Superintendent's Update

September 2023

Greetings!

It is hard to believe we are almost a month into the 2023–2024 school year! It has been great to see our students, families, and staff finding success in their routines once again.

Our elementary students are working with our robust collection of literacy resources, called Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts®, or CKLA for short. These resources are a welcomed addition to the tools used by our pre-kindergarten through fifth grade teachers. CKLA approaches reading as a science. The program is filled with knowledge-rich content! Students will be learning about such topics as farms, kings and queens, insects, early civilizations, the solar system, the Renaissance, and the human body — all while also learning how to read!!

The team at the middle school welcomed in new groups of sixth and seventh graders this fall. Red Hawk Intermediate is now home for our eighth grade students. Interestingly enough, this fall marks the first time students in all three middle-level grades started the school year in a different building than they'd been in the previous year. We are excited to see what new opportunities will come out of this shift for our students. We are also excited to see the energy being invested into our students from our teachers at the middle level to make sure students are feeling good about being back at school this year.

Many of our high school students have been at the new school year for almost two months! Hundreds of students started back at it in August, spending the last few weeks of their summer participating in band camp, summer workouts, and even fall athletic team practices.

Each day has brought on new challenges for us as a district, but they have not stopped us from providing the best possible education for our students. We are excited to see where the year takes us.

We can. We will. We are. TOGETHER!

With respect and gratitude,
Scott B. Smith, Superintendent