We hope you are having an amazing fall season.

It was so great to see many of you at our conferences last month. We always love the opportunity to have your family in the buildings. If you were not able to attend our in person conferences, we hope the virtual option was helpful for your families. Whether in person or virtually, we appreciate the opportunity to celebrate and discuss your student's progress with you.

You may have heard your students talk about taking the NWEA Map test. This is a test that all K-11th graders take in the area of Math and Reading and 5th-11th graders in the area of Science as well. These assessments tell us a lot of things around what our students know and what their next steps should be. It is our district goal to improve the percentage of students meeting their growth scores by at least 5%. A growth score measures a year's worth of learning for a year's worth of time. If a student meets their growth score, they are on track to move forward one year. If students are behind grade level, we hope to beat the growth score in order to accelerate learning and begin to catch up. You often hear students and educators talking about their RIT score. A RIT score is how about 50% of students in the country score on the test. Please note this is NOT on grade level. To see how close your student is to grade level standards, you will want to look at their percentile. Scoring between the 60th and 70th percentile is what is typically equivalent to being on grade level. To learn more check out the NWEA Family Toolkit at https://www.nwea.org/family-toolkit/.

As we move into this Thanksgiving Season, we want to thank each of you for your partnership with us at Homer Community Schools. It is said that "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child" and we are so honored to be a part of the Homer Village and the Homer families as we work to provide the best school experience possible for you and your child.

We have many other things to share with you so see below for more Homer Highlights!

Be sure to also follow Homer Schools on Facebook (@hcstrojans) or check out the website (www.homerschools.net).