Welcome back! I hope all of you had a great summer and are ready for a school year filled with learning and parent engagement. I spent much of my summer at school interviewing and hiring the very best teachers and staff available. I am particularly excited about our new assistant principal, Mrs. Sandra Patterson. We were delighted to hire her away from LBL Middle School where she taught gifted students. She brings tremendous passion and zest for learning to Taylor and we are lucky to have her here. Mrs. Patterson is very accessible and has an open-door policy so please feel free to drop by and meet her.
School is off to a great start. But like every year, little glitches arise and I want to communicate with you how you can help us solve them:
· Class schedule changes – we have put a temporary hold on any schedule changes until we can balance our class sizes to account for changes in expected enrollment. We are overcrowded in several sections of science and social studies. Once we rebalance class sizes, we will look at changing class schedules on a case-by-case basis.
· Dress code reminders- Students have done a wonderful job of following the dress code. Please remember that students must be in solid color polo every day except Fridays when they may wear a Taylor spirit or PE shirt. Also, girls need to be reminded to not show cleavage and boys need to be reminded to not sag their pants. We are asking girls to button up their polo shirt fronts and are providing zip ties to boys with loose pants.
· Cell phones- we have had marvelous compliance with the new cell phone policy (all phones powered off and out of sight from 8:15 until 3:05). We have had only one phone confiscated this week. Parents are reminded that confiscated phones are only returned to the parent that afternoon.
· Homework club – We will begin offering before and after school homework help starting the week of August 30. The Club will be staffed by Ms. Sikes and Ms. Kometa after school and Ms. Szczypiorski before school. We will announce days of the week next week.
· 3” Binders- we are requiring all student have a 3” binder to keep their class notes and materials in. This is our attempt to help students organize their materials and learn study skills needed to succeed in high school and college. If you cannot afford a binder, please let us know and we will provide one at no charge.
Finally I wanted to share with you my thoughts on our students’ performance on the SBA test. Clearly I am delighted by the fact that we beat the APS and NM Averages in reading across the board. This reflects well on parents, teachers, and students who have reading a priority. Our writing scores also compare favorably across the board with our 6th graders really shining. Science scores also exceeded state and local averages. Our math performance showed promise but also left room for growth. Overall, I believe we are making progress but we have chosen to focus additional resources to boost our math scores. This support will come in the form of Promethean Boards in our math classrooms, additional math coaching/professional development for our math teachers, and more math intervention classes for student not proficient in math. Together, we will improve!
