By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

As winter break rapidly approaches for schools across the Carbon School District, teachers and administrators are tasked with balancing educational opportunities with fun activities for the students. At Castle Heights Elementary, this balance includes a dose of charity as the school strives for constant improvement in its students.

To discuss this growth and other happenings at the school, Principal Wendy Fluckey and Instructional Coach Renee Strate joined the KOAL newsroom for this week’s Carbon School District update.

Currently ongoing at the school is a fundraiser for “Friendship Benches,” a concept which Principal Fluckey provided a closer look at: “When we were interviewing students for student government, one of the things that they went with was to have a bench, purchase a bench out on our playground so if a student didn’t have somebody to play with, they could go sit on the bench and that would indicate to the other students that they needed a friend.”

Continued the principal,” We are in the process of doing a fundraiser with a raffle, and whoever wins, it will be a one-day ski pass to Brighton Ski Resort, good for two adults. And so we’re hoping that we’re able to raise the funds to purchase this friendship bench for our students.

Tickets cost $2 and are available by calling the school at 435-637-7177. The opportunity drawing takes place on Tuesday, Nov. 25.

Moving to the academic angle, Strate explained what growth the school has seen in its students,” We’re working hard to make sure that every kid has all of the skills that they need to be good readers – and making sure that they understand all of the phonics concepts. So we have this great program we use called 95% that covers every single phonics concept, so we can make sure a student has all the tools they need to read. At the beginning of the year, we tested all of our kids, and 31% of our student body had some gap somewhere in their phonics skills. And in just a quarter and a half, we’ve worked those kids through the program, and only 19% of the kids are left in the program. So it’s really exciting to see the progress and the number of kids who are graduating from phonics.”

Fluckey provided broader context on the program and its alignment with statewide testing goals: “The state goal is for all third graders to be proficient at reading 70% by next summer. And at the end of our school year, 76% of our third graders were proficient. So we are exceeding the state’s goal, and we plan on continuing to excel to have all of our kids proficient in reading.”

Balancing educational opportunities while keeping students engaged is no small task. Fluckey shared how she and the staff seek to strike the right balance between the two,” Part of it is empowering all of our teachers and our PLCs to be leaders. Because it really does take all of us to lead this and to move forward. So it really is shared leadership.”

She added,” We are very fortunate here in Price. We have such a supportive school board, a supportive superintendent. We have such a supportive administration that really does support us here in our school to lower the class sizes so that we are able to better meet our kids’ needs.”

Closing our conversation, Principal Fluckey shared a message of gratitude for the community,” We live in such a great community. We are so grateful for all the support that we have, and encourage our parents to continue to support us.”

To stay up to date with Castle Heights Elementary, visit the school’s website or follow them on Facebook.