Year in Review - School District of Washington

​The School District of Washington is geographically one of the largest school districts in Missouri. We serve approximately 4,000 students from Franklin County, Warren County and St. Charles County. We believe the authentic learning and personal growth of our students and staff will ensure our collective success. 
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Focus Areas
The School District of Washington’s Strategic Plan for 2019-24 has developed five focus areas;
Student Achievement and Engagement – We want to provide our students with relevant learning experiences to match pour rigorous curriculum; equipping students with the skills they need to succeed in school, face future challenges and thrive well beyond graduation.
Safety, Health, and Well-Being of Students and Staff – We desire secure yet inviting school environments and believe in the whole-child approach to improve education. We want to take proactive measures to support students as they develop character, gain social and emotional maturity, achieve better health, grow in confidence, and acquire the citizenship skills needed to become members of society.
Meaningful Partnerships – We recognize the strength of our district/schools directly correlates to our timely, relevant, and ongoing engagement with families, businesses, higher education, and broader community.
Facilities and learning Environments – We desire up-to-date facilities and learning environments that support the learning needs of students, instructional delivery mechanisms of our teachers, while meeting the efficiency expectations of our stakeholders.
Assets and Sustainability – We know the success of our school district begins with how we value, hire, support and retain high-quality staff; providing them with effective resources to meet the needs of our students while maintaining fiscal responsibility and accountability.
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​​Health Science Academy
The School District of Washington, in partnership with Mercy, introduced a new program for students for the 2018-19 school year.  Health Sciences Academy of Innovation is a unique learning opportunity housed within Mercy Hospital and the Four Rivers Career Center.  Health Occupations students from the Four Rivers Career Center will be at Mercy learning through the lens of health sciences in specially designed state of the art classroom facilities. This unique learning environment includes hands-on application and exposure to the many pathways of study and careers in the field of health sciences.  Other courses offered as part of the new program are Medical Intervention and Biomedical Innovation, which will be held at the Four Rivers Career Center. Those students may spend part of their class time at Mercy.
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BUILD Academy 
The School District of Washington's BUILD Academy (Building Unique and Innovative Learning by Design) is held at Four Rivers Career Center.  BUILD Academy offers an authentic project based learning experience to over 100 sixth-grade students from Washington West Elementary and Campbellton Elementary. This project based learning model exposes students to possible careers that they may not even knew exist before they enter the BUILD Academy. 
The end project is a dog house. However, the true learning occurs when these students use every day standards by means of developing a business plan, designing business logos, drafting the dog house design from scratch and applying math and measuring skills to the actual building of the doghouse. 
"I am excited to be a part of the roll out of BUILD Academy. I was confident that the Project Based Learning method combined with the uniqueness of the program would be second to none. However, I underestimated how much excitement, pride and passion it would ignite in our sixth graders," said Annie Wieland, FRCC College and Career Specialist. "I was pleasantly surprised at the level of leadership and patience our high school Building Trades students displayed. Additionally, our sixth-grade and building trades instructors took an idea and brought it to life through collaboration and a lot of extra time, all the while, making it look easy. BUILD Academy has been a win-win for all involved."
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Project Lead The Way
Project Lead The Way provides transformative learning experiences for students and teachers by creating an engaging, hands-on classroom environment that empowers students to develop in-demand knowledge and skills they need to thrive.
Engineering, Biomedical Science and Computer Integrated Manufacturing are offered in the PLTW program for the high school level. At the middle school level, offered are Medical Detectives (students play the role of real-life medical detectives as they collect and analyze medical data to diagnose disease) along with Design and Modeling (students discover the design process and develop an understanding of the influence of creativity and innovation).
PLTW Engineering is a hands-on pathway for students who enjoy math and science classes. There currently are four engineering classes offered through Washington High School and Four Rivers Career Center. 
Introduction to Engineering Design (IED) and Principals of Engineering (POE) are offered at the high school. Students develop a solid foundation of skills to help them problem solve and use some of the software used by engineers in the design process. 
Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) is the first class offered in the fall at FRCC. Engineering Design and Development (EDD) is offered at FRCC in the spring semester.
PLTW Biomedical is a program with four different courses, all relating to different aspects of health science. The first two courses, Principles of Biomedical Science (PBS) and Human Body Systems (HBS), are offered at Washington High School. Medical Interventions and Biomedical Innovations are the final two courses in the PLTW Biomedical program. They are offered at Four Rivers Career Center. 
Washington High School is offering a new course for the 2019-20 school year in computer science. The course is titled Project Lead the Way CSE, which stands for Computer Science Essentials. The course is a great entry point for students who think they are interested in computer science and acts as a support to those who already have experience in this field.
In this course, students explore many different topics in computer science and gain experience through activities, research and projects. Topics covered in this class include mobile app development, robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and text-based programming. Students also research different professions in the computer science field, helping them gain knowledge of different career opportunities. 
PLTW Computer Science Essentials starts off with block-based programming. This benefits students who have never had experience with programming and are just getting used to the formatting and logic. 
The software we use in PLTW CSE include MIT App Inventor, VEX Robotics, and Amazon Web Services. MIT App Inventor is a block-based programming software that allows students to click and drag different pieces of code together to make a working mobile application. 
These applications that students develop are tested and deployed on an Android tablet. VEX Robotics is also a block-based program, but can double as text-based programming. In this unit, students program self-driving vehicles to navigate a map. Students also get experience with vision sensors. Vision sensors can view and recognize different colors and react differently according to the color. 
As the course develops and the students gain experience with the logic behind programming and eventually work on text-based programming. Text-based programming in Computer Science Essentials is done on Amazon Web Services – a cloud service. During this unit, students get experience with the syntax of programming and develop a more custom product.
Students seem to really enjoy this class. It is unlike other courses because it is 100 percent project based and students get to develop things that they are interested in. The course is set up to have specific activities and directions for students to work through first, and then leave the projects open for creativity. 
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Washington High School AP Classes
Washington High School offers a comprehensive list of AP courses for students. In the past 10 years we have grown our AP course offerings from two to 12 courses.  AP courses provide students the opportunity to participate in a nationally recognized program and earn college credit. How much credit a student earns depends on the college they will attend, the major they select, and how well they scored on the National AP exam. 
Washington High School has been recognized as an AP Honor Roll school. An AP Honor Roll designation means we have increased our offerings and kept a high achievement level. These courses are among the most rigorous offered at WHS. 
​AP classes offered at WHS are AP Calculus, AP Statistics, AP Computer Programming, AP Computer Science Principles, AP Literature and Composition, AP Language and Composition, AP Seminar, AP Art Studio, AP US History, AP Government, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics and AP Research.
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Looking Ahead 
Major planning is under way for new construction of South Point Elementary School and an inaugural Parent Summit. 
New Elementary Construction: The two-story, approximately 78,000-square-foot school will serve kindergarten through sixth grade. It will be built on a 75-acre parcel owned by the School District of Washington on Highway 100 east near St. John Road. It will be constructed at the northwest corner of Old Highway 100 and St. Johns Road. 
The new school is slated to open in August 2021.
Parent Summit: The School District of Washington is hosting its inaugural Parent Summit, scheduled for November 17, 2020, at Washington High School.  This is an opportunity for parents, guardians, caregivers and grandparents to learn more about important topics related to your child’s education in a conference style format.  The Summit is an opportunity for parents to learn directly from educators, business leaders and community members about important topics that impact your child’s education and social/emotional health.