Mont Vernon Village School

February 15, 2008

SAU #39 Mission:  We will engage, support, and challenge all learners.

Dear Parents and Guardians,

 My letter schedule is a little off with all of the delays, cancellations, and early releases.  We were very pleased with the use of the emergency phone notification system for our last early release.  Rather than making hundreds of phone calls from our 3 school lines and having them blocked for incoming calls, we were able to have over 900 phone calls made in approximately a 15-minute period.  If you experienced any problems with the numbers dialed or didn’t receive a phone call on that day, please send call or e-mail our administrative assistant, Charlotte Jameson.

 For your information, our school nurse, Mrs. Button, will be out on a health-related leave until early April.  Ms. Dahl Bauer, a regular substitute for us, will be filling in for Mrs. Button during her absence.  You can continue to contact the nurse’s office with any questions or concerns.

 The Morin family who recently lost their home to a fire has received many wonderful donations of food, manual labor and time, and household items from the school community and the larger Mont Vernon community.  We received a list of a few additional items they could use:  floor lamps, table lamps, desk/computer table, bookshelf, 2-3 night stands/side tables, area rugs, and serving dishes/utensils.  If you have any of these items to donate, you can bring them to the school office.

 NECAP results were released at the end of January to New Hampshire schools.  Students in grades 3-6 were tested in October to measure their proficiency in the previous year’s grade level expectation for reading and math.  Students in grade 5 only were also assessed in writing.  (Results for students in grades 3-6 will be mailed home to parents tomorrow.)  We are pleased with the MVVS results, and credit is due to both the students for their hard work and also to the MVVS teachers. 

 MVVS exceeds the NECAP state averages in reading, writing, and math for students in grades 3-6.  Our data from this fall showed an overall increase in reading performance of 1%, an increase in math of 10%, and an increase in writing of 50%.  As this is the third year of the NECAP assessment, we are also now able to look at multi-year trends which are a more reliable indicator of performance.  We are pleased to report that over 3 years (i.e. since they were in 3^rd grade) our current 5^th grade class moved from 74% proficiency in reading to 96% proficiency—a gain of 22% over 3 years.  Similarly, we saw an increase from 70% proficiency in mathematics to 88% proficiency—a gain of 18%.  We saw a similar increase in the performance of our current 6^th grade students who moved from 69% proficiency in reading in 4^th grade to a current proficiency level of 86% and from 57% proficiency in mathematics to 73% proficiency.  These results are quite impressive and speak to all of the hard work that has been done by staff at the Village School and across the SAU to align our curriculum and to enhance the performance of each student.

 The Mont Vernon School District budget public hearing was held last Thursday night.  The proposed school district budget is up 3% overall and includes increases for special education and teacher salaries, an increase from a ½ time to full-time technology integration specialist, and a laptop cart.  Copies of the budget are available from the SAU web-site  or the MVVS school office.  School district meeting will be held in the MVVS multi-purpose room at 7 P.M. on March 14^th.

Have a wonderful vacation week!                                                                                                    

Sincerely,          

Meredith Nadeau