Welcome Back Family Letter

Greetings LCHS families,

I hope you all have had a great, restful and amazing summer.  I have loved my first full summer in Leadville.  Training for the 100 bike has helped me get out, explore and really appreciate the amazing place we all get to call home.  As amazing as summer is, I am actually really excited to get back to work and jump into next school year.  We have an amazing team and great students and I feel great about where we are heading for next school year.  I can’t yet share how our students performed on state assessments, but I can tell you that the work we are doing is paying off and we are moving in the right direction.

Last year we worked hard on our school culture.  We want a school that is free from distractions, joyful and focused on the rigorous learning needed to prepare students for the futures they want.  This year we want to take that work further and continue to improve our school culture.  We will continue to work to strengthen Crew and to make it a structure that gets kids outside, builds culture, improves social-emotional learning, helps communication with families and helps students plan for the future.  We are going to continue our work on students’ academic plans and our collaboration with CMC to improve our instruction and increase students’ access to college work.  We are excited for this year and I am confident that you will continue to see positive developments coming out of LCHS.

I did want to bring you up to speed on several new staff members and staffing updates.  We are very excited about the individuals joining our team:

• Ari Gino has worked at HMI and most recently in Tahoe. She is very excited about expeditionary learning practices and will be our 7^th grade math teacher.
• Kim Chavez is coming over from WPE as our new culture para. Many of you know Kim as Jordan and Tyra’s mom, but she also has a ton of experience in school culture and behavior management and we are happy that she will be helping us with school culture systems.
• Christian Lovely spent time growing up in Summit County and has recently been teaching in Missouri. He is passionate about physical education and will serve as our PE teacher.  His wife is also teaching at WPE.
• Most of you know Whitney Johnson from her work at Full Circle. What you may not know is Whitney taught Spanish at HMI and is very excited to join our Spanish department as we work to build a bilingual program in our school.
• Alex Duran recently graduated from UNC’s Music Education Program and will be joining as our new band teacher. Alex is very excited to develop and evolve the many great band, drumline and Jazz programs that we have at LCHS.
• We were able to secure a 3 year grant to hire a social worker to help with preventative health education, mental health support and attendance. Sam Wogan will be joining our team to fulfill this position.  She has a background as a behavioral coach as well as work in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
• We are very excited for the West Park Community with Ms. Fitzsimmons as their new leader, and we are thrilled that Erin Dillon is coming on board to fill the Assistant Principal role at LCHS. Erin has worked for DSST in Denver for 10 years and developed many of the culture systems we now use at LCHS.  She has recently worked as a principal and is excited to be back in a role deeply focused on school culture.

I also wanted to make you aware of a couple of things coming up quickly this fall.  There will be more communication about these events in the coming weeks, but we wanted you to be aware as they are coming up:

• Orientation day will be from 10am-6pm on 8/21/17. Families should sign up for a slot during registration to come in and meet with their Crew teacher.  We will look at the ICAP and schedule, establish a relationship, talk about the best way to communicate and make sure the year gets off to a great start.
• Our First day of school is 8/22/17. We will go over syllabi and make sure students are ready for a great school year.
• All 7^th and 9^th graders will go through a cornerstone experience as they start these pivotal years in their educational careers. These amazing experiences are being coordinated through Get Outdoors Leadville and will involve HMI, Outward Bound, CMC, Full Circle and other local partners.  If you are the parent or guardian of a 7^th or 9^th grader please watch for more information coming home about these experiences.
• All 8^th-12^th grade students will be taking the PSAT and SAT on 9/21/17. This will help us know where students are performing compared to national peers and college readiness benchmarks.  This will be a half day and more information will be coming soon.
• Fall sports and activities are in full swing. Please keep an eye on the website, FB and our text messages to stay up to speed on what is happening at LCHS.

We look forward to a great year with you and your students.  My door is always open to parents and community members and I would love to hear from you on how we can continue to meet you and your student’s needs.

Thanks,

Ben

LCHS Welcome Back Family Letter PDF downloadable link