships and human compassion in aca-demic success.

COURTESY PHOTO | RYAN SCHASTEEN

Each student has their own GRAD Score History graph, displaying how their GRAD score has changed over the last 7 days, 30 days, or 12 months based on the range selected, Schasteen said.

The Healthy People 2020 Social Determinants of Health from the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion 1. Economic stability2. Education3. Health and health care4. Neighborhood and built environment5. Social and community context

2020 Graduation

STEM On-site & Virtual Sessions

Helpers

Fall semester school Photos Special thanks to Emily Robin Photography for the beautiful 2020 family photos of our students!

If you are interested in being a school photographer for First Light please send inquiries to info@firstlightsheridan.com.

Photos typically taken in October & April.

active learning

Health & Wellness Family Resources

At Provision Fund, we believe in providing for all members of our community––including its youngest residents. When we invest in programs that build character and encourage growth in our youth, we know that we’re investing in the future of our community.

Join the cause to help create a legacy of giving, meaningful connections, and support for all people in the Sheridan community.

www.provisionfund.org

Free Parenting with Love and Logic class

Classess will be held weekly for 6 weeks from 6:00 to 7:30 pm. Feel free to attend any session that fits your family’s schedule. To register, call Compass

Center for Families at 307-675-2272 or email Tracy Jones at tracy@compass4families.org Free Childcare provided for those who pre-register.

Health & Wellness Family Resources

P.O. Box 6351Sheridan, WY 82801

Return Service Requested

PRESORTED STD u.s. PostaGe

PaiDPERMIT 113

80525

n Safe, secure, locked facility

n College-educated instructors teaching the validated HighScope Curriculum

n Non-denominational values-based approach to character building

n Serving nourishing breakfasts and lunches prepared daily with fresh fruits and vegetables

n Students arrive to a clean, healthy environment daily

n NAEYC accredited, high-quality early learning program

n Intentional Focus on Early Literacy & Kindergarten Readiness

n Investment in a child’s education at First Light helps other community organizations further their mission as well

Come experience t he First light Difference7:00 aM to 7:30 aM (early Care) 7:30 aM to 4:30 PM 2 - 5 Years aFteR-sCHool/ suMMeR

enRiCHMent 6-8 YeaRs

Team Maureen Metcalf, Executive Director . stormy Broad, Center Wellness Director . ashley tiffany, Early Education Director . amber Quarterman, Bookkeeper . sasha Rollins, Preschool Teacher . saydie uddin, Toddler Teacher

Early Childhood Festival Robot Booth

Hiring teachers Contract Roles to teach Mini Broncs PreKinder and/or

Summer Enrichment Sessions Roles can be year-round or by semester

8:30-11:30pm or 1-4pm sessions $18-$25 based on experience & education in early education

“Other” hours could include engagement activities for families/community, breakfast/lunchtime and Outdoor Play Activities.

Please send cover letter and resume to info@firstlightsheridan.com