Greetings
GreenMount Community,
On May 7, at 6:30 p.m., we will have our All Family
Meeting, and as part of the meeting I will present a brief “state of the
school” address. Basically, I will be
telling you that the school is prospering and we are in a healthy state
financially. We anticipate that we will
have nearly full enrollment of about 102 students when we open our doors in
September. With that expectation we have
made some staffing changes, which I now present to you:
Ms. Pam will be moving to take over the 2nd/3rd
grade class and Ms. Tanza will become the 4/5 homeroom teacher. Ms. Elizabeth will not have a homeroom this
coming year. We have been in the process
of hiring a new full-time teacher to be responsible for middle school language
arts along with other teaching duties for the lower grades. It is interesting to note that I have
interviewed 15 individuals for this position, five of whom the entire staff
will interview next week. We have had a
great response to our position posting on the AIMS web site and many of those
who responded are very talented. We will
know by next Friday which candidate we will be hiring. Other full-time staff positions will remain
the same. However, until we complete the
schedule, we will not be able to tell you what each teacher’s responsibilities
will be.
On
the part-time side, I am sorry to announce to you that Mr. Ellis will not be
returning next year. It seems that his
incredible talent as a musician has resulted in more and more requests for his
presence as such and he has decided to dedicate his full time to the expansion
of his art. Mr. Ellis has long been an
important and creative member of our community and has become the friend of all
he has met. He will be missed in the
classroom, playing for our theme events and herding eighth graders around the
jungles of Costa Rica. As this Monday newsletter goes home, he has not yet
shared the information about his departure with the students and I expect he
will be talking to them tomorrow during his classes. I think it safe to say that the students do
not read my head message, so please keep this information confidential until
tomorrow. The Cultural Studies program
will continue, but in the form in which it originated. That is, Cultural Studies will only be
offered for students in grades 6-8. Mr.
Fletcher will be taking on that responsibility as part of his teaching load. More to follow…
You have heard me talk often about our efforts to have
students understand the meaning of excellence.
We have been working with students to foster an intrinsic desire to do
excellent work and, indeed, such is the case with many of our students. A wonderful case in point is the fact that
this weekend our Destination Imagination team (The Soul Seven) competed in the
state finals, having won the regional finals already. Their hard work and pursuit of an excellent
solution to their “problem” has resulted in the opportunity to compete in the
GLOBAL competition to be held Memorial Day weekend in Tennessee! This is an outstanding accomplishment, a
tribute to excellence and a very special way for our school to be represented
on a global scale. This recognition also
is a tribute to our efforts as a school community to foster creativity,
risk-taking, and innovation.
Additionally, it is a credit to the support of parents like Linda
Pietila and Dale Meyers, who provided the encouragement and support for this
team to reach such heights. We are all
very proud of the parents and students who have earned The GreenMount School
this recognition.
Cheers,
Steve
