Heather Ichimura, principal of Battle Ground High School, and assistant principals described an instructional shift focused on intervention and tighter assessment alignment during the district's school improvement plan work session.

Ichimura told the board the school's staff used a fall diagnostic to "quiet the noise," then implemented systems to address chronic tardies, single-period absences and cell-phone disruption so teachers could concentrate on instruction. She said staff developed a common approach to intervention—called Tiger Time—and a four-point formative self-assessment rubric to help students signal when they need reteaching rather than waiting for a grade to indicate failure.

Why it matters: School leaders said the changes are intended to improve on-track and graduation metrics by shifting effort from reactive makeups to proactive reteaching and by creating predictable intervention structures for students and teachers.

Tiger Time and metrics: Ichimura presented Tiger Time data showing staff recorded 12,636 Tiger Time student checkouts from the start of the year through the presentation; about 600 of those scheduled students did not attend their assigned intervention. Of the checkouts, 3,835 were classified as "flex" (maintenance; students with Cs or better who earned choice privileges) and 8,401 were "focus" (students needing intervention). The school also runs clubs during that block.

Formative practices and PLCs: Assistant principals described a push to align classroom assessment with Smarter Balanced test rigor. Ichimura and staff said teachers are using interim formative assessment blocks (F IAB) and released Smarter Balanced items to reduce the gap between classroom instruction and state assessments. A science PLC used cross-district collaboration and revised assessment practices after noticing static, low-informative assessments; the team moved toward standards-aligned, unit-based assessments to better target reteach sessions.

Freshman success and teaming: Assistant Principal Bethany Wilson described a new Freshman Success class, launched the same day as the presentation, targeting an initial cohort of 21 ninth-grade students who attend at least 70% of the time but who are failing one or two core courses. The school plans master-schedule and teaming changes in future years so teams of teachers can share prep time and coordinate interventions for cohorts of students.

Assessment context: District staff clarified statewide changes in how Smarter Balanced levels are interpreted: the state is moving away from a strict pass/fail framing and treating level 2 as foundational grade-level achievement (not strictly nonproficient). That change affects how proficiency rates are reported and how school goals are set; staff said recalculating using the new framing changed some percentages cited in school plans.

Discipline and culture: Ichimura emphasized staff efforts to create "collective commitments" and to surface tensions so the staff can identify and fix systems. She said teacher responses show growing staff trust and that the interventions are producing measurable teacher engagement; survey results on questions tied to collaboration and trust averaged about 81.8% strongly agree/agree in November, up from earlier figures.

Next steps and board follow-up: The school will continue monitoring Tiger Time attendance, refine the rookie Freshman Success pilot and report back to the board. Leaders said they will use PLC time and waiver days to refine classroom engagement measures and focus on high-quality instruction. No formal board actions were taken during the presentation.

Ending: The presentation concluded on schedule and the board moved to its next item on the agenda; district staff said the full set of school improvement plans will be presented for approval at the February 10 board meeting.