by The Register-Guard Staff
Name: Clear Lake Elementary School
Grades: Kindergarten through 5
Address: 4646 Barger Drive
School District: Bethel
Area served: Generally, the area north of Barger Drive, east of Terry Street, near WinCo and around Belt Line Road.
Principal: Betsy Fernandez
How long on the job: She’s in her third year. Before that, she was assistant principal and briefly principal at Shasta Middle School.
What makes Clear Lake special: “Clear Lake has a very strong and committed teaching staff,” Fernandez says. “It was one of the first staffs to put an Effective Behavior Support team in place in the district. This staff has been very willing to use and develop new programs like EBS, LIFT (Linking the Interests of Families and Teachers) and the Bethel Reading Project.”
Number of students: About 440
Number of teachers: Twenty-one full- and part-time teachers, including special needs and Title I teachers, as well as a full-time music teacher. Clear Lake also has a full-time counselor and a part-time speech therapist.
School employees: 35
Average years of teacher experience: 17
Average class size: About 23, ranging from about 19 in kindergarten and grade one to between 25 and 28 in other grades.
Programs the school is known for: Clear Lake’s EBS team has met each month for the last six years, with occasional support from the University of Oregon. As a result of these meetings and a monthly review of discipline data, staff have implemented several programs. These include a Teacher Assistance Team process where the EBS team meets with peers to get ideas and develop plans for students who are struggling socially or academically.
Also based on a review of the monthly data, the school identified playground interaction as an area in which students needed extra support and training. Clear Lake forged a partnership with the Oregon Social Learning Center, which helped implement the Linking the Interests of Families and Teachers program. This program includes a social skills component and a parent training component. The school’s success with the program was featured in the recent statewide Children First for Oregon report.
Clear Lake has also been actively involved in the Bethel Reading Project. With assistance from the University of Oregon, this project has been in place district-wide for three years. The school is systematically reviewing and revising how reading is taught. The project began in kindergarten, now includes first and second grades and will expand to third grade next year.
School mascot: The bear
School’s namesake: A lake that used to be nearby.
Year it opened: 1977. The new building replaced an older Clear Lake Elementary that was destroyed in a fire in 1975.
Number of students it can hold: About 465, which is next year’s anticipated enrollment.
How students fared on 1999-2000 statewide reading and math tests: Eighty-seven percent of third-graders and 74 percent of fifth-graders met or exceeded standards in reading/literature, compared with a statewide average of 82 percent and 73 percent, respectively. In math, 82 percent of third-graders and 74 percent of fifth-graders met or exceeded standards, compared with 75 percent and 70 percent, respectively.
Socioeconomic status, based on the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, mobility rate and attendance: On a scale of least to most affluent, Clear Lake’s third-grade class ranks No. 466 out of 754 in the state. It’s fifth-grade class ranks No. 468 out of 734.
School Report Card rating for 2001: Satisfactory
Attendance rate: 94.6 percent.
Upcoming events: Parent/teacher conferences this week; Kindergarten Round-Up for next year April 26; Jog-A-Thon on May 4.
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2001, The Register-Guard, www.registerguard.com.