Closing Out the School Year
Greetings Parents and Community Members! With only 8 days left in the school year, coupled with Georgia Milestone testing, 5th grade exhibition, Field day, packing up for the summer move at MC, completing end-of-year tasks, Hive Rallies and so many more “To Do’s,” this month has officially been named MAY-hem! It doesn’t stop our amazing teachers and staff from doing what they do best though – giving our students the summer send-off they deserve! Our teachers, on top of everything else they do, are flawlessly planning end-of-year celebrations, inputting grades, making class lists, moving rooms and so much more! I have to give a BIG shout-out to our 3rd-5th graders who just completed their Georgia Milestone assessment as well. If you don’t already know, APS pushed the testing WAY back to allow for more time of instruction and less end-of-year down time, and it worked! Our students came to school prepared, on time, and each grade level had near-perfect attendance! Our students worked hard every day and dealt with a different schedule, which can make it hard on some students who are used to eating lunch or going to recess at the same time every day. Our amazing students did it all with little to no complaining, our teachers executed the plan flawlessly, and our amazing AP-turned-Lead Testing Coordinator, Fume Ekpere, led one of the smoothest testing windows this school has ever seen. So proud of everyone involved! Aside from completing our Georgia Milestone Assessment:
- Our Math Olympiad team, led by Gifted Teacher Carla Kendall, earned a plaque for maintaining scores in the top 10% of the state. 5 members of the team even finished with perfect scores. Great work team!
- Some of our amazing students represented Brandon at the annual APS Special Olympics. I’ve been volunteering at this event for several years but was so happy (and proud) to now be able to cheer on some of my very own students to victory!
- We celebrated National School Nurses day, recognizing the amazing job Nurse Oxman and Nurse Ford do every day to help our school and children. We are so happy to have both of them back next year FULL TIME!
- Our amazing Kindergarten staff celebrated with an end-of-year picnic outside. It was so great to enjoy the company of our soon-to-be 1st graders! They also got to go on the last field trip of the year, Kinder-in-the-garden at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. And what a gorgeous day it was.
- And our amazing Specialists continued to prepare our students for Field Day. I can’t wait to see what the opening ceremonies have in store! I look forward to seeing ALL of our students at the Main campus this Friday!
I want to take a moment to thank everyone who volunteered this year, donated their time and money, helped out as room parents, volunteered in the offices, sat on the PTA and Foundation board, facilitated school governance on our GOTeam, joined me for parent coffee talks, were parent readers, were Junior Achievement facilitators, donated food for parties and generally helped out wherever needed. One of the major reasons Brandon is a great school is because of YOU! We have well over 1000 students, 44 homerooms and 120 faculty and staff in total. Couple that with two buildings, ten buses, 400 car riders and walkers, and too-many-to-count community sponsors, and we get our amazing school. We are one family, one school and one community. For that, I THANK YOU! To another amazing year of growth, collaboration, learning and fun in 19/20.
Signing off,
j