Brian Flones, Superintendent

The beginning of the new school year is quickly approaching and we are excited about this new opportunity to serve our students and families and to provide all students with a quality educational experience.

We believe that developing a strong partnership with our parents and community is critical to the success of our schools. This partnership starts by creating an environment of open communication, meaningful dialogue and mutual trust.

Our school board, administrators, and staff are committed to building this collaborative partnership and we invite you to get involved by volunteering in your child's school and getting involved in your school's parent organization.

Parent involvement at home is probably the most important kind of parent involvement in education. There are many things you can do to support your child's learning and development, such as:

Provide a quiet place to do homework and work with your child on reading, math or other homework materials at least 30 minutes every night.

Make sure your child gets a good night's sleep and a good breakfast.

Take an interest in your children's schoolwork and talk with them about it regularly.

Teach them respect for others and responsibility for their own behavior.

As we enter this new school year, we face many new challenges related to improving student achievement, modernizing aging school facilities, and providing a safe and caring environment for all students and staff. We address these challenges by providing a comprehensive professional development program for our teachers, closely aligning our curriculum, instruction, and assessments to the state standards and improving our support to families.

This past year, the school board has made a strong commitment towards meeting these challenges by:

• Adding four elementary teachers to reach our goal of reducing class size in grades K-2 to a 20-to-1 ratio.
• Increasing our support for creating a safe and orderly environment in our schools by adding a safety and security coordinator and one addtional school resource officer at the middle schools.
• Increasing our support to families by adding 5.5 additional family advocate staff to work with families with 10 or our 12 schools.

The commitment by the school board to realign existing resources and add new resources to the support of our classrooms and schools has been made possible through your continued support and our operational levies and school construction bonds.

So welcome back! Let's work together to make this a rewarding and memorable year for all our students.

Brian Flones
Superintendent
flones.b@mail.wsd.wednet.edu