E l i W h i t n ey S c h o o l N ew s !
December 2013
Volume 1, Issue 4
Jorge Ruiz, Principal
Selena Estka, Assistant Principal
Dear Parents:
The NWE assessment is taking place this month until the middle of January. It takes our school about a
month to test all the children of our school from 2nd grade to eight grade. We need to have baseline
data in order to find were our students are compared to national norms of students learning at the same
grade level. During the month of January we will also have the ACCESS assessment, this assessment will
be given to all English Language Learners students in our school starting January 13, 2014.
The State exam ISAT will have 100% Common Core State Standards this year, therefore the assessment
will be more rigorous and will require thinking and answering at higher levels. Up to this point most of
the assessments required reading one source of information. The new standard will be reading "several
sources of information" in order to answer questions that are interconnected; most of the reading will be
non-fiction and students will be able to find " textual evidence" among the text. Close reading is one of
the strategies that enhances student learning and is part of our theory of action for this year. All our
students are exposed to close reading on regular basis.
I want you to remind all of you that the goal of attendance for this year 2013-2014 is 97%. You need
to send your children to school on a regular basis. Every day counts!
Winter Vacation
12/23/13 –1-3-2014
No Classes
It is imperative that during this month the children that have not finalized their health requirements complete their schedule with their doctors.
I want to thank all the families that were able to contribute Thanksgiving baskets for the most needed
members of our community. We were able to celebrate perfect attendance with a couple of classrooms
that had 100% attendance. The students from this group were able to visit to the museum of Science
and Industry.
In December we have classrooms that have scheduled field trips to different locations within the city. All
the trips are educational in nature with the purpose of enhancing student learning.
We have a new facilities manager ,Mr. Charles Campagne he has contracted a company to replace the
lighting of our school. The lighting will be changed during the afternoons in order to avoid causing minimal distraction for our students and to avoid safety and noise concerns as well. We will have a contractor fixing the floor of the gymnasium during the winter break, we have some portions of the floor that
need to be replaced.
We will have a winter celebration starting December 18 and 19, there will be two separate winter assemblies in order to accommodate the classrooms that will be participating on this endeavor.
The following year students will take the PARCC assessment and will be more rigorous and will be
aligned to international standards. We have to be certain that our students are college and career
ready and able to compete at the same level with students within our country as well as international
students.
I want to thank Ms. Field, Ms. Campbell and MS. Kenyon for helping us with the winter assembly.
The school will be closed in December for two weeks (12/23/2013-1/3/2014) due to winter holidays. I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you Happy Holidays! I hope that all of you will be
able to relax, recharge and be ready for a brand new 2014 year.
Sincerely,
Jorge Ruiz