Superintendent's Blog

September 3, 2010 - A Focus This Year - Literacy and Character Development

We are excited that the school year has officially begun and hope the first two weeks have been a positive start. With the release of the academic news over the summer, we want to continue the great effort into this school year.  

This year, we will especially focus on literacy and character development – two goals included in our Strategic Plan. While we made substantial gains in literacy, we have a lot of work to do in order to reach our goal of 81 percent by 2012. We need to make significant progress and it’s a goal we need to hit because reading is so important as a basis for all education.

Over the summer, teachers in grades K-5 participated in our summer literacy institute and we will be calling on the community to continue to get involved in our schools and promote the message about how important reading is in our children’s lives.

Since the launch of the strategic plan, we talked about how character development will be vital in preparing our students. This past year, we rolled parts of this initiative out at the end of the school year, including the district’s character traits and service learning. Service learning will be even more of a focus this year as it is a critical component of character development. We had more than 100 employees involved in service learning professional development. These teachers will serve as the champions of character education in their schools and help make this initiative successful across the district.

I’m really looking forward to watching our progress this year and celebrating more successes.

August 20, 2010 - Back to School is Almost Here

In just five days, all 71,000-plus students will return to school for the 2010-11 school year. It’s quite exciting and we have a lot to look forward to this year. The progress we made this past school year was admirable. Let’s carry this effort into next year, continuing to raise expectations for our employees, community and students.

We have two new schools – Jamestown Middle and Haynes-Inman Education Center. On Saturday, Jamestown Middle will hold its ribbon cutting ceremony at 11 a.m. before their open house. Haynes-Inman will hold its ribbon cutting ceremony on September 26 at 2 p.m. 

Speaking of open houses, I encourage parents to visit your child’s school and house, meet your child’s teacher and become familiar with their school.

In addition, as new school supplies are purchased, I encourage parents and the community to donate supplies to a school or community school supply drive to help all of our students has the classroom tools they need on the first day of school.