Principal's Message

September 2014

Dear Parents and Students,

WELCOME BACK TO SCHOOL!     

Lake View enjoyed a wonderful school year last year and we hope that 2014-2015 will be just the same.  This past year, our students achieved some awesome academic results.  From the beginning until the end of the year, our students improved in reading accuracy by 29%.  As a school, we improved in overall math proficiency by 4%  The average student at Lake View achieved one and one half year’s growth in math this past year.  Our 5^th graders once again showed off their writing abilities as 80 out of 83 of them scored proficient or higher on the annual direct writing assessment.  The average score on this test went up from 23.7 to 25 out of 30 this year.  We are all celebrating these achievements!  The former district superintendent, Mr. Ron Wolff, recently sent us a congratulatory letter in which he cited the tremendous growth in academic achievement of Lake View students. 

I also want to remind you of your rights as a parent. If you ever have questions regarding your child’s educational performance or what they are being taught, please just drop in or send us an e-mail. We will be happy to answer your questions. Your child has a right to quality instruction that is centered on rigorous curriculum with high standards and relevance.  The focus of this instruction is literacy and numeracy to promote economic prosperity, citizen participation, strong moral and social values, and commitment to constitutional government. We believe that educational success is most likely to be achieved when we develop a partnership. We hope to develop and nurture those relationships.  Please keep us informed of your child’s needs or any impactful changes.

As we do each year, the members of the school improvement committee have met to analyze our school and make any changes we deem necessary to the improvement process.  To improve our students’ reading skills, we will be implementing a new phonics instruction program for grades K-2. This program is called “Reading Horizons”.  We will use it to provide structured daily phonics lessons to ALL students in those grades.  Another ongoing problem that we have noted is the poor attendance of many of our students.  When students are absent, key instruction is missed and those students typically fall behind.  PLEASE have your child here each day unless they are ill or there is a legitimate emergency. If your student is ill, they will be required to make up work that they missed. Please call to inform us if your child is ill or if they will be absent.     

We have also decided to make it mandatory for all visitors to the school to check in at the office and then wear a visitor’s badge.

When you visit the school this year, you will notice another new portable classroom.  Lake View is using this new portable to house our new computer lab.  This will give us two computer labs.  A few teachers have also moved to different classrooms to allow us to better collaborate.        

            We believe that an orderly, safe environment is essential for students to learn and achieve academically.  To promote this type of environment, we will continue to use our discipline program.  Students can earn blue slips by demonstrating outstanding behavior.  They may also be given a white slip when their behavior is not so great.  The rules we expect students to follow when they are not in class:

·         FOLLOW DIRECTIONS THE FIRST TIME THEY ARE GIVEN

·         PUT OTHERS UP NOT DOWN

·         KEEP HANDS, FEET, MOUTH AND OBJECTS TO YOURSELF

·         ALWAYS BE IN THE PROPER PLACE or HAVE A HALL PASS

·         ALWAYS WALK IN THE BUILDING

·         USE ALL MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT PROPERLY

Lake View Elementary remains a Love and Logic school.  We will continuously seek to improve our school community by following Love and Logic philosophy and by providing students with recognition when they do something good.  To learn more, visit their web-site: www.loveandlogic.com

December 2013

Greeting Everyone!

This has been a great year! I would like to tell you a little bit about our students’ hard work and success in math so far this year.  At our school, we use the SMI,(scholastic math inventory), to assess our students’ performance in math.  We test all students in grades 2-5 at the beginning, middle and end of the year.  Everyone took the test for the second time in December and we have achieved some great results.  The test is computer based and it is adaptive.  It measures a student’s present level of performance with points.  Here is how we are doing.  All of these scores are averages for the grade level:

Grade                   September score             December score               Average Growth             

2                              49                                           137                                         88

3                              219                                         317                                         98

4                              390                                         501                                         111

5                              511                                         619                                         108

Important note: Grades 2-4 are expected to grow 150 points in one full year of school.  We have not even finished half the year and look how much growth we have already achieved!!!

5^th grade is only expected to grow 85 points in one full school year!!  That’s right, we have already surpassed that!

Congratulations to the students and teachers at Lake View!!!!!