Superintendent's Blog

January 26, 2010 - GCS' State of Our Schools

I shared the State of Our Schools with our employees, parents and members of our community. They learned about our academic accomplishments and the steps we are taking to meet the goals for 2012 outlined in our strategic plan.

Our community heard stories about students who are being the change we want to see locally, regionally and even internationally. It is our students’ creativity, hard work, determination and optimistic outlook that remind us how important our role is in influencing their future. They truly are worthy of our honor and our respect.

All of us play a part in preparing our students to succeed. If we want our students to be the change, we also must be the change. Many of us are doing just that, and on the State of Our Schools Web site, you can read these inspiring stories. 

We are one year into the district’s strategic plan, and I am pleased with the academic progress we have made thanks to your hard work and dedication to our students. Reading and math scores increased in grades three through eight, the district’s graduation rate rose and the achievement gap narrowed. But, if we are to meet the academic goals set in the strategic plan, there is still work to be done.

Our online, interactive annual report serves as a tool to help guide you as you learn more about how we’re doing academically.

We will push to improve at an even faster rate, and focus on several strategic plan initiatives, including One Million Books and character development, both of which launched district-wide at the State of Our Schools.

With the support of Guilford County, One Million Books will help tackle literacy gaps as we challenge schools to read one million books collectively as a district.

Our character development initiative includes two exciting endeavors. The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) actively promotes character development in our high schools. Through a grant, NCCJ is partnering with GCS to expand their human relations projects to every GCS middle school in the 2010-11 school year.

Service learning, another major part of character development, connects meaningful community service experiences with academic learning, personal growth and civic responsibility. Because of an anonymous donation, GCS employees and students will have the opportunity to partake in a service-learning project by building a Habitat for Humanity house. I encourage you to visit our Character Development Web site to learn more.

These initiatives will help our students excel in the classroom and beyond. We will work to increase family and community involvement and improve school safety. It has been a successful year, but as I mentioned, there’s more work to be done. I look forward to sharing our progress as we begin year two of our strategic plan.