Principal’s Message October 24, 2022

Principal’s Message

October 24, 2022

School Grade:

I have fantastic news to share with everyone now that school grades have become official and public. Olympus Jr. High received an A grade from the Utah State Board of Education! We are the only junior high school in Granite School District to receive an A.

We are excited by this report as it highlights the work and effort of our students and teachers to make sure learning is the priority at our school. It has been a couple of years since schools received a letter grade from the state. The last time we received a grade was when we received a C in the 2019-2020 school year for the 2018-2019 academic year. We have made tremendous gains to move from a C to an A, especially considering the many challenges we have faced the last couple of years.

I encourage everyone to take a minute and visit https://utahschoolgrades.schools.utah.gov to check out our report card report. Also, from this page, you can look at any school in Utah and see their school grade and data breakdown.

The following graph shows how a school’s letter grade is determined. There are four categories that impact our grade: Achievement (proficiency scores from RISE), Growth (growth scores from RISE), English Learner Progress (how our English Learner students do on the WIDA testing), and Growth of the lowest 25% (the state wants to see that our students who don’t reach proficiency on RISE are still learning and progressing).

The following image shows where we scored in Achievement, Growth, and English Learner Progress. We were number one in the district in all three Achievement areas and number one in two of the three growth areas (ELA and science). We were also number one in our Growth of the Lowest 25%.

If you visit the link above and are looking at the live version of our report card, the blue “View Details” buttons will take you into a deeper dive of the data for that box. Some highlights are that we improved our proficiency by 10% in ELA, 11% in math, and 8% in science. We also outscored the district and the state in all three categories. We don’t have improvement data for the Growth sections as we didn’t generate growth last year. However, we do have data for how much our Growth of the Bottom 25% improved. That group showed 29% more growth than they had the year before. You may also notice that the growth scores showing on our report card are different than the growth scores I reported in my earlier information this year. The difference there is accounted for by the RISE Growth is based on a median score (whatever score is the middle score of all the students who took the test), and the growth scores on the report card are an index score (each range of a growth score is given a certain point value, those points are then added up and averaged). The index score gives us a much better idea of how well the students scored instead of just showing us the middle growth score of the group.

As you can see, an area where we need to keep focusing and working is in how well our English Language Learners are progressing. Our score for this group’s progress is actually up 5% from last year, but it is down from where they scored two years ago.

Each category defined by the state has a points possible and points earned, and those percentages are added up to give an overall percent for the school. The state then uses a scale to determine the school’s actual grade.

Again, we are very excited about how well we did last year, and by how well our year has started this year. Earning an A on a school report card is not an easy task, and our goal is to make sure we continue to focus on providing a high caliber learning experience for our students.

End of the Quarter:

First quarter ends this week. Students have school Monday-Thursday, and they don’t come to school on Friday. Remember that we get out at regular time on Thursday (2:45pm). Most teachers had last week as the cut-off for late work, but your students should know which teachers are requiring what regarding getting work in prior to the grading deadline.

This is also an opportune time to remind everyone that we are a pilot school for the district’s new Citizenship Grade process. The district is homing in on what citizenship means and how it should be graded for secondary students. They are calling this the Graduate of Granite Characteristics. The rubric and information for how these characteristics are scored can be found on page 23 of your student’s planner. The areas scored are Hard Work and Resilience, Respect, Communication, Responsibility, and Dependability. The teacher will score the first four of these categories, but the last category, Dependability, will be automatically scored based on your student’s attendance (absences and times tardy). When you look at your student’s report card, they will have eight classes listed with five citizenship grades for each class. This can look overwhelming, but the goal of the new system is to provide you and your student with more detailed information about how they’re doing on the Graduate of Granite Characteristics.

Lost and Found:

As we enter cooler weather, we are seeing that our lost and found is growing. A lot of jackets and hoodies are getting left laying around when students get too warm and take them off. We would love to get these items back to their owners, but often they go unclaimed and eventually get donated. You can help us get things back to your students by making sure that jackets and coats have names in them, and water bottles have names on them. Lunchboxes should also have names in them. We do check all items for names when they wind up in the lost and found.

I understand that it’s harder to label hoodies, so if you know your student has a hoodie and you haven’t seen it in a while, please have them check the lost and found.

Yearbooks:

Remember to pre-order yearbooks now. We will only order yearbooks for those who preorder, so if you want one, you need to get it now. Pre-order sales will be open until January 31. Remember that yearbooks are not automatically charged to student accounts, and they are not part of the general registration fee that is paid at the beginning of the school year.

Facebook Page:

I maintain a Facebook page for the school that has updates and information on it. Many times, information will be posted there before I send it home in one of these messages, so I suggest everyone follow our page. If you go to our school website and click on the Facebook link in the upper right corner, it will take you to the correct page and then you can click “Follow.”

Upcoming Dates:

Oct. 24 Soccer vs. Bennion

Oct. 26 Soccer vs. Bonneville

Oct. 26 Fall Concert (Music) (6pm)

Oct. 27 End of 1^st Quarter

Oct. 28 Student Non-attendance Day (SNAD)

Oct. 31 Soccer Championship games

Oct. 31 Basketball start day

Nov. 2 Talent Show Try-outs

Nov. 8, 9 Talent Show Rehearsals

Nov. 15 Basketball team selection

Nov. 15 Open Enrollment begins for 2023-2024 School Year