October Newsletter

Posted Date: 10/31/25 (12:00 PM)

District Newsletter

Monthly news and updates

October 31, 2025

Dear Santiam Canyon Community,

Welcome to our monthly newsletter, a vibrant reflection of the happenings and achievements within the Santiam Canyon School District. This edition brings you reminders of important dates for our district, exciting news about our high school sports teams, reminders about the importance of attendance, and the link to our monthly board meeting agendas, attachments, and recordings.

It's been two months since we started school and it is off to an amazing start! We are exciting about the amazing things happening in our schools and encourage our community to join us - whether it be as spectators at our school events, volunteers in our classrooms, or even just waving at our students as they come to school each morning. Our staff and students are doing amazing things and we are proud of them!!

As always, please feel free to reach out and contact me anytime with questions.

Ms. Nieraeth

In this issue:

Fall Sports Successes!

Congratulations to our Santiam High School Girls' Volleyball team on being the Tri - River League Co - Champions this year! This is the first time in school history that our volleyball team has won a league championship!! The team has earned the #9 seed to the state playoffs and will travel to Weston - McEwen High School THIS Saturday to play for a chance at a trip to the state tournament in LaGrande next weekend. Good Luck Wolverines!!!

Our Santiam High School Football team will end its season this weekend at Gaston High School and will be in the hunt to make the state playoffs, which start next weekend. These boys have worked hard this season and we are proud of their accomplishments! Please be checking the SJSHS Facebook page for more information about potential playoff games.

Attendance Matters

Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing more than 10% of the school year. In Santiam Canyon, missing 10% or more of the school days means that a student is missing 15 or more days each year!!!

Here are 5 facts about school attendance:

Absenteeism in the first month of school can predict poor attendance throughout the school year. Half the students who miss 2-4 days in September go on to miss nearly a month of school.
Poor attendance can influence whether children read proficiently by the end of third grade or be held back.
By 6th grade, chronic absence becomes a leading indicator that a student will drop out of high school.
Research shows that missing 10 percent of the school, or about 15 days in our district, negatively affects a student’s academic performance. That’s just about two days a month and that’s known as chronic absence.
When students improve their attendance rates, they improve their academic prospects and chances for graduating.

Let's make regular attendance at school a priority!

Family Attendance Winners at SES

SES is awarding Family Attendance Winners each month!! Each student who has 90% or more attendance earns their family a chance to win a gift bag. Thank you to all of our families who have their student in school regularly!!

Important Upcoming Dates

November, December and January are quickly approaching and here are some important dates to remember!!

Nov. 6 - 7 - SES Parent/Teacher Conferences

Nov. 11 - Veteran's Day *NO SCHOOL

Nov. 26 - 28 - Thanksgiving Vacation *NO SCHOOL

Dec. 19 - 1/2 Day of School for Students

Dec. 22 - Jan 2 - Winter Break *NO SCHOOL

Jan. 5 - School Resumes

School Board Information

The Board of Directors of SCSD holds their monthly meeting at the SES Commons the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 6pm. The public is invited to attend these meetings to keep up to date on all board business.

New this year! The Board will be using BoardBooks to publish the agendas and all presented information for the public to review prior to the meeting. You can subscribe to the SCSD BoardBooks page to get all updates for meetings, agendas, and minutes.

Click on this link to see our BoardBooks: https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Organization/3310

We update our BoardBooks for each meeting the Friday prior to the meeting.