I hope you and your children enjoyed a restful and joyful summer.

Some of you are experiencing the excitement and nerves of dropping your child off at school for the first time, or for their first day at a new building. Others are seeing your child begin their final year of high school. Each of these moments, whether firsts or lasts, are milestones that remind us how quickly time moves. Our work as a school community is to make those moments meaningful and to ensure every student feels supported, challenged, and inspired.

I want to extend my sincere thanks to everyone who prepared our schools for the new year. Our custodians, directors, secretaries, administrators, technology staff, business staff, curriculum staff, and personnel staff have all played important roles in getting our buildings and systems ready. I especially want to recognize our facilities team for their outstanding management of this summer’s construction projects. Their dedication ensures our students and staff have safe, updated, and welcoming spaces to learn and grow.

This year, we continue to embrace the Raider Profile, which challenges us to prepare students not only for academic success but also for life beyond school. The profile asks us to cultivate young people who are curious, resilient, creative, and able to collaborate across differences. To guide this work, we are deepening our focus on the Rigor-Relevance-Resilience (R3) Learning Model. This model pushes us to go beyond surface-level learning and state assessments. True rigor means helping students move past memorization into higher levels of thinking where they investigate, analyze, and design. Relevance asks us to give students opportunities to apply what they know in meaningful and authentic ways. While artificial intelligence can replicate much of what happens at the lower levels of application, it cannot create original solutions to unpredictable problems. And resilience, the thread that runs through all learning, prepares students to adapt, persist, and grow when challenges and adversity arise. 

As we begin this school year, my hope is that every student feels both challenged and supported as we bring this vision to life. Your child will not simply be asked to memorize facts; they will be encouraged to think deeply, make connections, work with others, and design solutions to problems. They will also learn how to adapt when things don’t go as planned, which is where resilience truly develops. These are the experiences that prepare them not only for success in school, but for the unpredictable and rapidly changing world.

I am grateful for your partnership and excited about the work we will do together this year. As always, please feel free to reach out to me with suggestions or concerns. 
 
Warm regards,
Dr. Janet Warden, Superintendent of Schools