At Marshall it's all about the little things.
It starts everyday at around 8:30 in the morning when we stuff more than 600 children between the ages of 5 and 11 into this small neighborhood school-building. And then every afternoon, just after 3:00, we send them all home again.
Rain or shine, we load them into big yellow buses and mom-cars, or watch them carefully as they cross the street to tread their own path toward home. And, one way or another they all arrive there safely. Barring a slip-and-fall on the playground, they arrive largely unscathed at that.
It happens every day, 180 days a year. Pretty much without fail.
It seems like such a little thing. But, really, it's kind of amazing.
We feed them. Take their temps. Dry their tears. Refocus their attention. Settle their petty disputes. Admonish them for their infractions. And, perhaps best of all, recognize their earnest efforts to be good-people and to do-the-right-thing with the heartfelt hugs and sincere high-fives they've been hoping for.
We teach them, as we're able, to perform and apply myriad discrete academic skills. And we teach them to think. We hope, above all else, that they will take these skills and couple them in an unbreakable bond with this practice-at-thinking, and with these new abilities we hope they will soar.
In doing all of the above, we're just doing the job we're required to do.
As we go about our business day-by-day we quickly forget (perhaps because we make ourselves forget) about the CPS reports, the orders of protection, and the other dysfunctional baggage too many of them bring to school: the undernourishment, the neglect, and occasionally even the profound abuse that we're sometimes compelled to deal with, too.
We naturally do our best to patch the emotional holes in their boats. As we're able.
We know that our mere presence often begins to offset the otherwise ever-present unmitigated stress in their lives, so does the structure we create in our classrooms each day, the patterns of speech we follow, the expectations of behavior we insist upon, and the carefully wrought daily routines we work so hard to make innate to them.
But our buckets are often too small to stem the whelming tide that is the chaos of their small lives.
That's when we accommodate. Which is another kind of amazing little thing we're also very good at.
I've wanted to hold a faculty meeting with you, such as the one we've had this afternoon, for some time and for a number of reasons.
Chief among them, I've wanted to provide you all with the opportunity to engage with our core values in an active and meaningful way.
Also, I've wanted to give our RTI and Magnet Programs team a chance to review with you some of the great new acquisitions and assets we've recently been able to acquire as tools and resources for you to use.
By the numbers, there's much to be grateful for:
Our site council, including a number of active parents and staff members, headed up our fall 2013 tax credit drive and as a result of their concerted efforts we raised nearly $41,000 in contributions, more money than ever before, from more donors than ever before.
Through the earnest efforts of our classroom teachers and front office staff, we were able to enroll 57% of our families, more than ever before, in the federal free and reduced lunch (FRL) program, significantly enhancing our School-wide Title 1 Program operating budget for next year by many thousands of dollars. Our FRL enrollment at Marshall has increased more than 10% since 2010.
School-wide enrollment is as near capacity as it's been in several years. We have been able to enroll more than 600 students into classes that are optimally very close to par (23.5 students per section K-2; 27 per 3-5) in almost every classroom. Early enrollment and staffing projections indicate that we will be in similar shape during the 2014-2015 school year, too.
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| Jan. 2014 M-COMP (click to enlarge) |
Our most recent January 2014 AIMSWEB benchmark testing indicates excellent progress at many grade levels in both reading and math. Please note, especially, the transition to "above target" for second and fifth grade students on M-CAP as well as the universal progress from students school-wide as measured by the M-COMP.
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| Jan. 2014 M-CAP (click to enlarge) |
On a somewhat less significant though no less important scale, during the last year we've received many generous gifts and worked hard to secure a number of important grants which have all been used to purchase curricular, extra-curricular, consumable and capital items and thus "promote the general welfare" of Marshall School: $500 from Target Stores, over $600 from Fratelli Pizza, more than $3200 from the PTO Mustang Gallop fund, $4000 from the Arizona Commission on the Arts , $5,500 from the Flagstaff Community Foundation, and $10,000 from the state Heritage Foundation. Via our Suzuki violin rental program, we've been able to collect more than $3000 in monthly instrument rental fees. Additional fundraising resources, such as the School Cents, Box Tops, and eScrip programs, as well as Epiphany's Random Acts Of Kindness and Marshall Adult Dodgeball also contribute generously to our bottom-line.
Please don't misunderstand, we are not now, nor is it likely we will ever be flush with cash. But many members of our school community have worked diligently to cultivate and retain a number of generous contributors, donors, grantees, and fundraising opportunities and to expend these funds in ways that consistently benefit our students. All of this has empowered us to continue our long-standing tradition of excellence and innovation which has always distinguished Marshall School and our students among the many other competing educational choices in the region and throughout the state.
It is truly my honor and privilege to work for you as your principal, and it's my hope to return to work among you again next year, should the superintendent give me the opportunity. I am honored to count myself as a member of a community of coworkers who has identified Persistence, Passion, Collaboration, Honesty, and Innovation as their core guiding Values; which has carefully worked together to set and attain reasonable measurable achievement goals for their students; and who have invested their collective time and personal resources into ensuring that our school has the funding necessary to implement valuable, unique academic programming for our students, well above and beyond the budget and expectations set forth for us by the district.
I cannot deny my own feelings of optimism related to the aforementioned rates of our progress and overall academic achievement scores, as well as what I perceive to be our generally positive and upbeat esprit de corp.
I sincerely hope you also possess this same sense of optimism, just as I hope you view your role here as an honor and privilege, too. If not, then perhaps you'll seek an opportunity soon to pause to reflect on the origin of your dissatisfaction for a moment or two. In that time, I hope you will ask yourself: if I'm not upbeat about working at Marshall, why might that be? I'd be curious to know what you discover. I am well aware of the reality that not every day at work is a great day, even when working at so fine a place as Marshall. It's simple for me to identify places where we, as a school, need improvement, and even easier for me to point out places where I have proven ineffective in my administration of this place.
I am sure the same is true for you.
Nevertheless, all things considered, it's my hope that you share my optimism as well as my desire to steadfastly apply our collective efforts and expertise in order to continue to see Marshall School excel and our students to soar.
