A message from the Superintendent

Sept. 6, 2011

Dear Seattle Public Schools families:

Welcome to the 2011-12 school year!

With school starting tomorrow, I find myself reflecting on the excitement I felt as a student at the beginning of each new school year. With these memories, I cannot help but think about how your student starts each school year - excited and hopeful that anything is possible. At Seattle Public Schools, we will do all we can to live up to your expectations.

During the past six months as your Interim Superintendent, I have spent time listening to many of you and others in our community who care deeply about the success of our students. I have learned, been inspired and am now ready to embark on this new school year with a renewed focus on our mission of graduating all students prepared for college, career and life.

We start the school year with some great news – our students are making improvements in their academic achievement. Thanks to strong teaching and instructional leadership, students across the District saw increases in performance on test scores. Seattle Public Schools outperformed the state average across subject areas in Grades 3-8. We had especially strong year-to-year improvements in the percentage of students meeting standard in all four tested subjects.

We still have plenty of work to do, not only to close the achievement gap, but to make sure we are challenging all of our students to do better. To remind us of our shared mission, we have adopted a motto for this year called AGREE: Attacking Gaps/Raising Expectations Everywhere. It is time for us to be bold and attack our educational and opportunity gaps, while at the same time improving the quality of instruction for all students—and we must engage our families and community partners in this effort. To that end, I have outlined our priorities for the year as our Four Pillars of Success.  They are:

1) Great principals highly skilled as instructional leaders
2) Great teachers highly skilled in meeting the needs of all students
3) Families and community partners connected to our schools
4) Central office staff who serve and support schools and families

You will hear more about this in the weeks and months ahead, and you may also go to this link to see the presentation I shared this summer with staff and PTSA leaders.

While the quality of teaching and learning is one of top priorities, we also have other important issues to address this year.

We will focus on improving our long-term capacity management planning. As our enrollment numbers increase, we will get better at responding to, and planning for, this enrollment growth and the related program needs. This fall, the District is creating a new committee of staff and community members to guide our long-term planning. The Capacity Management Advisory Committee will also include subcommittees working on regional and program issues, including advanced learning.

We must also be diligent in maintaining our communications with you - our families - and community partners. I will continue to hold office hours once each month. To provide you and others with even more timely information, our Assistant Superintendents for Operations, Business and Finance, and Teaching and Learning will each hold office hours once each month as well. For information on scheduling an appointment, please see the Leadership Open Office Hours webpage.
 
Our back-to-school Celebration of Learning last week at the Seattle Center was a fantastic kick-off to the school year. We are fortunate to have a community that supports our students and it is clear community members are ready to partner with us this year to ensure every student in Seattle Public Schools succeeds. If there is any city where this can truly happen, it is Seattle.

We look forward to seeing you back at school on Wednesday. There has never been a better time to be in Seattle Public Schools—here’s to a great year together!

Sincerely,



Susan

Susan Enfield, Ed.D.
Interim Superintendent
Seattle Public Schools

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