Planning for Improvement

Dear Parents and Guardians,                                                                                          Feb. 14, 2010

Welcome to another year of Getting to Great the Planning for Improvement survey. The purpose of this letter is to provide you with the details of the survey and information on why completion of this survey is so important to the success of students within our board.

This survey allows students, parents/guardians, and teachers throughout the Halifax Regional School Board to share information that will help us improve schools. The result of the survey will not be used to evaluate individuals. We’re on a mission to make every school a great school, but we can’t get to great without you. Your voluntary participation in this survey will help us to identify the strengths and challenges at your child’s school, so we can do our part to enhance the opportunities every school holds for students to learn. The survey is voluntary and we hope parents and guardians will answer as many questions as they can but they do not need to answer any questions they do not wish to answer.

Your input is valuable in helping us make improvements that will directly impact your child’s learning and school experience. Please remember, all survey information is anonymous and is not used to evaluate students. At the end of the survey, you will find space to make any additional comments you wish to share anonymously with your child's school.

Please visit the website: http://survey.hrsb.ns.ca select our school and start the survey. You are welcome to complete a survey for each child attending our school. The online survey is available from February 15- March 12, 2010.


Thank you for your participation, your input is very important to us!

Kim Acorn

Principal

Gaetz Brook Junior High

827-4666

The Halifax Regional School Board is committed to supporting the learning needs of all students, their ongoing achievement and their success.

We want to ensure that as a school system and as individual schools, we continuously work towards developing new and improved ways to meet the student needs. Out of the Effective Schools research come two principles which guide our efforts – all students can learn and all schools can improve.

Based on these guiding principles, all schools are part of a Planning for Improvement initiative. Schools are working to answer three key questions:

How are our students doing?
How do we know?
What do we need to do now?

With system support, our schools are seeking out data relevant to student achievement, student success, school strengths and needs. Analysis of the data will engage school leaders, school staff, parents and students in conversations around the three questions. Out of these conversations, school communities can identify strengths and celebrate successes, identify needs and establish priorities and goals for the future. Schools will implement plans, monitor their progress and review and revise as necessary.