Greetings Star Lake Families,

We are so excited to see all of you at Student Led Conferences this week on Thursday or Friday!  You should all have scheduled a conference with your child’s teacher.  If for some reason you do not have a conference time finalized yet, or if you need to reschedule, please reach out to your child’s teacher.  Our students are busy this week setting goals and reviewing their work, so they can share their strengths and areas of growth with you. They are so proud to show you!  Remember, your child attends student-led conferences with you…that’s the student led part!

Sharing your child’s progress with you is so important!  Star Lake is proud of our 100% rate for connecting with families during SLCs over the past two years.  If you do miss your conference for some reason, we will be calling you to reschedule either an in-person meeting, a phone call, or email.

Each year our teachers and school leadership team analyze student academic and social-emotional data to determine our School Improvement Plan stretch targets and action plans.

GOAL 2: whole child

We are proud that 94% of our students have zero or one office referral. This means those students are using kind, safe and productive behavior and are positively responding to the incentives we have in place like Star Lake Way tickets and Eagle wings.  We believe this is due to our strong implementation of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports strategies, Second Step, and Capturing Kids Hearts. We are continuing to analyze our data for students who have had more than one discipline referral to determine functions of behavior and supports.  Our district goal by 2020 is to have no disproportionate data by ethnicity. Our staff is engaging in professional development to increase our culturally responsive teaching strategies, and to learn even more ways to help students if they are frustrated, stressed or have escalated behavior.

GOAL 1: the early years

We have changed our building academic goal to goal 1 this year with an increased focus on early literacy and numeracy.  Our data shows that we need to increase the number of students who are meeting standard in math and ELA when they enter 3^rd grade so that they will be ready for the more rigorous academic performances that come with intermediate grades and the SBA state assessment.

While we are excited that last year we had 10% more 4^th and 5^th graders meet ELA standard on the SBA than met when they were 3^rd and 4^th graders; in addition to this growth, we need more of our entering 3^rd graders to meet standard as well.

Our School Improvement Plan outlines our targeted action plans, interventions, and professional development aligned with these goal areas.  I will be sharing our School Improvement Plan at our PTA meeting on Tuesday, November 19^th at 6:00pm.  Please join me, so you can provide input and feedback!   I am so very thankful for your partnership and for the privilege to work with the fabulous students and staff here at Star Lake!  I wish your family health and happiness!

Kris Rennie, Principal