My first visit to highly successful districts for 2023-24 was Washington County USD 108, which boasts a 2022 graduation rate of 100 percent, 8.5% higher than predicted, and since 2017 has increased its graduation rate by 15.6 percent, 14.0% higher than the predicted rate of 1.6% based on its enrollment and percentage of high needs students. 

School leaders believe that this progress results from intentional plans to improve. Washington County was my first 2023-24 district visit. With KASB Leadership Field Specialist Marcia Weseman, we started the day meeting with long-term school board member Rod Steward, who also served as KASB president and spent many years on both the KASB Board and Legislative Committee. Rod praised the community's strong support for its school system, from passing bond issues to local fundraising and partnerships to filling the stands at ball games. But he made it clear that support alone isn’t enough. 

“About ten years ago, we noticed that our graduation rate had started to slip,” he said. “That concerned us. We started hearing from our parents. The school board found that the problem wasn’t that those kids weren’t able to learn, but that they weren’t motivated to get their work done. So, we began to look for ways to identify red flags sooner because it’s too late when they are seniors to fix what is keeping them from graduating.” 

We met with Superintendent Denise O’Dea and her District Leadership Team – principals, teachers and counselors – to learn how the district addressing those issues. 

Fueled by Superintendent O’Dea’s spectacular homemade coffee cake, three interwoven ideas emerged. First, education must be personalized to help more students succeed. Second, there must be an equal balance between high academic expectations and social-emotional learning. Third, successful schools have strong relationships between students, families, communities and educators. 

“It’s high expectations and high love,” said 7-12 principal Brock Funke. “You have to have both. You can’t just ‘love on’ the kids all day and then not expect them to follow through. But we’ve learned that education isn’t cookie-cutter. We have kids at the high school who have different needs. If we can respond to those needs, they can be successful.” 

Key to boosting that graduation rate to 100% has been a more flexible, individualized approach to matching students with their interests to keep them in school. One example was a junior who was frustrated with school and just wanted to go to work. The high school placed him in an independent study class to work with the district transportation director, who is now helping him prepare to get a Commercial Driver’s License and is working on school bus maintenance.  

Or a student who wanted to be a teacher assistant as a junior, which usually isn’t allowed. But the school allowed the student to make a proposal, get agreement from a teacher and self-advocate for the role. “The student got permission and the teacher is now reporting it’s the best TA they’ve ever had,” said counselor Ali Busch. Or the pregnant student with a Certified Nurse Assistance credential who needs an adjustment when struggling with a work-based learning class. “We could have yanked it away because she wasn’t following the rules, but we wanted to find out why it wasn’t working and make a few changes. That probably kept her in school and on track to graduate.” 

Washington County students can take concurrent enrollment courses online through Cloud County Community Colleges and other college courses to give them more options based on their interests. The district offers seven Career Tech Ed pathways, and students can work with other institutions in areas like CNA. The high school also works to provide work-based learning opportunities in the area. 

Making all those efforts work requires a team effort. Busch said she noticed a difference in how Washington approaches problems. “In other districts, we might see a problem but assume it was someone else’s job to fix it. Here, we act like it’s everyone’s job to fix.”  

Like every district I’ve visited, Washington County is dealing with mounting issues from students facing non-academic challenges. “It's behavior and mental issues,” said Superintendent O’Dea. "We know so much more about issues like autism now, and I think a lot more kids are being diagnosed on the autism spectrum. We're also seeing a lot more multiple issues like having emotional difficulties, oppositional defiant disorder, a whole cocktail of things. Something that surprises me is the number of kids I had that receive outside counseling services even in this small community.” 

O’Dea says district efforts in social and emotional learning have helped. “My first year here, I was also the elementary principal, and I probably dealt with parents in a discipline issue every single day. I can say with confidence that that doesn't happen now because of the work we have done.” Part of that work has been expanding preschool to be open to and free for all four-year-olds, with district transportation. Parents as teachers has also been expanded. 

All those strategies really come down to working with individual students and families. “We put a focus on relationships and treating each kid like an individual person rather than just a student or a number,” said high school social studies teacher Tommy Tryon. “It's kind of like that, inside-out coaching or inside-out teaching. You want to win the hearts and the minds of the kids. I always reflect on my day by asking, am I a teacher that I would want to have?” 

Bright ideas: Every elementary classroom in Washington County has a business sponsor. Partners include local banks, cosmetologists, veterinarians and agricultural groups (like board member Rod Stewart’s seed company) with the Farm Bureau providing resources. “It’s a two-way partnership,” said k-6 principal Amy Hoover. “That they monetarily support us in the classroom, but it's also someone from that business visits the classroom each and talks about what they do. Students visit the business each spring, so it begins to build career awareness about working for that company.”  

District Profile: With about 370 students, Washington County USD 108 ranks 46th out of 143 districts in the enrollment group of less than 500 students, and with a 2015 to 2022 average of 72.8% low-income students plus students with disabilities, is 5.6% higher than the state average of 67.2% for those high needs students. But Washington’s graduation rate for 2022 was 100%, 8.5% higher than expected for its enrollment and high-needs students, and since 2017 increased its graduation rate by 15.6%, which is 14.0% higher than the predicted rate of 1.6 percent. (Washington’s 2022 state assessment results were 5.2% lower than predicted; its change in test results 2.6% lower than predicted, and its postsecondary effective rate 10% higher than predicted.)