School Learning Plan

Aloha-Huber Park is a preK - 8th grade school in Beaverton, Oregon. We serve approximately 930  students.  725 are elementary students and 170 are middle school students. Our school qualifies for the community eligibility program, with all students eligible for free meals. 15% of our students qualify for special education services, 52% are Emerging bilinguals and 26 different home languages are represented. Twenty-three of our students are identified as Talented and Gifted. 6% of our students identify as Asian, 5% identify as Black or African American, 61% identify as Hispanic or Latino, 5% identify as multiracial, and 22% identify as white. Aloha-Huber Park is a multicultural and multilingual school, valuing the full cultural and linguistic repertoires of our students, staff and families and using the cultural and linguistic resources of our community as the foundation for student learning.  

Our pre-k program serves a total of 36 preschoolers. Eighteen students attend in each half day session.  Next year, we will offer a bilingual Spanish-English pre-k section. We partner with families to nurture the whole child. Our pre-k team engages each child in joyful learning and playful inquiry.  

Our dual language program serves 360 students in grades K-6th grade.  The mission of the dual language program is to honor and develop multilingual, multi-literate, and multicultural students through rigorous, culturally inclusive education while nurturing a diversity of identities, and empowering students to become agents of change in a global community. We implement a 90/10 model.  This means that the language of instruction in kindergarten is 90% Spanish and 10% English; 80% Spanish and 20% English in first grade; 70% Spanish and 30% English in second grade; and 50% Spanish and 50% English in grades 3rd-5th.  Our middle school has begun to transition to dual language this year with our two 6th grade classes.  The language allocation in middle school is 50% Spanish and 50% English. Next year we will add 7th grade and the following year, 8th grade. This will ensure a bilingual pathway for students through high school and the opportunity to graduate with a Seal of Biliteracy.

Our newcomer program serves 30 students in grade 2nd-8th grade. We have 15 elementary students and 15 middle school students participating in the newcomer program. The mission of the newcomer program is to provide recent arrivers with tools that will increase their confidence and use of the English language and at the same time assist in the positive acculturation of students in the new environment so they grow to be productive navigators of society.  

We are a staff of 106.  There are 34 classified staff members and 72 certified staff members.  Our staff is reflective of the student population we serve and bring rich cultural and linguistic diversity to our school community.  9% of staff identify as Asian, 5% identify as Black or African American, 30% identify as Hispanic or Latino, 4% identify as multiracial, and 51% identify as white. Thirteen languages are spoken by AHP staff. The languages spoken are Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, Dari, Cantonese, Modern Standard Arabic, Hindi, Kannada, Catalan, Khmer, Tamil and English.  43% of our staff is multilingual/bilingual. Our staff brings diverse backgrounds and perspectives. 36 hold bilingual, literacy, math, ESOL and/or special education endorsements.  One of our staff members is nationally board certified. We have an 87% teacher retention rate. 

We have strong family empowerment efforts embedded into our work at Aloha-Huber Park. There are multiple opportunities for families to be involved at school and for their ideas to be reflected in school decision making. The Latinx Family group meets twice a month.  The first meeting of the year focuses on generating topics and ideas for upcoming sessions.  Keynote speakers are then organized for upcoming sessions to present on topics ranging from social emotional learning to how to support students with literacy and mathematics at home.  In addition, the Latinx Family group organizes school events as a way to share about the rich and diverse Latinx culture. We also have an AHP Family Leadership Team.  The team is a culturally and linguistically diverse representation of both families and staff committed to using a Tellin’ Stories Approach as the foundational component to their meeting structure.  This is an approach developed by Teaching for Change to help public schools better partner with families. The Family Leadership team meets once a month.  Family involvement at AHP includes and is not limited to PTC participation, volunteering in the classroom and for school events, home-school projects, Newcomer Family Workshops, and participation in principal coffee chats. 

Aloha-Huber Park provides  support for our students throughout the school day, through extended day and school year opportunities, and by engaging in a partnership with families and community organizations. Our after school program is supported by the S4 grant as well as donations from Nike and other local businesses and individuals. After school tutoring funded by the Multilingual Department and activities through community organizations, including Chicas and Pacific Youth Choir, are held at the same time to take advantage of bus service and building monitoring. Students engage in academic and enrichment classes including Ballet Folklorico, math games, and Marathon Kids running club. With a comprehensive approach to educating the whole child, we aim to equip all of our students with the skills and perspectives necessary to become fully engaged members of their communities.

We are striving toward utilizing the workshop model in all core areas (reading, writing and math) with a focus this year in writing workshop.  The use of the Estructura para la evaluación del nivel independiente de lectura (ENIL), Independent Reading Level Assessment (IRLA) for reading provides specific guidance on where the students are as readers and what strategies need more refinement.  Additional formative assessments aligned with ENIL/IRLA include EasyCBM, Lexia, Dreambox and iReady.  In writing, authentic writing and continual daily practice provide us with a roadmap for instruction. The use of writing progressions, success criteria and student centered rubrics aligned to district adopted curriculum will provide guidance on where students are as writers. This year, we will focus on identifying, developing and implementing these measures of assessment. In math, we use grade level created post assessments and Dreambox to ensure we are supporting individual learners. Each of these areas necessitates conferring to set up individual goals, and strategic grouping during work time to link instruction to the students “zone of proximal development”.  We have begun implementing a co-teaching model during  writing as a targeted universalism strategy.  Language learning is a universal goal that all students benefit from. Co-teaching is a targeted universalism strategy that benefits all students while targeting and focusing strategic support for our Emerging Bilingual students. 

Along with the rest of the Beaverton School District, we have recognized the need to further equip our staff with tools to support and nurture our students’ social and emotional learning.  We have implemented the following structures:  morning meetings in each classroom each day, daily community/academic/restorative circles, knowledge and use of the Zones of Regulation, restorative practices, Positive Behavior Supports & Interventions (PBIS) and our district adopted Kindness in the Classroom and Character Strong programs.  The AHP Student Success Framework serves as our roadmap to guide these efforts. Playworks will also support our recess space as a learning playground where students have safe opportunities to engage in organized games and practice conflict resolution skills in real time.  We work to ensure that every student feels safe and experiences a sense of belonging and significance at school every day.  

Our teamwork mindset propels us towards instructional equity.  Together, we ensure that every student learns grade level content every day and can demonstrate evidence of learning every day.  We do this by leveraging the gifts our students bring to our school and classroom communities every day. 

We will engage in reading, writing, listening, speaking, metalanguage (4+1) domains during Teacher Workshops throughout the school year.  We will engage in curriculum planning that aligns standards, learning targets (content, language, culture), instruction and assessment.  Data collection, disaggregation and analysis will be used to inform our instructional moves. Staff Development Days will be prioritized for this work to take place. We will study instruction and analyze student work - researching, testing and revising teaching strategies together through cycles of inquiry that will take place during Professional Learning Communities.

We will embed belonging work in all school efforts.  The concept of belonging describes more than a feeling of inclusion or welcome. Its full power is as a strategic framework for addressing ongoing structural and systemic othering, made visible, for example, in the wide disparities in outcomes found across a variety of sectors and identity groups in society.  We will engage in belonging work by integrating culturally and historically responsive practices (Muhommad, Hammond, Sealey-Ruiz), No Place for Hate programming (Anti-Defamation League), and multilingual mindsets (Medina, Beeman, Escamilla, K. Goodman, Y. Goodman, Walqui) in our learning as a school community - students, families and staff.