In August as I prepare this column, the start of the school year is fast approaching and we are looking forward to welcoming our school community back to teaching and learning.
Our 2024-2025 Theme
Our theme this school year is Connect. Believe. Achieve. This theme will:
Guide us as we work together to build relationships.
Remind us to trust in ourselves—we can all “do hard things!”
Focus our efforts on helping children achieve their highest potential.
Our Goals
In our theme, the word “connect” is listed first on purpose. That is because building relationships and strengthening class communities is a cornerstone for learning. Our efforts in this area will help us realize our first goal: Improving student achievement at Granby Public Schools. We are particularly focused on improving mathematics achievement across the district. Last year we hired a new math intervention teacher at the middle school. We also began promoting small group targeted instruction to meet student needs in this subject.
Improving district communications is our second goal. We are entering year two of our district’s communications plan. We are making progress in streamlining our communications to help families find the information they seek. We are improving our website and sharing timely information with families through the ThrillShare app, with the community through The Granby Drummer and with all audiences through the askGPS blog (don’t forget this helpful resource!).
Addressing School Concerns
This summer we created an “addressing school concerns” webpage. This webpage can be found under the Family Resources section of the website. It outlines a process that will help people get their questions answered and problems resolved as quickly as possible. Many family questions and concerns are best addressed with the child’s teacher or counselor.
We find that effective problem solving in our classrooms and schools involves dialogue, context, clarification and follow-up. The process we outline provides the time and space for this to occur. Social media posts and letters to the editor generally do not facilitate a timely resolution to the problem at hand. Therefore, we encourage you to reach out directly so we may work together.
The new school year has just started by the time of publication. It is always such an exciting time!