Dear Community Members,
Buchanan continues to find success as we move through the school year. In January we held our very first Buchanan Promise night for potential 2017 graduates of Buchanan High School. We had several parents and students in the audience, and by the time the evening was over, more than a third of the senior class had completed their applications. We want to encourage every senior student who resides in the Buchanan Community School District to apply for this scholarship even if you don’t know your plans for after graduation. This money will be available for you for up to six years. Apply now! You may need this in the future! www.buchananpromise.com.
On another note, we want to celebrate our Middle School staff for a job well done! The state has released them from their Focus status. Focus status is when there is a 30% learning gap between the top performing students and the bottom performing students. What we have noticed in the past two years is if students arrive at the Middle School in 5th grade below grade level in English Language Arts or math, they are at or above grade level when exiting the Middle School in 7th grade. This staff has worked hard and has focused on every student succeeding. Kudos!
In addition we are just completing our mid-year assessments. We are pleased with preliminary results on NWEA which indicate students are on their way of succeeding in their yearly growth target or they have already met their goals in both reading and math! What’s nice about this assessment is that it will also give us a prediction of where our students will fall on the MSTEP test and gives us a chance to adjust our interventions before the end of the year.
Last, but not least, Buchanan is the proud recipient of a School Safety Grant! This grant will allow us to upgrade our current security cameras at our elementary school and will also give us the capability of allowing our local law enforcement to have a live camera feed into our buildings should we ever have an emergency situation.
Buchanan is an exciting place to be these days! I can’t wait to see what’s next!