October has arrived:

     I always enjoy turning the calendar page to October.   The school year is no longer new and things are rolling along.   The start of school can be hard for some students, especially if they are changing buildings or making a move to Conway Springs.  It is nice to get the first month of the school year out of the way and get into a solid routine.

     As I have stated before, we are in the second year of a new five-year accreditation process known as KESA.   This process makes us take a look at various factors to make sure we are continuing to move forward and improve.  The state is continuously looking for ways for schools to improve so that causes us to make changes each year.   During this second year, we are working through our action plans that were determined last year.  We are working through a new math curriculum which is better aligned to the state standards and also takes into consideration each student’s needs.  In the elementary, we then break students down into smaller groups to work on those areas of need.  The end result should be higher math scores for our students on state assessments now and higher ACT scores later on. 

     Another part of the KESA process is to track what students have done since leaving high school.  Schools are given a score/rating for this piece.   We have done very well over the past five years.  The score given by the state basically only gives us credit for those students who have stayed in college or received some type of certification or degree.   We really want to see how all of our students are doing after high school so we are going to chart where everyone is at now so that we can see all of the success stories.  

     Parent surveys will be coming out within the next few months.  These surveys help us gauge how we are doing in various areas.  We ask that you take the time to go through the survey and give us feedback so that we can look at what we are doing well and what we might need to change.   We appreciate your time and effort on these surveys and we do use them.