CONNECTIONS
Spring 2026
Dear Cascade Community,
I hope this message finds you well and enjoying the springtime! At Cascade School District (CSD), we are proud to provide enriching opportunities for students both inside and outside the classroom.
CSD is known for excellence, adventure, creativity, and belonging. We invite you to learn more about our schools and programs at: https://www.cascadesd.org/page/explore. This newsletter highlights a few special people who are part of our Cascade family. Please scroll down to the bottom of the newsletter to subscribe and learn more!
Please join us in supporting our athletic and academic programs throughout the spring and in celebrating our graduates on June 5. Also, we always love volunteers! You can sign up on our website at: Volunteer Program | Cascade School District.
Thank you, as always, for your continued support and the amazing partnerships this community provides to our students and schools.
Best wishes,
Dr. Tracey L. Edou
Cascade School District Superintendent
D’Andre Vasquez goes hard for what he cares about. The 24-year-old became Cascade High School (CHS) head wrestling coach at 21. He helped grow girls’ wrestling in the Upper Valley and was head coach for both the boys and the girls’ teams for 3 years until turning over the girls’ team to a new head coach last year. He also works “more than full time” at the Wenatchee Chamber of Commerce, and gets up at 5 a.m. to exercise and get ahead of the day. He attended Washington State University, which he picked because he could double major in political science and marketing, and because they had a club wrestling team, which he joined. But underneath all these activities is a much deeper purpose: D’Andre is driven to create community.
“D’Andre had a lot of leadership in creating the girls’ wrestling program,” says Cascade School District Superintendent Dr. Tracey Edou.
D’Andre has a 14-year-old niece who wrestles, and wanted to make sure the infrastructure was in place for her and others to have a valuable wrestling experience at CHS. He says the process was definitely a group effort, with parents stepping up to drive the vans to tournaments, and coaches volunteering their time before there were funds to pay them. He thinks his main job was to keep advocating for the team to be created.
“It’s probably my role.” he says. "To push.”
D'Andre is from Peshastin, where he grew up with his five siblings. He went to high school at CHS himself. And community, he says—the wrestling community especially—is what saved him his freshman year in high school. D’Andre, his grandmother and both his parents were in a car accident. All three of them died, and D’Andre broke both of his legs. Icicle River Middle School teacher Jesus Sandoval was the wrestling coach at the time, and D’Andre credits Jesus’ strong support as a coach and a mentor with helping him get through the aftermath of that accident.
“Wrestling provided me with a space to cope,” he said. “You’re going to find something,” he added, referring to peoples’ need to fill the grief and empty space left after tragic events, which can often lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms. “I’m just glad it was wrestling.”
D’Andre learned a lot from the wrestling program when he was a student, where he first learned that hard work could lead to success. His philosophy is a mix of showing his wrestlers that he expects them to do their absolute best and giving them the tools and support they need to get there. He shows his students what they can accomplish and how they can grow as a result of their own efforts. D’Andre knows that success isn’t just about winning awards, either. That knowledge and the skills used to bring it about can serve his students in any number of ways, throughout their entire lives.
On January 20, 2026, Cascade High School (CHS) welcomed its first cohort of students for its new Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) certification program. Created in partnership with Mountain Meadows Senior Living Campus and Cascade Medical in Leavenworth, the semester-long program is part of the regular school day at the high school and is free for the students. Once the students get their certificate, they can immediately start working in the medical field.
An essential aspect of the program is that it provides a certification that allows students to immediately get a job after it’s completed. "CNA jobs are available everywhere", says CNA Program Director and Mountain Meadows Executive Director Amanda Ledezma.
Someone with a CNA certification can stay in the area or move somewhere else—there are even travel CNA positions, too. A CNA is also a prerequisite for many medical degrees. Obtaining the certification in high school is a leg up for any student who has an interest in a medical career, regardless of what kind.
It took a year of coordination to bring the program to fruition. Although Mountain Meadows already had a template in place because of their own in-house CNA program for adults they created with Cascade Medical, the new CHS program required approval from both Washington Department of Nursing—standard for any state-certified CNA program—and the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction since it was a high school class. The double certification process took the concerted efforts of Amanda Ledezma from Mountain Meadows, Cascade Medical Registered Nurse Christiane Brown, CHS Career and Technical Education (CTE) Director Kirk Sunitsch, and CHS College and Career Counselor Amy Rieke. There are five students in the first cohort; eventually, says Amy, the hope is to run two cohorts of about 6 students each per semester.
The CNA program was born out of an idea of “Why wait?” says Amy. “Once they become certified, they are immediately employable at Cascade Medical, Confluence Health and Mountain Meadows.”
Amanda points out the student CNAs can work at Mountain Meadows even before graduating high school, filling in on weekends and over school holidays. The CNA certification is part of a growing portfolio of courses and offerings that CHS students can take in high school to gain skills that will help them get jobs straight out of high school if they wish—jobs that don’t require a two-year or four-year degree. In addition to the new CNA program, CHS’s CTE programs include welding, culinary skills, business courses and more.
Although Wenatchee Valley College also offers a CNA program, not everyone can make it to Wenatchee or afford the fee for the course. By offering it within CHS, students can avoid a commute to Wenatchee, save the money they would have paid for the training otherwise, and be able to work immediately in a number of positions.
“At a minimum, we’re saving everyone $1500,” says Amy.
In addition to the advantages for a future career, it can also give students a chance to see if they’re interested in the medical field. It serves as a litmus test, says Amy: if a student says they’re interested in a medical degree but shies away from the program, Amy suggests they rethink why they’re going into medicine at all. Physically caring for patients is the bedrock of any medical career.
