What's New for 2008/2009
by Tom Mulligan
July 10, 2008
We are very excited about the start of the 2008-2009 school year. As always, our school district is involved in a continuous process to make improvements to all aspects of our educational programs. Continuous improvement in Riverton comes in our efforts to implement the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. The Baldrige criteria are a set of criteria that provides a researched-based framework of criteria for effective schools. The goal for a school district is to have an approach or a process in place for each of the criteria. Once the approach is in place, it must be well deployed (consistently used) throughout the district, evaluated and improved annually and aligned to other criteria. We continue each year to analyze data to make improvements to our programs through this continuous improvement model.
The district will continue to expand the use of Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) as an instructional approach this year. Over 50% of the district teaching staff were trained and began implementing this approach with great success last year. The remaining staff will be trained by the end of the first quarter this school year. It is an exciting approach that really gets the students involved in taking responsibility for their learning. For more information, check out the articles on the district website.
The most staff changes this year came at the high school level. The district only saw a couple of teachers leave the elementary and middle school staff (mainly due to retirements). The district did create a new 3rd and 4th grade reading intervention position this year. That position was filled with an internal candidate, Beth Held. The high school saw several staff changes. The district feels very fortunate to have been able to secure some tremendous teachers for our high school students. Mr. Kyle Price was named the high school Dean of Students. He will provide support in the area of discipline for our high school administration, Mr. Lamkey and Mr. Gum, and our counseling staff. We are also very excited to be able to offer the new Pre-Engineering program at the high school, Project Lead the Way.
The district plans to expend its efforts to use the district website. As many of you know, we implemented a new website last year, and the use from staff and the community expanded as the year went on. This year, the district has also added the lunch portion of Skyward, which is our student management system. Parents will be able to access their student’s lunch account just as they can access their student’s grades. The buildings will be providing more specific information when school starts.
Our district is very goal driven. We still have not received all of the state assessment data from last year yet, which means we still cannot determine whether or not the district met its strategic objectives for last year. Once that data is received, we will make that determination and use the data to set the strategic objectives for this school year. This is done through our school improvement process. I will be reporting to the school community on our progress from last year as soon as I receive the data. I will also provide the strategic objectives for the 2008-2009 school year once they are determined in our school improvement process.
I hope everyone has a tremendous educational experience in our school district during the 2008-2009 school year. As always, if you have questions, I can be contacted by phone at 217.629.6009 or by e-mail tmulligan@rivertonschools.org.
