Dist. 54 on path to meet goals for new school year
Over the past several weeks, District 54 staff members have been preparing their classrooms to welcome more than 14,000 students in preschool through eighth grade to the start of another successful school year. During the summer, our teachers and support staff spent countless hours attending professional development classes, pursuing advanced degrees and working with their colleagues to plan many exciting learning opportunities for their students. We continue to be very fortunate to have such a dedicated team of professionals who do whatever they can to help every student achieve at a high level.
Before I highlight several of the key projects that we will be working on this year, I wanted to share with you a quick synopsis of our district’s overall student assessment results. Reading and mathematics achievement continued to rise and were at an all-time high. Seventeen of our schools met the district’s goal of having at least 90 percent of our students meeting or exceeding state standards, with every school demonstrating positive gains. We are also seeing significant progress in closing the achievement gap for students in all 27 of our schools. As a district, we continue to work hard to make sure that no student is left behind and every student receives a quality education.
We are particularly proud that 90.8 percent of our students met or exceeded state standards in reading and 94.6 percent of our students met or exceeded state standards in mathematics. Congratulations to our students, parents and staff members who have worked hard to make this happen. These are phenomenal results!
To support the efforts of our staff in meeting our district’s goals and our mission of Ensuring Student Success, we will again be working on a number of districtwide projects. We are continuing our laserlike focus in prekindergarten through second grade to ensure that our students read at grade level upon entering third grade. Last year, we implemented a new instructional model for our English Language Learners and have seen positive results. We are pleased with the gains that we have seen in these two areas, yet we know we can and will do even better this year.
Students in kindergarten through sixth grade will be using a new interactive social studies curriculum. All 21 of our elementary schools will be offering a variety of new enrichment activities in fine arts and physical education, which will provide interested students additional opportunities to develop a variety of new skills. We are also excited about the technology upgrades that you will be seeing in each of our schools. To create and implement more interactive and engaging learning activities for students, every third- through eighth-grade classroom will be equipped with a projector, document camera and tablet computer. In addition, 39 classrooms will be piloting interactive whiteboards.
Several new projects have been included on this year’s list to strengthen communication with our parents and community. In August, our board of education began using a Web-based system for their meetings. This will allow for the online posting of the meeting agenda and the supporting documents at least 48 hours before each board meeting. Later this year, parents of our junior high students will have access to an online Parent Portal to view their child’s grades and progress in real time.
The complete list of the 2011-2012 projects can be found on our district’s website (sd54.org) in the board of education section under Mission and Goals. Thank you for your ongoing support and we hope that we can continue to count on you to help us make the 2011-2012 year be our best yet!