Happy New Year

This year has started with a bit of a bang for me and -- as a result -- I have missed some early opportunities for blog entries for 2011. Happy New Year! I hope that everyone had an enjoyable break. We are back and ready to continue our efforts for high quality school experiences for all students.

My calendar had me visiting with the elementary principals during the early part of this week. It is always exciting to see the strong, foundational work that takes place at these grade levels. This has been a wonderful start to a new calendar year.

One idea that Tonya Breland, our Evergreen Principal and district Supervisor for Curriculum and Instruction PK-5, is promoting for the new year is the goal of increasing the opportunities for students to read and our overall expectation for independent reading. Her message has been one that she has shared with her teachers and with me personally.

In an effort to support this reading emphasis, I thought it would be a good idea to put the call out for any books in good condition that may be in your homes collecting dust. If your children have moved past a certain reading stage and you have books to donate, we would welcome these at any of our schools.

You can drop off the donations to the main offices of the school of your child attends (or, if you are reading this as a community member interested in helping, you can get the books to Mrs. Breland at the Evergreen School and she will get them out to all of the schools across the district). At the elementary level, we are looking to expand in each room the available books so that there are rich, exciting classroom libraries available to all students. Your donation (and the donations of any friends or neighbors?!?) would be most welcomed.

Thanks -- and Happy New Year. I guess one of our school district resolutions is to read more! Interesting, because that is the same thing that I resolved to do better with for 2011. We are all so busy, I set my goal to be a realistic "book a month" for enjoyment.

Good luck with any personal resolution you are working to accomplish.