Our District 6 Superintendent's Office is intended to provide a number of areas of support and direction for the community and our schools. We are the conduit between the services that District 6 provides for our children and our Board of Education, who serve the community in their elected leadership roles. The BOE meetings and communication with the BOE is primarily done through the Superintendent's Office, and our meeting schedule is posted on the District website. Our office can also be a resource for families who have concerns and our issues that have not first been able to be addressed at the school building level. The Superintendent's Office also helps provide direction and information to our community and schools on initiatives that we undertake in a never-ending drive for "Excellence Without Exception" in regards to the education of our children.

Below information on several of these initiatives.

2009-10 was our first formal year with Response to Intervention (RtI) at each of our schools. RtI is a process of implementing high quality teaching to students, monitoring student progress, and adjusting instruction and providing interventions as needed based on student success. in 2009-10 we focused on Reading, and as a result our staff worked very hard with our students in each of the buildings to make sure our students have the literacy skills they will need and use for life. Last year in 2010-11, we formally implementing Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports (PBIS) to support behavior interventions as part of our overall plan. PBIS is intended to help us build learning communities that emphasize being Respectful, Responsible, Safe and Kind! The more we, as a community, can consistently reinforce positive decisions, and consistently redirect poor behaviors, the greater likelihood that our young people will learn the behaviors associated with positive values. In 2011-12, our RtI efforts will focus on Mathematics, and we are excited to develop new programming and interventions to help our children be successful in the exciting world of Mathematics!

One of the most important parts of our process of monitoring student growth in Reading and Math is our use of NWEA scores and growth targets for our 2nd through 8th graders. We know that each student is uniquely different and possessed individual strengths and areas of necessary improvement. As a result, to expect every student to be at exactly the same place is neither a real nor desired outcome. Rather, we use NWEA-MAP scores and targets to allow each student to be able to set realistic and personal goals for their academic journey. Please engage in discussions with your child about his or her personal goals for the year, and please contact your child’s teacher if you have questions about their scores and how these scores relate to their classroom work.

We are also beginning our fourth year of our Central Focus Process which has an established and identified list of initiatives to undertake at Zion Central Middle School. These initiatives were the result of a community wide process which took place in the spring of 2009 and cover a great deal of the improvements which we have made at ZCMS over the past few years. All of these initiatives and the implementation timelines are included in the "Documents" tab to this page under "Central Focus Timelines in Dec 10".

Please continue to work with your school's principal and teachers to help your child make the upcoming year an outstanding year, and thanks again for your support of District 6 and our children!