The CHS CNA course is comprised of 115 hours of coursework, divided into nine units.
“I think what makes the program incredibly unique is that we don’t just have one nurse teaching the program, which really makes it a lot more dynamic,” says Amanda.
Not only are students learning the basics of physical nursing—how to move patients, help with toileting or bathing, etc.—they’re also learning the importance of caring for themselves in the process. Amanda reminds the students that it’s ok to have a range of feelings in the process of caring for their patient, especially in end-of-life care. She teaches them about all the ways that grief can show itself, how to remember that their patients are humans with their own feelings, thoughts and experiences, and how important their own self care is to ensuring they can maintain the emotional capacity to be there for their patients and do their jobs.
“There aren’t many jobs that are both physically and emotionally taxing in the same way,” says Amanda.
These lessons are layered in with hands-on training on how to be professional, communicate well and how to be a good employee—life skills that are essential to any job, even if the student ultimately decides not to go into a medical field.
“And those aren’t things you can learn on a quiz,” says Amanda.
Cascade High School senior Cody Salmon doesn’t consider himself to be very good at the traditional sports generally associated with high school. “I’ve never really been the best conventional athlete,” he says. It’s a good thing conventional sports aren’t the only ones available. In May 2025, Cody took first place at the state competition for trap shooting.
Cody started shooting in 7th grade, when it became clear that sports like basketball weren’t his thing. At the time, Cody’s family lived near Vancouver, WA. One of their family friends was a coach for the Woodland High Trap Team. The coach suggested Cody try it out—he thought Cody might enjoy it. Not only did Cody enjoy it, it turned out he was good at it, too. When he joined the team, Cody was brand new to the sport. Six years later, he took first place at the state championships, hitting 98 of 100 moving targets—a near-perfect score.
“As a parent, you want to see your kid succeed,” says Cody’s dad, Scott Salmon. “[Shooting sports] give kids that might not be conventionally athletic another option.”
Cody says that the people they’ve met through shooting are one of the biggest highlights. “I really like the community,” says Cody. “They’re some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”
Cody’s family’s dedication to the sport continued after they moved to the Upper Valley. There is no local team that is part of the Washington Youth Education in Shooting Sports league that Woodland belonged to. Nevertheless, Scott recognized the importance of Cody being part of a team and continuing to shoot. Although he no longer lives in the Vancouver area, Cody has maintained his status on the Woodland team.
“So he can be part of a team,” says Scott, “And when he shows up to a tournament, he’s not just shooting with random people.”
Between tournaments that he travels throughout the country to attend with his Woodland teammates, Cody practices on his own at the Wenatchee and Cashmere Shooting Ranges, where he’s been met with a lot of support. The Wenatchee shooting range gave Scott a key so Cody can practice whenever it works for their schedule.
“The veteran shooters have been very supportive of Cody,” says Scott. “They enjoy watching him shoot.”
Cody generally competes in three disciplines: trap, skeet and sporting clays. All involve shooting clay disks, which are launched in different directions relative to the shooter and have to be shot while in motion. Depending on the discipline, the clays will be launched one at a time (trap shooting) or simultaneously into the air (skeet shooting) or a mixture, including along the ground, simulating a fleeing animal like a hare (sporting clays). When shooting at tournaments, participants rotate through pre-determined positions with their teammates, shooting 100 targets each in four rounds of 25.
Although most shooting ranges have trap shooting fields and many have skeet shooting fields, the sport is not popular locally among Cody’s age group compared to other sports. When Cody goes to national and regional competitions, he’s often competing against kids his age from the Midwest, or Texas. Nevertheless, the sport is growing on the West Coast; like any other high school sport, it offers an opportunity for those who excel at it. On March 7, Cody signed a letter of intent to compete as part of the trap shooting team for Eastern Oregon University (EOU) in La Grande, Oregon, which offered him a scholarship. One of his teammates at EOU will be the son of the coach who originally suggested Cody might like the sport in the first place.
“So it’s come full circle,” Cody said.
In addition to shooting, 18-year-old Cody was also a lineman for CHS’s football team, which earned him an additional role as a stunt support team member for CHS’s cheerleading squad. The cheerleaders asked Cody and two of his friends—also linemen—if they would help the cheerleaders with stunts, including lifting, throwing and catching the cheerleaders as part of their routines, mostly at home basketball games.
“It’s good to give back because they always do so much for us when we’re playing football, rain or shine,” says Cody. “And my buddies wanted to do it, so it was one last hurrah before we go our separate ways.”
Cody plans to study conservation biology at EOU.
“I like working outdoors, and conserving animals for future generations. If I have children and grandchildren, I want them to be able to enjoy the same animals I did.”
Even after college, Cody can continue his sports shooting through his local shooting range wherever he ends up. “Most [shooting ranges] have 3 to 5 trap fields and maybe a skeet field,” he said.
He’s enjoyed the stories he gets to hear from other shooting range members, including people who have been shooting for decades. “This is something he could do for the rest of his life,” says Scott. “Get together on a Saturday, have a cup of coffee and do some shooting.”
Teacher Appreciation Week
May 4-8
Class of 2026 Commencement
June 5 | 8:00 - 10:30 PM | Peshastin-Dryden Sports Complex
8th Grade Promotion
June 9 | 6:00 PM |Cascade High School Commons
Last Day of School
June 10 | Early Release
Visit the District Events Calendar for a full list of upcoming events.