Principal's Message - November Edition 2011-2012

Dear JHS 13 Community,

We are quickly approaching the holiday vacation. This is when it will be essential for us to know how close we are to reaching our school goals. With our focus on attendance, the ELA exam, the math exam, culture and community, and improving our support for Special Education students, meeting our goals will continue to transform our school to an ideal learning environment. With our goal of 35% increase in proficient students for both ELA and Math, it is imperative we do not wait until the exams to find out how well our students are being prepared.

We have built our unit exams to be our system to assess student progress in getting ready for the state tests. These unit tests include key standards identifying what our students need to be able to do to be successful on the state exam. By teaching and assessing these key standards we can monitor our children to see if they are ready to take the state exam. For teachers, by using progress measurement and the unit test as such a large portion of the child's grade we can clearly see how well we are preparing our students for the state exam. For parents, you can look at your child's grades especially on tests to see how they are going to do. With the numbers in front of our face, we can be proactive about the results we are seeing right now. There are so many support systems available at our school. If we identify a child who needs key concepts to be re-taught, we have the resources to do so. With our test prep classes, after school programs, partnerships, SES providers, and hard working staff, we can make sure every child is prepared for the state exams.

Our recent learning environment survey yielded great progression from last year. Teacher satisfaction has improved and parent satisfaction has greatly improved. The feedback we collected from teachers brought light to several improvements that needed to be made to our discipline code and some issues with communication. Our teacher surveys showed gains in 100% of the areas inquired in the City-Wide Survey. Our parent surveys collected from every parent who attended our parent-teacher conferences revealed that 92% of our parents feel that their child is safe at our school, that their child is supported, and the school promotes learning with positive messages and displaying student work. Over 88% of our parents believe the school has a positive vibe, their children are being academically challenged, and teachers are holding their child to a high standard. Our next step is to survey our students. We are anxious to work out the collection process so we can continue to improve the school.

Attendance team has built several new systems to promote higher attendance. One initiative is posting the attendance of the previous day. Although it may seem minor, it has reiterated the importance of attendance. It has built a culture of awareness which is an essential step in improving the attendance. We currently are at 92% attendance. We will be working rigorously to battle the winter drop we face every year due to illnesses and students avoiding the cold. We are asking all parents to be aware of your child(ren)’s attendance to make sure no school days will have to be made up during summer school. We will continue with our strong communication and reiteration of the importance of attendance. We will move into individual student contracts to provide additional support and to review steps with the family of what needs to be done for the student to be promoted to the next grade level. The reality of the situation is if students are not attending school, then they are not learning. If they are not learning, then they will not be ready for high school or even college. Our vision is for every child to get into the high school he or she prefers.

Last year, out of all of the students performing at a level one on the state exam, 70% of them were special education. With those results, it is urgent we make some significant changes to help our special education.
Our special education goal is to move 25% of our special education population into a less restrictive environment. The concept of special education was developed as a temporary setting. Unfortunately, the setting has become permanent for too many students in our school system. Our vision is to improve the goal setting process for the Individual Evaluation Plan (IEP) and use the benchmarks as a determining factor of proper setting. If students continue to meet their goals or are certain to reach their goals, then they will be referred to the child study team. After a thorough review process, a decision will be made to mainstream with potential support or reduce the amount of support by provided during the week depending on the current setting and the progress the child has taken. We believe the more students that move to a less restrictive environment, the higher they will perform on the state assessments.

As you can see, we are progressing toward reaching our goal. We have strong action plans to ensure success. Our school was recently given SINI Status which is a “School In Need of Improvement.” With our recent dip in scores, it is understandable how we have been placed on the list. I am confident with our latest initiatives and the incredible hard work of our staff and parents we will see a significant improvement. I am guaranteeing we will be rated above average in 80% of all the categories for all constituents on the city-wide survey. I am also guaranteeing we will be removed from the SINI list by next school year (2012-2013). Finally, we will improve at least one letter grade on the next Progress Report. If there was a way to be removed from the Persistently Dangerous School List in a single year, we would achieve that as well. Unfortunately, it is a mandatory two year status.

Our students are in great hands. They are buying into our motto “Two Tests, One Dream. To be the best, we must be a team!” They are stepping up to the expectations we have laid down before them. It is the responsibility of every adult to make sure every child is progressing to the next performance level on the state exams. Let’s accept this challenge in continue toward our destination of excellence. Thank you for all that you do and what you will do.

Yours Truly,


Jacob T. Michelman
Principal