Superintendent's Message

Portrait of a Graduate Guides Instruction, Defines Student Experience

Throughout these past few school years, ones that have been filled with unpredictability and challenges, one thing remained crystal clear: although we are responsible for aligning our instruction to meet state standards, students must be engaged in learning experiences that promote a variety of skills and competencies.

In order to meet these unique needs and bring additional structure to students’ overall school experience, members of our team recently engaged various internal and external stakeholders to create our district’s “Portrait of a Graduate” (POG). As one might expect, this guiding document helps bring focus to the identification and delivery of necessary academic content. Perhaps more importantly, however, POG challenges us to provide students learning experiences that equip them with the skills and aptitudes our community has deemed most important for them to have upon graduation: Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, Social Emotional Wellness, Adaptability, Collaboration, and Communication.

POG is a living document that will be used to formulate programming that empowers all students to become productive citizens. It brings consistency to the district’s academic framework and ensures all students will have educational experiences that meet their unique and changing needs from their elementary grades through their high school years.

As we begin the 2022-23 school year, we are optimistic that this will be as “normal” a year as we’ve experienced in quite some time. We’re also optimistic that we will begin to see the beginning impact of recent work to develop and implement our POG. I encourage everyone to learn more about this important initiative by watching this presentation and this brief video released in the spring of 2021. Some of the names and titles of those included in this video may have changed since then, but the importance of this work has not. We look forward to sharing our progress and successes with everyone throughout the coming academic years.