Once again we are off and running on a new school year.  Students and staff are already settling into routines and digging into the teaching and learning activities that serve us well year after year.  The Houston school district recently received the news that we did very well on our Annual Performance Report (APR).  The APR is the state’s report card for schools that evaluates performance in 14 areas including test scores in various subjects at selected grade levels, graduation rates, attendance rates and others.  On the APR, the state indicates that a school district has either “met” or “not met” a standard.  Houston has 14 “mets” this year.  

While we are pleased with our APR, we are not satisfied.  The impact of education on our students’ lives is far too great for us to ever become complacent based on a good report from the state.  Our staff has been working very hard over the past couple of years to become more collaborative, more focused, and more skilled in strategies and teaching techniques that can make a difference in student learning.  We believe that the capacity we have been building will be converted into increased learning and higher performance levels for students.  To see the level of success for our students that we hope for we must become a district where the adults in our schools create a culture of learning and collectively accept the responsibility for ensuring that every student graduates with the tools needed for success. 

One critical key to bringing about the level of success we want for our students is literacy.  It is a goal in our district that every student becomes a good reader.  Learning to read well leads to reading to learn, which is why we are asking teachers to incorporate even more reading into their classes this year, and have students discuss and write about what they have read.  The more proficient our students become at reading, and processing the information they have read, the better prepared they will be for future learning.  Our goal of developing highly literate students…just one step in fulfilling our mission of striving for excellence and learning for all.

As we anticipate the beginning of another school year in the Houston R-I district there is an air of expectancy permeating our campus.  Our staff development in recent years has been highly focused on becoming a place where the adults in the school create a culture of learning and accept the collective responsibility for ensuring our students are given the tools needed for success beyond high school.  The level of focused, quality professional development that has occurred, and is ongoing, in our district has generated the air of expectancy that we are poised to achieve levels of success not before seen in our district or area.  As we work to fulfill our mission of “Striving for Excellence…Learning for All” we envision becoming a school district recognized throughout the area and beyond for the high levels of learning achieved by our students.  

Our staff has been working diligently to become more collaborative, more focused, and more effective regarding key things that will lead to increased learning for our students. As we work together to improve our effectiveness, the increased collective capacity our staff has developed will continue to grow and allow us to consistently improve upon the educational opportunities offered to our students. 

We are collectively committed to working collaboratively to present a highly focused curriculum to our students through the most effective instructional practices possible.  In addition to focused curriculum and effective instruction, we are determined to use quality assessment strategies to measure student progress and offer timely feedback as well as targeted learning interventions when needed.  By maintaining a laser-like focus on these few things that are proven to have very high impact on student learning, we will accomplish our goals of having every child reading at or above grade level by the end of fourth grade, being a school where our students read and write more and at higher levels than any other school around, by the end of their freshman year every student mastering the essential standards for Algebra I, high school graduation rates above 95% or higher, and seeing every graduate of the district leave high school well prepared for post-high school education of some kind or to enter the work place.

Without question, our mission, vision and goals are lofty, but they are absolutely attainable.  That is why the “air of expectancy” I mentioned at the outset has settled on our school.  We have a staff with the commitment and capacity to make great things happen for an outstanding student body that deserves no less than great.  Poised and ready…2011-2012 is set to be a wonderful school year in Houston.

As we are all very aware, from the national level down to the local, current economic conditions are definitely less than positive.  Because of the economic downturn state revenue is nearly a billion dollars short of what was projected for this year.  Since Missouri's constitution requires the state to maintain a balanced budget this means that cuts have to be made in the state's budget.  Most of the money received by school districts from the state comes in the form of the foundation formula.  Earlier this year  the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) requested an additional $43 million from the state in order to fully fund the foundation formula.  That request was not included in the governor's supplemental budget proposed to the state legislature.  Without that additional funding, schools will not receive the full amount that they were expecting to get from the state this year.  The outlook for the next fiscal year doesn't get any better.  While Governor Nixon's proposed budget for FY 2011 does include an increase of $18 million for the foundation formula, it is still $88 million short of what would be needed to fully fund the formula.  In addition, some of the money schools receive from the state does not come from the foundation formula.  There will almost certainly be cuts in state funding for programs like transportation, Career Ladder for teachers, summer school, and the Parents as Teachers program.