Dear Hayfield Secondary Families and Community Members: Welcome to the 2010-11 School Year! Well…actually we’re still a couple weeks away but I feel the time is right to celebrate and share some important information with you as we prepare to begin our journey together. Let me start by stating that I had the pleasure of attending the first official PTSA meeting of the year on Tuesday night, July 20. I enjoyed meeting our new PTSA president, Mrs. Liz Dunn, as well as the entire PTSA board. Among other issues, we discussed spirit building ideas. I encourage to you to share your ideas and get involved with our PTSA this year through the following means: Join the PTSA – still only $5.00, checks can be turned in to the main office or you can simply join up at back to school night (see dates below). Attend monthly PTSA meetings – currently we hold PTSA meetings at 6:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday evening of every month in the Hayfield Media Center. Depending on the topics and size of the group, the location may change in a given month. I hope to see you there. As a part of each meeting I will be giving a “principal’s update” and also plan to bring a staff representative to each meeting in order to discuss various timely topics as the school year progresses. Visit the fantastic PTSA webpage at www.hssptsa.com. Our website curator, Mr. Mike Lambert has done an outstanding job maintaining this site. Current and timely school information will be posted on the site. This is a great way to stay current, as well as become more involved with our school and school-related activities and events. I'm proud to say that we have hired some outstanding new leaders. As I relayed through the webpage, we recently hired our new associate principal, Mrs. Pamela Ellison-Brumfield. Pamela brings an incredible wealth of experience to us and I know you will enjoy her team-oriented proactive approach to leadership. We are also in the process of hiring a new middle school assistant principal. As soon as we’ve made this selection, I’ll post information on the PTSA webpage. Finally, our administrative team has done an outstanding job filling teaching positions with student centered educators. We’re really excited about the start of the 2010-11 school year and appreciate their hard work with staffing. Our positive trend regarding standardized test scores has continued. Each subgroup as measured under “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP), showed significant positive growth in 2009-10. Our assessment coach, Mrs. Christine Lemnitzer, continues to do an outstanding job with both coordination/leadership and dissemination of the results and information in a user-friendly format. As we continue to work on creating professional learning communities within our school, we are very confident that students will receive the support they need to continue making strides. I want to publically commend our directors of student services, Mrs. Barbara Driggins on the high school side and Mrs. Maria Verna on the middle school side. These professionals have done an incredible job with the master schedule for 2010-11. All core teachers (science, math, history and English) will have a common planning period this year as a result of their efforts this summer. This will allow teachers of like subjects to spend more quality time during the school day on such critical activities as developing common assessments and tracking student success within a given unit of instruction. This in turn will allow students to receive timely intervention and enrichment experiences. This new structure will also provide teachers a structured time in order to share successful ideas within a given lesson or group of lessons with their peers. Let me also take a moment to share some important upcoming dates with you. Back to School Night is scheduled as follows: High School: Wednesday, September 22 @ 6:30 p.m. Middle School: Thursday, September 30 @ 6:30 p.m. Homecoming Week - October 11-15, Homecoming Game October 15 with the Homecoming Dance scheduled for October 16. In closing, I am very much looking forward to working with you and your students during the 2010-11 school year. As I emphasized when I was introduced to the community at the “meet and greet” a few weeks ago, my primary school vision revolves around establishing positive relationships at all levels within the Hayfield school community. Together as a team we will provide the best possible school experience for our students. Again, welcome to 2010-11. Let the journey begin! Dave Tremaine Principal Hayfield Secondary School |
HH News 2010-11 > Principal's Messages >