Dear Scholars, Parents, and Community Members,

Welcome to Sunnycrest, a rich and vibrant community of diverse learners. We foster a school culture that empowers scholars to be fully engaged as critical and creative thinkers.
We are currently the only school in Federal Way offering a Spanish Dual Language program.
Each day we come together to celebrate our shared expectations for a safe, kind, and productive campus.
We have focused our work this school year on Strategic Plan Goal 2- The Whole Child and Goal 4- Content Area Mastery. We are especially excited about our big ambitious goals and will do our part every day to make those goals a reality for our scholars. The goal include to increase our state assessment scores and increasing time in class.
We are one of many schools using a new math program call Ready Mathematics. The program ensures that all math lessons from kindergarten through fifth-grade build skills over time. These lessons use ways of teaching math that are based in research. We also have a new phonics program called, Wilson Fundations.

Wilson Fundations completely teaches the foundational skills of reading. The materials support reading, writing, and language development. Along with new materials, we are increasing our collaboration, because we know that by working together we can increase our effectiveness as individual teachers. We are opening ourselves to new ideas about how best to meet scholar needs. We regularly dive into our assessment data, and research-based practices for instruction.

 Your child's safety and well-being are important to us. Discipline is part of education. Nationallly, we see students of color receiving more discipline referrals than what would be expected based on their enrollment. This is true in Washington state, and it is true at Sunnycrest.
Therfore, we use Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) to ensure that we are teaching positive behaviors explicitly so that all students are aware of the expectations for safe, kind, and productive behavior at our school. We are also looking to change practices that provide privileges to some scholars and not to others.
Finally, we recognize that relationships and trust are at the heart of everything we do. Culturally Responsive teaching focuses our attention on relationships in the classroom. Positive trusting relationships between students and teachers are needed for students to reach their fullest potential. We know that humans are hard-wired for relationships and we believe that what we do in the classroom every day has the greatest impact on student learning

Yours in service,
Kelly Maloney