SANDPOINT — The staff at Sandpoint Middle School strives to “make learning irresistible,” as that is the school motto.

“We want students to want to come to school,” SMS principal Casey McLaughlin told Lake Pend Oreille School District officials during the Nov. 18 board meeting.

SMS was the second in a series of school presentations that will take place over the next several board meetings. For these presentations, the principals from each school in the district are tasked with answering two questions — What is unique about your school? What strategies are taking place this year that are different that the school is instituting to get more students learning more?

The thing McLaughlin said makes SMS unique is that the school has implemented a number of electives over the past three years. The school went from having about five electives, to more than 25 electives, he said.

Advanced fitness, dance, crime scene investigation, media arts and robotics are among the many choices students have to choose from.

“It’s been a great opportunity for our students to look into some things that they might be interested in,” McLaughlin said. “... They are getting hands-on experience and having fun doing it.”

One of the things McLaughlin said he and staff noticed this year is they need to focus on community building.

“We recognized a need for students to really get to know each other,” said assistant principal Kari Granier. “They are coming from so many different schools.”

The first four days of school were dedicated to that community building, Granier said, allowing students to intermix in the different homeroom classes throughout the week. A field day was held where the students did team building exercises, she said.

School staff, in conjunction with individuals and organizations like Underground Kindness, had the opportunity to teach behavior expectations, such as how the students should speak to a teacher or a peer, and how to help someone in need.

“And then we really tried to set the idea, ‘you are a class of 2023 graduates,’” Granier said.

McLaughlin said the school has also been working on connecting with adults, including connecting the students with their parents, and connecting staff with parents. Every time there is an issue with a student and the youngster has to leave class for whatever reason, the parents are brought in for a conversation, McLaughlin said. So far, he said, it has been a successful endeavor and has helped create connections that weren’t there before.

For students who are struggling academically, McLaughlin said it is a goal this year to identify those students and figure out why they are struggling.

To do this, McLaughlin said the school has set up four different leadership teams, each with a different objective. The leadership teams are made up of about half the SMS staff. While he didn’t list the specific objectives, McLaughlin said they “very clear,” with clear results and outcomes. One that he did highlight is the internal leadership team, made up of nine people, including McLaughlin. One of the objectives of that team is to look at what the school does and figure out what they can do better.

“Those are the main things we have going forward this year, and ways we think that we are going to improve Sandpoint Middle School, and some of the unique things as well that make our school kind of what it is,” McLaughlin said.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.