Guest Blog Post: West Clermont Words

This past year, West Clermont encountered several major events.  Some of them were achievements after much hard work.  Others were unavoidable events.  All of them had an impact on our fiscal fitness.

Calling all future West Clermont Kindergarten students!

Do you or someone you know have a child that will be 5 years of age by September 30, 2021? Let them know that we have begun enrolling kindergarten students for the 2021-22 school year!

West Clermont prides itself on providing a full-day, world-class, student-centered, and tuition-free kindergarten experience. We engage students through relevant and meaningful learning experiences to create a strong foundation for each student's success. Our students are taught by highly-competent educators who are passionate, well developed, and held accountable for providing learning results in a safe and nurturing environment.

To ensure we can provide a positive start to every child's West Clermont experience this fall, we encourage parents to enroll their children into our district as early as possible. Early enrollment allows us the time and opportunity to best plan for the needs of our incoming kindergarteners. We anticipate that our 2021-22 kindergarten class will be West Clermont's largest one yet!

For more information about kindergarten in West Clermont, check out: http://westcler.org/welcome

Enrollment trends and planning for our future

As it is for many school districts across the country, enrollment has always been a moving target due to the transient nature of a portion of our community. However, with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the uncertainty of our enrollment numbers has been magnified. Over the last three years, we have seen an increase in our student body every year by approximately 150 students.

Despite the uncertainty of the fall of 2020, we know that we were able to meet the needs of many of our students that were looking for an online school option through our launch of the West Clermont Online Academy. In fact, the WCOA quickly became the largest “school” in our district with over 2000 students enrolled. However, for the 2020-21 school year, our overall district-wide enrollment experienced a sharp decline of almost 200 students in grades K-12.

In order for us to remain efficient and fiscally-responsible, the leaders of West Clermont are already proactively planning for the 2021-22 school year. Through our work with an organization called DecisionInsite, we are able to make better-informed decisions by studying regional enrollment trends, demographic studies, possible new community housing developments, and the impact of open enrollment and building to building transfers.

These data will help us predict manageable class sizes and appropriate staffing levels. In addition, we are surveying our West Clermont Online Academy families to understand their intentions at this point for the next school year. Over the upcoming several months, we will continue to listen, evaluate, research, and plan our best path forward in regards to the instructional model for the 2021-22 school year and the future status of the West Clermont Online Academy.

West Clermont Cares and Connects:
Introducing the new district FACE Team

West Clermont teachers and staff have long taken pride in strong relationships with families and the community. Although we've continued to build connections with the district's children, caregivers, and the many businesses and organizations with which we partner, we are now taking a more intentional, focused stance to boost engagement with those we serve. We have created West Clermont's Family and Community Engagement (FACE) Team. This group will focus on our commitment to deeper, more meaningful relationships that will ultimately benefit our most important resource: West Clermont's children.

The FACE Team currently consists of seventeen West Clermont staff, teachers, and administrators...all with a passion for people. The team's work is facilitated by Jeffrey Riel and Tanny McGregor, having a combined 50 years of service in the district. From January through May of the 2020-21 school year, the FACE team will learn how to create more meaningful interactions and will be guided by a common text: The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip and Dan Heath (Simon & Schuster, 2017). Ultimately, the team will help to develop "playbook" pages to concretize our new learning and move toward agreements about how we engage with families and the community in West Clermont.

Step by step, the FACE team will build an engagement plan focused on the enrollment experience, the transition years (PK, K, 6, 9, 12), and even everyday interactions with caregivers and community members. The team is honored to be part of such important, lasting work.

West Clermont School Board Meetings on YouTube

Did you know that you can access recordings of recent Board of Education meetings on YouTube? For the most recent meeting on Monday, February 8th, click here. In addition, you can access Board meeting agendas, meeting notes, and Board policy on BoardDocs by clicking here.

We hope you'll tune in at 7 PM on February 22nd to watch Superintendent Adams give a virtual State of the Schools presentation during the next West Clermont Board of Education meeting It will be broadcast live on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/kqZ8eLRqx8Q.