Franklin Academy
March 18th, 2018
Principal's Corner
As most of you already know, at Franklin Academy we offer two tours every month for non-Franklin families in order to provide opportunities to get to know us better. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to lead one of these tours. While I was explaining to these perspective families all the amazing experiences we provide to our students, I could not stop thinking about the immense amount of talent we have here at Franklin Academy Sunrise Campus.
More than 60% of our staff has been with us since we first opened our doors to our families back in 2015. This year, we are lucky enough to have five High Impact teachers on our campus identified by the Florida Department of Education. Our educators accumulate a lot of experience and we all are very committed to the profession. If you visit us to complete your service hours, you can see that in our school our biggest priority is the 1376 students we are lucky enough to serve; every decision made at Franklin Academy is made with the students best interest and their well-being in mind.
I am very proud to be leading our school and extremely proud to be part of Franklin Academy.
In The Spotlight: Coach Leonardo
This week, we hear from our Physical Education and Health teacher, who educates amany of our MYP scholars. Mr. Leonardo is also our very commited Athletics Director.
When and why did you decide to work in a school? I decided to work in a school after working two jobs during college. I was working as an intern for WSVN in the sports broadcasting department but also spent my time in the summer working at a sports camp in Weston. The woman I worked with was in physical education and took me in as her mentor. At the same time I did not like the hours in broadcast journalism as they were usually late at night and worked during holidays and I could not see myself starting and be an active and participating father in a family with that job. So I stayed in the sports field but just focused my attention on becoming a physical education teacher and athletic director.
What sports did you play growing up at school? I played multiple sports growing up and I always wanted to keep busy. I played football, basketball, and baseball through middle school and then went to high school and played football. In college, I played competitive intramural flag football and basketball.
What is your favorite sport to play? My favorite sport to play is basketball and football because I grew up playing predominantly those two sports but can really do anything that is competitive. I am a highly competitive person and as long as you trying to determine a winner and a loser, I am going to give 110 percent.
What is your favorite sport to coach? My favorite sport to coach is basketball and football. I truly enjoy the games and as I coach others, I tend to get better at the sport as well. I also like to learn from my other coaches about sports I wasn’t so familiar with growing up such as soccer.
What is your favorite memory at Franklin Academy? This question is tough because in three years at Franklin and two as the physical education and athletic director there are just so many to choose from. The relationships I have built with many of our students will always be remembered but if I had to pick single moments a couple come to mind.
I will always have a lasting memory of the first game played at Franklin Academy Sunrise, where our girls soccer team beat New Renaissance 9-0. This led to a journey that took us through a year of struggles and hard work that ended this year with our girls team winning their division and hanging our first banner. The girls basketball season as a whole is another one as they went 0-10 last year and all were determined to come back and the work they put in showed as they finished 7-4 and finally as far as sports goes our boys flag football team finishing the regular season undefeated and becoming division champs and hanging our first boys banner.
Around Franklin...
The Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) has released a list of “high impact teachers” chosen based on students’ performance on state standardized assessments during the 2016-17, 2015-16 and 2014-15 school years. The teachers recognized must have taught English Language Arts (grades 4-10), Mathematics (grades 4-8) or Algebra (grades 8-9).
On behalf of Franklin Academy, we would like to congratulate the five High Impact teachers at the Sunrise campus. This week they were greeted with cheers by the administration and the leadership team as well as their pictures being displayed in the school lobby.
A recent analysis of student performance on statewide standardized assessments found that Ms. Galan, Ms. Palmer, Mr. Mondejar, Ms. Mahler and Mr. Lucas had an impact on student learning. This group serves as a small representative sample of the outstanding teachers here at Franklin Academy and we are proud of their hard work!!!
Our amazing Physical Education teacher, Coach Easter, would like to share with our parents that that he will be administering the Fitness Gram test to our 3rd, 4th & 5th grade students. The Fitness Gram test was developed more than 20 years ago by The Cooper Institute to enable physical educators to facilitate communicating fitness testing results to students and to parents. Each student will be completing and going home with a Healthy Fitness Zone scoresheet. Parents are reminded to please have students in their sneakers and P.E. T shirts and shorts for the upcoming weeks.
Yesterday, we celebrated a very special event for our male students and their queens. This was the first time we held this event and it was extremely special! We wanted to share some amazing pictures from this spectacular day and unforgettable time.
OUR SUN-RISERS OF THE WEEK
Parent: We would love to acknowledge the hard work showed by our PTO Executive Board. Thank you, Ms. Gerdes, Mr. Vasquez, Ms. Cuchel, Ms. Button, and Ms. Galinaitis, for making FASUN an amazing school.
Staff Member: As you know, this past Thursday was a difficult day for our school. During the Code Yellow and Code Red situations, all our staff did an amazing job keeping our students safe and ensuring that our students felt that way. Kudos to all our incredible team!
Student: We have to thank all our students for the great behavior showed during the entire week, especially on Wednesday during the National Walkout for MSD and on Thursday during our Code Yellow and Red situations.
Community: This week, I would like to thank the Sunrise Police Department. During Thursdays Code Yellow and Code Red situations, our amazing officers from the City of Sunrise ensured that all our students were safe and protected.
We Are Franklin Academy
Website: sun.franklin-academy
Location: 4500 Northwest 103rd Avenue, Sunrise, FL, USA
Phone: (754)-206-0850
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FranklinAcademyCharter/
Twitter: @twitter_FranklinCharter