It’s hard to believe it is the end of the first quarter already. Thank you to all of the people who have been patient with me as I get to know the school, the staff, and the community.

After my first quarter, it has become apparent that our parents, staff, and community care deeply about our school.  This gives us common ground to work towards school and student improvement.

At the last board meeting, the School Board tasked me with two goals. The first goal was student improvement and the second goal was to improve communication. I concur that these are two areas we can improve. I also understand that these are huge undertakings and will take time.

Our staff is already working toward student improvement with our administration leading the way. The administration meets weekly and student improvement is the top priority. Many tasks are already in place designed to help our students succeed.

Our elementary staff has regular meetings to work on Response to Intervention (RTI) and data from MAPS testing. This helps to identify individual student needs to help our students improve academically and target students reading and math skills. I’m impressed with the hard work that our elementary team has put in and the improvements they have made in student achievement. They are a very dedicated group.

Mr. Sukut, Mrs. Satterwhite, Mr. Tait, and Mr. Mercer are working on improving student ACT scores during 8th period. Starting in the second quarter, the Juniors will take a practice ACT test. This test will give us an idea of how each junior will score on the ACT test and identify areas to improve. Following the test, the juniors will work with Mr. Tait and Mr. Mercer to help them improve their scores. Mrs. Satterwhite can explain the ACT intervention should you have any questions. I firmly believe this program will help our juniors score better on the ACT test. Mr. Sukut and Mrs. Satterwhite have worked hard to help our students in this area.

During the 1st quarter, I focused on improving communication within the school by having weekly administration meetings. This has allowed us to work together and collaborate on the important issues facing the school as well as planning ways to keep our staff informed and allowing us to receive input from our staff.

Our current schedule does not allow us much time to collaborate with our teachers. In spite of this, we are working with our teachers to improve communication. Currently, we are holding staff meetings. Our goal, until we can schedule more time into the school year for collaboration, is to make sure our meetings are meaningful.

One of the first areas I would like to improve is our school website. This could be a great resource for getting information out to the community and parents. We will work to accomplish this over the school year.  One thing that compounds the use of the school website is the loss of Dave Dobbins as our tech coordinator. Dave did a lot of work to keep the website up to date and has been very difficult to replace. Thank you for your patience as we work to improve the site.

I am also working to improve communication by being open and available to the community and parents. If you have any questions or concerns, I would really appreciate if you contacted me. Feel free to call our office and make an appointment. My days are very busy but I will do my best to be available to meet with you.

I have had people meet with me and express interest in a modified school day. I discussed this with the School Board at our last meeting and we have decided to investigate the possibility. My first step will be to gather information from our parents, staff, community, and students about this. I am going to schedule a community meeting concerning this issue. I will get the time and date out to as many people as possible. Please be on the lookout for more information on when the meeting will be, as your input is valued.

Once again, thank you for the opportunity to work with our students. I am truly enjoying my time in Cascade and look forward to continuing to help our students succeed.