In the area of student achievement, one of our goal areas is to focus on meeting the goals of the Every Student Succeeds Act and the World’s Best Workforce which means 90% of students would meet targets in graduation, college and career readiness, attendance, and other areas with no groups below 85% and we have seen a lot of exciting improvements. Our recent graduation rates went up to a high for our district of 92.1% with a big jump in students receiving special education services. This is great progress and we will continue to work to strengthen academic achievement for all students in our district.

In supporting Kindergarten readiness, the district has applied for and received a community schools grant that will move our district forward to better serve our community. The goal is to bring the community voice more into the decision making process in our schools and I am excited to see this happen.

We are also working towards closing the achievement gap with staff training on best practices and literacy work that will greatly impact our students. We have been identified as a top 5% school for literacy for schools that have more than 40% of students receiving free or reduced price lunch, which is a great sign that we are making significant gains in best serving all students. We are also working with the Regional Centers of Excellence to implement programs to close achievement gaps and best educate every student in our schools as well as working towards a new curriculum and additional programming throughout our district.

We are looking into ways to best serve our ELL students with dual immersion options and seeking different tools we can use in the future to best serve different student groups. We have added new programming in academies to help with college and career readiness, and are finding ways to support students in all aspects of their lives by offering free activities in the next school year, increasing social and emotional learning opportunities, and providing services that support students and their families.

Our teams are working towards other goals in the focus areas and seeing great progress across the board in continuing the strong work we have done in the area of finance, making sure we are serving all students through the area of diversity, equity and inclusion, creating a positive school climate, and strengthening our communication and collaboration with our community.

The GFW Community is a strong and powerful community and we are honored to be able to serve students and their families every single day.