Principal’s Message Fall 2011

 

     The first thing I want to do is to wish a very belated welcome to all of our new students and families to SMSA. The school year is nearly a month old and with the exception of our busing situation we are off to a pretty darn good start.

     I just learned today (9/28/2011) that we were selected by U.S. News and World Report as one of America’s BEST Schools once again. We were awarded a bronze designation for the fourth time in five years. That is a great acknowledgment of the outstanding job that our students and staff do. With the Distinguished Magnet School Award presented to us by the Magnet School Association of America we cleaned up pretty well with the awards last year. That is the second time in three years we received that recognition. In addition we continue to show measurable improvement on the CMT’s, CAPT and a 71 point improvement on the SAT. Our AP Calculus scores are second to none and we graduated a really wonderful group of seniors from last year who are now college freshman.

     We will not rest on our laurels and we have set some lofty but important goals for school year 2011 – 2012. As always we look to show at least a 4% improvement in student achievement in all academic areas and will place special emphasis on writing this year. We also are already working diligently on improving our student’s SAT score. Even though we had that significant jump of 71 points on the SAT last year we have partnered with the Princeton Review to help work directly with our students and with our staff to improve our SAT scores. The higher the scores, the better the selection of colleges and the higher amounts of scholarship money. We are hoping to continue and extend this SAT initiative and move it down even into the middle school grades. We also are working with the Center for Talented Youth at John Hopkins University to establish options for students that can meet the challenges of and need accelerated work to reach their potential. Staff from the John Hopkins will be here at SMSA on Oct.12, 2011 to speak to the families about students who are being identified as possible candidates for the program.

     Lastly we will be implementing two pro-character, anti-bullying programs this year. The entire school will be subscribing to the Governor’s Prevention Partnership program and our grade 8, 9, and 10 students will be trained and implement an additional program entitled “Names Can Really Hurt Us.” We’re not perfect, but we work hard to establish and preserve a safe, comfortable and inviting learning climate.

     We have rescheduled our school’s football tailgate party for Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011 from 5:00 – 6:30 pm. Our football game against Coventry HS follows at 6:30 pm. We want as many families as possible to come out. Last year was our first one and it was a really good. Go Tigers !!!