February Update from Dr. Heck
In my last letter to you I said "change is difficult, but inevitable" and that's where we start in my letter today! Everyday we get closer to our renovations throughout the district being complete. Most of you have seen the new vestibules at Gregory, Middle School and High School. These offer many great safety features for our students and staff. It may be an extra step for parents or grandparents coming into the building, but, it is also an extra step for those who are not part of our communities, allowing our administrative staff to know and assess who is coming into the school. You may have seen the newly renovated bathrooms at the schools. They look nice and feel updated as we host ballgames and school events for our own community and those around us. There are many safety updates to the buildings that you may not see, but which were needed for the safety of all who are in the district.
I know that you haven't yet seen the new renovation at the MS which we will call our Bond Wing. I promise we will have an open house where you can walk through and see the changes, but, it will probably be in early August before school starts and after we make our move from 105 N. College to 404 E. Colegrove. We have not set parent/grandparent workdays to work on the playground areas as of yet, but I anticipate those being in April, May and/or June.
We hope to break ground on the Unit Office in the next few weeks. It will be built by our district staff on the Middle School property. We hope to have it completed by early August so the office will be in place by the start of school.
As I mentioned before, this year our numbers in the early grades (PrK-1) have increased which is a great problem to have but, our numbers in the intermediate grades (2-5) have continued to decline. I am pleased to say that we did not lose kids at the rate we have been losing them over the last several years; our student population number this year 2019 (678) is only down 1 student from last year 2018 (679). That is GREAT news and I hope we will see that number remain steady AND increase. With the increase in the early grades, we have discovered that we will need to have three Kindergarten classes and three First Grade classes next year and in the next years to come. Central A&M staff alone will be adding 11 students to the Kindergarten class of 2024-2025!! A big thank you to them for adding to our numbers coming up!! Because of this increase, we will need to move our 2nd grade students to Gregory where we have several open classrooms. Over the last two years, we have had to decrease the upper elementary grades from three classes to two classes each, which is why we now have open classrooms at Gregory. This move will help balance our numbers between the two buildings and will be the best use of our current space.
As students travel to and from school their safety is always my first concern, so within the next couple of weeks, the leadership team, transportation director and the Assumption and Moweaqua police chiefs will discuss the flow of transportation for all of our schools and any changes (there's that word again) that will need to be made for next year. As soon as we have a solid plan, we will share that with our Central A&M community.
While all these changes are infrastructural changes, Central A&M remains a quality education for ALL students. Next year all four of our school libraries, one at each level, will be fully staffed. This will allow ALL students and teachers the ability to enhance classroom and individual reading practices, continuing our emphasis on building strong readers. Our ways of teaching have changed with new technologies and as educators we work at keeping up to date with best educational practices. What hasn't changed is that we have teachers who are second to none in this district. They care about your kids. They teach them with a passion for learning, no matter the topic. Daily we have exciting and fun classroom knowledge being shared between kids and adults. Together we embark on this learning process and our goal at Central A&M is to create life long learners who love to build, create, question, investigate and collaborate to make educated decisions and develop citizens who will change this world for better.
As always, It's a GREAT day to be a Raider.
Dr. Heck