Dear MTUESD Community,
I am enjoying the last of the fresh and crisp mornings before the heat of the season is upon us! It’s been a pleasure to have these mild days as we all enjoyed the fun festivities of the fair. The Soroptimists planned a beautiful Youth parade down Main Street with so many organizations and students out and about. There were horses with glitter on their rumps, dancing cows being roped by Cowboys and Cowgirls, frog mobiles, floats, and so much more. Then you head over to the fair and our own Jessikah St. Louis is hard at work with Mr. Peters, Ms. McDaniel, and a crew manning up the parking for AMA. The core of volunteers gave away their time to make sure the kids have what they need in AMA’s biggest fundraiser of the year. I spent a couple hours in the Habitat for Humanity booth talking to folks on Sunday. What a great tradition this event is, and only in small towns like this do they thrive. A huge shout out to Angels Camp Fire Department for the tasty pancake breakfast in the park. Yum!
For our Copperopolis families, the highlight of the year was the annual Spring Sing, which was truly fantastic. What a tremendous show of talent and expertise our students displayed as they sang their way through class by class. Open House was glorious and the effort and time that staff put in to making it look fantastic, was truly apparent. It looked like we were hosting Taylor Swift on the site with cars parked for blocks all around! Well done!
I want to talk a little bit about staffing next year. When we look at staffing ratios, we look at proportionate pupil to personnel staffing. Sometimes, in small schools it goes one way or another because you can’t do 1/3 of a person. We really look at sites as a whole and determine those staffing levels. It’s not about one for one, when you have one school that’s 515 kids and another that’s 215 kids. We divide the number of pupils by the staff and try to balance it in all areas. I want to reiterate that next year is going to reflect much larger class sizes. There is no flexibility in adding a teacher at either site unless we increase enrollment by more than 30 kids at one site. That’s a total bummer and I get it, but we knew that going in if Measure A didn’t pass. The reality is we just have to deal with it as we readjust to our continuing decline in enrollment and corresponding funding loss. As my grandma used to say, “No amount of fussing is going to change it.” I can’t grow money. I can only cut to free money and there isn’t a lot in this district to cut.
The good news out of the state budget is that we received additional money. Unfortunately, it is restricted to after school programming. Where we’re going to have to focus our energies on supporting all learners is in the after-school and summer school programs with tutoring and small group work. Not my preference, but that’s the cards that we’ve been dealt, so we’re going to have to roll with it. Again, I want to reiterate that the state doesn’t just give districts money and say “Here you go! Go educate these kids”. They give us money that’s restricted to certain categories and we have to operate within the program parameters of that money. The cost of a new teacher is 30 NEW student enrollments at the site. That is unlikely. We are anticipating a decline of another 30 students, as we graduated a large class this year. But I want to assure you we don’t submit to discouragement–we will do the very best we can for kids. On a very positive note, we are seeing some GREAT preliminary indicators of improvement on our state testing and will share more as we learn more.
Sign-up forms for next year‘s after school program are going home shortly. Please make sure you return it as soon as possible. Please remember that enrollment will be confirmed prior to school start. First opportunity for enrollment is given based on eligibility for the state's criteria. Hang in there.
Speaking of graduation, sixth grade ceremonies at Copperopolis and eighth grade ceremonies at Mark Twain are quickly upon us. A huge shout out to the PTC and Badger Boosters for their support of the end of year events. See the list of important dates below!
The last thing I want to talk a little bit about is chronic absenteeism. Next year, as our leadership team gets going in their new positions, there will be a renewed focus on attendance. We have some families that are chronically absent. We will be working with them, and if we can’t develop better attendance, we will be referring to the SARB process, which is a county multi-disciplinary team, including social services, law-enforcement, and the district attorney. Sending your student to school is the law. Being absent or routinely tardy is something that we need to clean up in this district. Will be working hard to make sure all kids are here. There’s two reasons. One, and the most important, is I want your kids to get a great education. It holds back the whole school when we have students that are chronically absent and behind. The second thing is it’s a financial imperative for our district . If your student doesn’t attend, funding is destabilized and also it takes up staff time to track you down. If you need help getting to school, you need to talk with us and we’ll figure something out. Just this past month, we are seeing kids ride bikes to school. It’s been fun to see all the bikes in the rack from We Deliver Wheels and those kinds of solutions to support families to get to school are opportunities we can explore for a win-win.
There is still room in summer school. Please sign up at your school office. There is a bus for both session A and session B in the morning and back again after lunch from/to Copper. Don’t miss this chance to give your kids some deep intervention or extension work. We are also accepting interest forms for after school programs for NEXT school year. Enrollment will be confirmed over the summer, but sign up now.
Wishing you a happy and safe weekend ahead. On the home stretch. PLEASE SEND YOUR STUDENT TO SCHOOL!
Mark Twain Elementary
Reminders/Looking ahead
5/22 4th -5th track meet Hazel Fischer
5/22 TK-3rd Student of the Month assembly
5/23 6th Grade Dance
5/26 No School Memorial Day
5/27 8th grade awards night
5/28 7th-8th PBIS celebration
5/29 Red Bench graduation practice
5/30 8th grade to Six Flags
6/2 8th grade BBQ
6/3 7th grade breakfast
6/3 8th grade graduation practice Frogtown
6/4 Last Day Middle school Student of the Month-Honor roll
Copperopolis
Reminders/Looking ahead
4th & 5th grade Track Meet at Hazel Fischer – 5/22 all day
Staff Meeting – Class Planning – 5/23 1:15 pm
Summer School Meeting – 5/23 at 2:15 pm
NO SCHOOL – Memorial Day Observation – 5/26
2nd grade field trip to Angels Camp Theater – 5/27 8 am
3rd grade field trip to the Angels Camp Museum – 5/28
5th/6th grade dance – 5/28 9 am
Fun Day – 5/30
All School Spring Sing Performance – 6/2 8:30 am
6th grade Farewell – 6/3
Student of the Trimester Assembly/Character Trait Award for Creativity – 6/4 – all school at the same time – 8:30 am
Last Day of School – 6/4
Sincerely yours,
Louise Simson
Superintendent
650-996-3290