From the Desk of the Superintendent
I have never been more excited for a new school year to begin. We have so many new and exciting opportunities for our students and staff. Additionally, our buildings look great and the new furniture has arrived and will provide an excellent learning environment for our students. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to lead our district and be able to update our facilities and provide the best learning experience for our students.
Before we get to all the stuff for the new school year, I want to take a moment and recognize a few outstanding performances across the district. First, congratulations to all our students, staff, and community for once again having the highest corporation performance scores in Montgomery County and surrounding areas on the ILEARN test for grades 3rd-8th in both Math and English Language Arts! Additionally, we are very proud of our IREAD-3 results and Ladoga Elementary has earned a 100% pass rate for the past three years. While there are several other areas to celebrate, special recognition goes to Mrs. Erin Jones and the 8th grade for earning a pass rate of 82% on the ILEARN 8th grade English test, which was 38% above the state average! Finally, as a corporation our students scored 18% above the state average on the English ILEARN exam and 20% above the state average on the Math ILEARN exam.
Over the summer we held several professional development opportunities and we are very thankful to our teachers that attended these sessions. In June, we held a Science of Reading Summit that will help our teachers with the new ELA curriculum and benefit our students that are learning to read. Also, we held a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) professional development for grades K-8. We are excited to enhance our Science curriculum with a new program entitled Create2Think and we are in the process of becoming the only area district to be certified in STEM. Next, we received professional development in our new Junior High Math curriculum entitled Reveal Math. This was the #1 choice of our Junior High Math teachers and it comes with a new online platform entitled ALEKS Math. Additionally, our teachers in grades K-6 have received multiple days of training on the new ELA curriculum entitled CKLA and we are all extremely excited to implement this curriculum at the start of the school year and watch our students grow. Finally, we will be taking approximately 20 staff members to the PLC (Professional Learning Community) Institute in Chicago at the end of the month. I have attended this conference in the past and it is the best conference that I have ever attended.
We are wrapping up several capital projects throughout the school corporation. If you drive by the high school and junior high you will see that the parking lots have been repaved. Inside the junior high and high school, all the classrooms have been repainted, most rooms have been carpeted, and we hope to have the new liner installed in the pool. Across the entire district, new furniture has been installed, deep cleaning has taken place, and our buildings are almost ready for the first day of school. Despite all the projects going on it is extremely quiet in the buildings without our students. I am very excited to see all of our students back at school and I can’t wait to see their faces when they see all the updates to our buildings. Until then, good luck at the fair to all those that are participating and enjoy the rest of the summer as school will be here before you know it.
Sincerely,
Dr. Chad C. Cripe
Proud Superintendent of Southmont Schools
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Southmont Community School Corporation