Close of a great year

Dear Families,

I've been waiting to communicate end of the year information with you so I could do it at one time, and hopefully avoid confusion.
There are a few decisions that I want to write a brief narrative to explain, and others that I think can be communicated with just a list. As always though, if you are confused or would like more information, please come visit with me.
So at this time, these are the plans moving forward for next year:

Staffing

Ms. Suzie, who teaches fifth grade, will  be moving to Grand Junction. Mr. Brooks will make a shift into being the fifth grade teacher along with Ms. Billie.

We have hired Teresa Littrell, an experienced current DCSD teacher to step into the teaching role of 2/3 Discovery where Ms. Melani, who currently teaches, came out of retirement to support us this year. We are looking forward to seeing Ms. Melani substitute teaching at Renaissance.

Both Ms. Amanda and Ms. Jody are going to take a different role in our school.

Ms. Amanda is going to be our Math Specialist.

Ms. Jody is going to be our Special Education Moderate Needs teacher

Ms. Elisha will move back to the role of Literacy Specialist upon the retirement of Ms. Josie

We have hired an experienced new third grade team:

Welcoming Samantha Burns and Mike Hillen to Renaissance!

Both of these teachers are currently teaching in Douglas County and bring years of teaching experience. Please look for their bios on our web-site.

Ms. Kristin, our school nurse of ten years, is retiring and we are currently in the process of hiring.
Ms. Josie is retiring this year, and Ms. Elisha (listed above) is stepping back into that role.
* Just a reminder that we have a Retirement Celebration for Josie and Kristin in the cafeteria at 4:00 next Thursday, May 26th, for our community to stop and wish them well.

While this might appear or feel like a lot of change, (three teachers leaving) in the climate of our fast changing world, this is very little change. It is inevitable that we will have teachers retiring and moving, and we have been so fortunate to have hired such talented teachers to fill their roles. 

Programming

As a staff we have analyzed and evaluated our programming and student needs. We implemented Rosetta Stone for several years, and while in theory it should have been a wonderful component to our learning experiences, students just didn't like it. It turned into a struggle of student engagement and a challenge for fitting it into an already packed schedule. Therefore, we are letting it go.

We want to intentionally continue to mix our students up so that ultimately, we are Crew, throughout the school. In the coming year, we have shifted around the Integrated Art schedule so that in grades 2/3 Discovery, three through six, entire grade levels will attend Integrated Arts together and we will mix classes up each quarter/semester so that students will be in these classes, throughout the year, with a variety of their peers. The students will come from all classes - both traditional and Discovery. These same groups will have the same lunch schedule. This will expand the opportunity to build friendships beyond the class level.

The Sustainability class was created intentionally to provide a fourth rotation during the Integrated Arts schedule. We tried this in order to increase the amount of collaboration time teams could have. For a variety of reasons, the schedule didn't accomplish the goal. Because we were giving this format a try, it was funded with 'soft money' (one time funding). It was decided that while we know that sustainability has a very high value in our community of learners, we can still accomplish it in different ways. Mr. Brooks will now be teaching fifth grade, a more sustainable position :).  Mr. Brooks will continue to provide leadership with sustainability and lead our Green Team. More to come on the direction we will take sustainability in the beginning year.

This year, we are adding a layer of support for students and teachers in mathematics, by providing a Math Specialist. We know we have struggling and advanced students in math, and know that it is essential that we provide all students with the support they need - both with targeted instruction and coaching for teachers. The Math Specialist will provide instruction for students, support teachers in designing their units of study and serving to align the overall math instruction for the school. This first year will be a pilot year and we will evaluate the impact on students and teachers over the year.

Elementary Progress Reports (EPR) will be open for parents on June 3rd at 12:01 a.m. There is information in the school newsletter and website to help you, should you need it, with Parent Portal, where you will find the report. 

Your child's current teacher will email you by the end of the day Friday, June 3rd, with your child's class assignment for next year. We took parent requests into consideration as we met time after time, and spent hours carefully considering the needs of each and every child. We considered their learning needs, strengths, challenges, friendships, personality, learning style, social/emotional needs and personal situations. Please know that should you reach out over the summer and request that we make a change, that is a very complex request. It impacts all the other children. It is not unusual at all for a parent to be pleasantly pleased when they were initially apprehensive.


We have purchased two 14 passenger buses! Woo hoo! They are being inspected and serviced to meet the requirements of the Colorado Department of Education. They will be ready for action at the beginning of the school year! If anyone knows anything about how to get signage onto a bus, I could sure you some help! We are required by CDE to have the DCSD logo on our buses, but we would like to add our Renaissance logo. Please connect with me if you can help me with this.

It was a wonderful year.  I'm always incredibly proud of being part of this community. We have something so special at Renaissance and the partnership between the school and families is one of those special ingredients. Thank you for all the time you devoted to supporting us both at school and from home. Thank you for being so generous with us when we slip up or make a mistake. It makes all the difference knowing that we are in this together - all human - all making mistakes and learning from them. Thank you for always treating us so kindly and with such compassion. These are the conditions that keep our staff, students and families happy and thriving. Because, after all, that's when we are living our motto: We are Crew.  And our ultimate mission together - to do the very, very best we can for the kids.

Have a wonderful summer!

Ms. Deborah