Plenty to be thankful for in Dist. 203
It is easy to take living in Naperville for granted.As Thanksgiving approaches, I decided to highlight three things in Naperville and in Unit District 203 about which we can all give thanks.
Let's start with our veterans.Last Friday, District 203 hosted a breakfast for 75 veterans who then fanned out for assemblies and grade presentations in each of our 21 schools.
Because of the hard work of Judd Kendall VFW Post 3873 and American Legion Post 43 here in Naperville, we have a wonderful group of both veterans and volunteers who bring history to life for our students.
It is amazing that our local veterans are so willing to share their stories with our students and do such a good job of it. Their sacrifices, and those of their comrades, are a living legacy of patriotism and dedication that are important lessons for our students to learn about history "firsthand."
In the same vein, we also can be proud of our students at Madison Junior High who, thanks to the leadership of Brian Bakke and the seventh-grade Team United, have collected more than 2,500 Beanie Babies (with other schools such as Kingsley and River Woods contributing hundreds as well) to ship to our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The soldiers then pass them out to the children they meet on patrol. Beanie Babies as instruments of world peace -- who would believe it?
The second thing, for which we must constantly give thanks, is the wonderful level of parent and community involvement and support we enjoy in District 203.
Our recent telephone survey of 400 random voters told us that roughly 82 percent of respondents graded the district with either an A or B on overall performance.
And so many of you took the time to participate in our recent Touch the Future community engagement campaign (centered around facilities), with more than 1,000 of you giving us feedback on our facilities options. Very impressive!
Even though the phone survey did not confirm that the majority of residents felt the same way as those completing our community engagement feedback surveys, there can be no doubt that almost everyone is aware of our facilities issues.
Whatever the board of education ultimately decides to do, it will be a better decision because so many of you have given us some of your precious time to share your opinion on the options before us.
Last, but not least, more thanks must go to our dedicated staff, students and parents who provided important feedback to us in our recently completed outside assessment of our district's strengths and weaknesses by the Consortium for Educational Change.
Our staff's hard work on a daily basis was validated by the outside reviewers who commended our district for, among other things, our curriculum design and deployment, our high levels of performance (compared to similar districts), and our overall commitment to our mission that the team be labeled "extraordinary."
At the same time, the review team cited two areas that it believes will be our key to continuous improvement: meeting the needs and challenges of a changing population and helping each student take responsibility for their own learning more consistently.
The executive summary of the report is now on our Web site (see the Spotlight section on our home page: www.naperville203.org). I encourage parents and staff to review it there.
To meet the challenges of the future and to continue to earn "high marks" from our community requires ongoing effort and perpetual vigilance. That our community and our school staff work so well together to set high expectations for our students is truly something for which we also must give thanks.