August 7, 2011
Canadian Community Members,
The upcoming 2011-12 school year represents another opportunity for our students to achieve excellence. We hope that parents, faculty and students will be striving for just that. If all stakeholders pursue excellence, we can achieve great things.
There are a number of specific goals that we have developed as a result of administrative meetings, board meetings, parent surveys, and site-based meetings. Academic achievement is always going to be a top priority. We want our students to successful on the new state assessment, STAAR. Our staff will be working to align our curriculum to allow our students to have subject level “carry over” as they move through our system. Subject area vertical teams will work together to ensure student success on a state assessment that will be much more rigorous than before. We want to give our students the tools to have ACT/SAT success and facilitate them through college requirements and opportunities. We hope to help them be college and job-force ready. We are excited about the addition of Julia Schafer as a College/Career Readiness Specialist courtesy of the Pickens-Abraham Foundation. Finally, we want our children to learn life lessons to prepare them to be productive citizens and gain a sense of ethics with the content they are taught.
We especially want to encourage parents to take an active part in the education of their children. It is with your support, that learning can be enhanced. We encourage you to allow your children to show you their work and the things that they are accomplishing. We appreciate all the parents that participated in the school survey last spring. We appreciate your feedback. Parents are encouraged to have appropriate communication with their child’s teacher. All staff members may be contacted through email. We would ask that any problems or serious issues be resolved through face-to-face conferences. Such conferences may be set up through the campus office during teacher conference times. Please remember that you can track your child’s progress through the Parent Portal.
I want to personally thank those of you in the community that let your voice be heard to the 82nd Texas Legislature. Texans made it known that the education of our children should remain a priority. The originally proposed $10 billion cuts to public education were substantially reduced as a result of public outcry. It is still disappointing that the adopted budget will fall $4 billion short of funding individual students at the same level they were funded in 2010-11. The cuts will equate to about a $450,000 reduction for Canadian ISD during 2011-12. Those cuts will be even higher in the second year of the biennium as adopted law takes a larger cut from high target revenue schools. I am especially appreciative of the Canadian ISD Board of Trustees’ active involvement during the session. They worked hard for the kids of this district.
I want to remind parents that the school district provides some insurance for students while they are at school and participating in extracurricular activities. This insurance is secondary and is not intended to be primary coverage. Our insurance carrier makes extended 24 hour coverage available at a very reasonable cost to parents. For information on this extended coverage, contact any campus office.
Finally, I’d like to express my sincere appreciation to the staff of Canadian ISD. Canadian ISD recently received a Recognized rating from the Texas Education Agency for the 2010-11 school year. Only five percent of Texas schools received an Exemplary rating and a mere thirty-four percent were Recognized. Fifty-four percent were rated as Acceptable and seven percent were Unacceptable. We are proud of the work that both our students and teachers did to be in such an elite group. We have an outstanding faculty that has dedicated their lives to kids. The recent legislative session created many uncertainties for those in public education. The new STAAR testing will present Texas educators an even bigger challenge with standards rising again. I have confidence that Canadian teachers will rise to the occasion once again to help our students be successful. I also want to recognize the support staff here at Canadian ISD that get our students to school, feed our students, and work to make sure that the appearance and condition of our facilities reflect the same quality of the instructional programs they serve.
As we move toward the start of another school year, we are planning for great things in 2011-12. We always want to strive to enhance the excellence that we enjoy. Please share with us in supporting our students to do great things. We appreciate the support this community gives to our schools. Our students benefit greatly from the interest you take in their education.
Kyle Lynch