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Superintendent Thanks Community and Staff
August 2018
Dear Neighbors,
We are hard at work preparing for the start of the next school year and excited to see staff and students return soon.
Before we begin in earnest, I want to say thank you to our wonderful community for the incredible support you provide our students and staff. Our community has always had high expectations for its students and because of this, our schools provide much more than most schools in Idaho. Thanks to you, we offer preschool, all-day kindergarten, robust arts programming, world languages, engineering and technology classes, counselors and social workers, small class sizes, a broad array of athletics and student clubs, well-maintained buildings and livable wages to recruit and retain excellent staff.
Over the past several years public education has significantly changed. In the past, our only responsibility was to provide opportunities for all students to learn. Today, we are expected to provide opportunities for all students to learn and ensure they master the Idaho Content Standards at a minimum. These standards are much more rigorous than previous standards. All students need to be critical thinkers and problem solvers; these are essential for the world we live in.
While the expectations have increased, as they should, at the same time our student demographics have greatly changed as well. Staff work every day to help students overcome hurdles to learning which include poverty, homelessness, learning English as a second language and physical and intellectual disabilities. At the same time, we have also learned to work with revenues that are not as robust as they were in the past. We continue to ensure that our budget is balanced and that resources follow student need, which calls for constant readjustment from our incredible staff.
Through all these changes, staff have risen to the challenge of increasing expectations while still working hard to find new ways of educating our students so that ALL students are on track to master the standards. We owe them our deepest gratitude. As a community, you too have risen to the challenge of these significant educational changes. You have held us accountable for ensuring ALL students master the standards, regardless of circumstances, and you have provided financial support above and beyond what the state of Idaho provides for students. As a school district, we thank you profusely for your unending support for our students and staff. Your belief in us and your high expectations encourage us and inspire us to move forward in the most important work in which we are engaged: the education of our future.
With gratitude,
GwenCarol Holmes
Superintendent