Superintendent's Update, May 2019 скачать в хорошем качестве

Superintendent's Update, May 2019

Video Transcript Hello Vestavia Hills City Schools parents, friends and supporters. I wanted to send you a final video update for all things related to our school system as we are heading into summer. It has been a fantastic school year, one that has given me a great opportunity to learn more about the high quality school system that we have where when we strive for excellence, it really means something, our mission to focus on providing opportunities for students to learn without limits is an incomparable way, I believe, to prepare our students for all things after they graduate and leave us. This month is a very exciting month. We have a lot of end of the year celebrations that I've had the privilege of attending and look forward to attending graduation on the 21st of May this month and that's going to be an exciting night to learn all of the accomplishments of our students that are graduating and heading out to their futures. Just a few things to update you on heading into the summer. We have completed the accreditation process that really took us all year to work through. After our team visited us in February we received a report about a month later that commended all of the excellent things going on in our school system, and a couple of weeks ago I received a letter that affirmed that we did get accreditation for the next 5 years. That's a very important thing for a school system to have. I'm most appreciative to the many people, including our administrators, our teachers, parents, and students, all those that were part of this process year year to demonstrate all the things that we're doing well. Accreditation gives us an opportunity to look for things that we can improve upon or grow. Strategic planning has been going on this spring, and it is incorporating the ideas that we have gleaned from accreditation along with other data sources which include interviews with parents and students and teachers, data points on surveys from our accreditation years past, all of those things have been collected to put together a set of district goals that we want to have moving forward. Our strategic plan is one that has a fine mission, it has a wonderful set of beliefs that we like, so we're focused in just on looking forward with new District goals and our team has been working on that through this spring. In June we will finish up that process and we will begin to present that information to our Board of Education, and that will take us through the summer and we’ll be looking forward to hopefully approving a new set of district goals that we can work from as school year begins next year. I look forward to telling you more about that as that process is finished up. As you know, we have a good bit of construction still remaining in our projects, and that includes work that’s taking place at Berry which will be the new Pizitz Middle School and also at the existing Gresham Elementary School which will be Dolly Ridge in the fall. Do remember that we will not be occupying the Berry campus beginning in August, but we will be at Dolly Ridge beginning in August. To learn more about the construction work that we’re doing, we’ll be providing the Board an update during its May 20 meeting. Dr. Patrick Martin will be sharing that information with our Board, so I encourage you to watch the video, attend the meeting if you like. We like to keep our Board updated on all things related to construction, so we look forward to sharing that information with them, and of course you’ll be able to see and hear about it as well after the meeting. This summer we’re moving East and West and Central's teaching staff around to accommodate these moves. There's a lot of moving parts, literally, that are taking place, and that'll go all through the month of June and into early July. We want to have that move done as quickly as possible so our teachers can get in at some point in the summer as they would like to and begin preparing. So it’s an exciting summer of things to take place. Each year we provide an annual report of all the things that happened in our system the prior year, and that will be coming out in August. I look forward to sharing that with you. Our report has received a two-time recognition from the state association on public relations in Alabama schools as the best annual report, so I’m very pleased with that, and we always want to look to do things better, so you’ll see some new looks to the Annual Report this year, and it’ll be something that I think just shines a light on all the good and wonderful things that happen in our school system. This cannot happen without your support and your commitment to your children and to our community and our schools together, so thank you so much for being such an important partner in getting our kids ready for college and life and career choices. I hope you have a wonderful summer, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.