Good afternoon. I am writing with a few reminders and pieces of information.
The end of the first quarter is closer than it appears (31 October 2014). The 3rd and 4th of November will both be student holidays. The 4th is also parent-teacher conference day from 12noon-7pm. As we have done in the past, we will make use of a sign-up genius for scheduling. Information pertinent to signing up will be sent soon.
Thank you for your ongoing support of our school via your use of the Amazon link on our website (https://mlwgs.com). From our home page, click “Support” then you will see the Amazon link. When you access Amazon via this link, we receive a small percentage (approximately 6%).
We are planning to honor Mr. O’Bryan on Saturday evening (25th) at 6pm in our auditorium. In terms of his students, we have been fortunate to be able to call on Ms. Boyd as substitute for the past week. Over the next couple of days, Janet Meyers will transition into the role of long-term substitute. You may remember Janet as a former part-time MLWGS teacher August 2005 through June 2009. Janet earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maryland in English and Education and a Masters degree in Educational Evaluation, Research Methods, and Curriculum Development from the University of Virginia. As I know you will, when you see her please welcome her into her difficult yet important role. We will begin the process to identify a permanent teacher soon.
As some of you have already noted, I have begun to provide updates online at https://mlwgs.com/author/jeff-mcgee/. By accessing this site, you can read up to date posts as well as subscribe to receive notifications of new blog posts by email (bottom left of page). In addition, these posts will appear on our school facebook page. By modernizing our public relations protocol we hope to more closely connect with you as well as others who may choose to sign up for blog posts (i.e., alumni).
We remain deeply involved in strategic planning. Our committee, including representatives from our student body, PTSA, SAC, Foundation, faculty, staff, administrative team, superintendent’s committee, and school board is being facilitated by Amy Nisenson. To date the committee has identified goal areas including: admissions, curriculum and instruction, faculty and staff, and capital/facility. In addition, our mission and beliefs have received a close review. We hope to have ‘goal statements” and “objectives” for these areas completed soon. I will keep you updated as the process unfolds.
Finally, it has been almost two years since our community participated in our strategic planning survey. It is important that we monitor student and parent satisfaction as well as school climate and culture in odd years to ensure that we are meeting expectations. Thus, parents and students will be invited to participate in student and parent satisfaction surveys in the weeks ahead. An email invitation and reminder notices will be sent when the survey window opens.
As always, thank you for all of your support and please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of assistance to you.
