Hello Highline Community,
First and foremost, I want to thank you for an incredible year. It has been a joy to work along side each of you and your children. Thank you for sending your child to our school, for trusting our team to serve your family, and for supporting the work that we do. I hope that this letter serves as a wrap up for this year and a preview of what is to come in 2018-2019.
Fundraising: This year’s fundraising efforts were a tremendous success. The auction, a PWP event that was led by Abbie Wessel, brought in over $56,000 this year! The auction, combined with Run 4 Funds, Colorado Gives Day, and other smaller events like restaurant nights brought our fundraising totals to over $150,000 this year. Thank you for your generosity!
Many of you have asked where this money will go. In addition to supporting academic programming, we will use these funds for the maintenance of and improvements to our building. We own the building, which presents us with great opportunities to better serve our students, but also adds the responsibility for maintaining it and ensuring that it is the best learning environment possible. We have over 600 people in our building every day, which has resulted in wear and tear to many areas but the most immediate need is in regards to plumbing. The money fundraised will create a fund specifically for building needs and will help us ensure that money provided by the state and district is put directly into student programs. We hope to introduce a large building project, like our field from last year, to roll out at the beginning of next year.
Staff Changes: I am excited to announce that we only have four teachers leaving Highline this year! Rachel Van Scoy, Kori Holliday, Bazhena Gaister, and Tiffany Davis have all been huge assets to the Highline team and will be deeply missed. Ms. Van Scoy moved to Manitou Springs this school year and has been commuting to Highline daily. Unfortunately, this commute is not sustainable and she will be working at a school closer to home. Ms. Holliday is taking a break from teaching to pursue other passions. Ms. Gaister has determined that as she grows her family she needs to step back from a homeroom teaching role. She will be working as an interventionist for a DPS elementary school. Tiffany Davis will be moving to American Samoa with her husband and baby. Her husband has an amazing opportunity to work as attorney for a year while she stays at home with baby. We are grateful to each of these four teachers for the impact they made during their time at Highline.
We are excited to welcome four new members to our team next year. Leah Michael Dillard will be joining us as our new 7th grade ELA teacher. Ms. Dillard has been teaching Language Arts in middle school and high school for the last 17 years and is thrilled to return to a charter school and join the Highline team. Maggie Patel will be joining us as a middle school science teacher. Ms. Patel has been teaching middle school science for 10 years in Denver. Roxana Perez will be joining us as our ELD coordinator. Ms. Perez is moving from Georgia where she has been teaching for over 10 years. Her son will be joining Highline as well as an incoming 3rd grader. Finally, Brian Simmons will be joining us as our 1st grade homeroom teacher. Mr. Simmons has taught 1st grade for the past 6 years in Charleston, South Carolina. We are excited to grow our team with experienced, passionate teachers and cannot wait for you to get to know these new members of our community.
Social Emotional Supports: Highline Academy’s mission is to develop academic, personal, and civic excellence in our students. Next year, we will not be making significant changes to our academic program. However, we will be renewing our focus on personal and civic excellence through the development of a more robust social emotional program. We are excited to announce three changes that we believe will provide support and services to more of our students. First, Megan Drivas, school psychologist, will be on site 4 days a week. Ms. Divas joined our team this year as our DPS psychologist and has developed strong relationships with many students and families; we will be increasing the number of days she is on campus so she can support more students. Second, Hilary-Jane McMinamen, our school counselor, will be teaching social emotional classes to all of our Kindergarten – 5th grade students twice a week. We started these classes this year in 1st and 2nd grade with great success; we look forward to providing all elementary students with this opportunity. Finally, all of our middle school teachers will be trained in a research-based social emotional curriculum that will be taught during advisory time each week. With all of these changes, we hope to give students the tools and support to proactively build social emotional skills.
Again, I want to thank you for a great year and for your partnership in your student’s education. I am honored to lead this community and cannot wait for another fantastic year. Enjoy your summer; we will see you at the welcome back event in the evening of August 10th!
Your Partner in Education,
Sarah Verni-Lau
Principal
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Academic report cards:
We know that this year has been especially challenging with the switch to standards based grading and the inconsistency in grading software. We are excited to be able to offer a standards based report card to students for the first time in 7 years. We have included your student's report card in the envelope with your student's iReady report and comment sheet.
Your child's report card can also be accessed through the DPS Parent Portal. For instructions on how to access the DPS Parent Portal, please click here. To view your student's report card, click on "Reports & Transcripts" on the left hand side of the main page of your student's dashboard page then click on "Highline SE Report Card". In addition, please be advised, you may see an overall grade for your child in each class in the Grades and Assignments section on the dashboard page. These are not their actual grades, as grades are reflected on the report card. Unfortunately because we switched to IC mid year, this could not be removed from our home page. This will be removed over the summer once the Parent Portal is updated by DPS.
In addition to the report card, you will also receive a comment sheet that highlights your students strengths, opportunities, and summer work suggestions for reading and math in all grades and other content areas for 5th grade and above. Finally, you will be receiving your child's Spring iReady scores in reading and math. This envelope will be sent home with your student at the end of the day today (some grade levels did not have a chance to pass these out in the final hectic moments of the day - please accept their apologies). If your student left early or was absent, please stop by the front office before Wednesday, June 6th between the hours of 8:30am - 3pm on Monday and Tuesday and 8:30am - noon on Wednesday. Any envelopes not picked up by June 6th will be mailed to the primary mailing address. All 8th grade report card envelopes will be mailed today!
Summer work:
For many years, Highline offered a summer packet. However, we have received feedback from families over the years that this packet could be more purposeful. In the comments you receive today, teachers have indicated personalize summer work for students that they feel it may benefit. If you would like additional resources for your student this summer, please access this packet: http://face.dpsk12.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/SummerGuideEnglish.pdf
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Registration for the 2018-19 school year will be online again this year, using both Highline forms and the newly updated DPS Annual Family Update. In order to register your student in August, you will need to have a DPS Parent Portal account set up. Please do not delay in getting access to the Parent Portal! Registration for the 2018-19 school year will start in late July and will run until August 6th. Specific details will be coming in July - - but sign up for the DPS Parent Portal now!
We look forward to seeing our returning students and families on August 10th at 5pm for our annual Welcome Back to School Event.
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