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Granite School District > Superintendent's Office > Sup’s Vlog > Students

Students

Question – Optional Extended-Day Kindergarten

Question – I love that the preschool is getting money to improve, but the kindergarten needs their money back that was cut so the OEK can continue.  Our district should be having every school have the OEK not just title one.  Please work on getting our funding back.

Answer – We have supported and implemented both optional extended-day kindergarten (O.E.K.) and preschool in Granite School District for many years, and will take advantage of any opportunity we have to expand and/or improve these programs. When the Utah State Board of Education made grant funds available in the preschool area for this year, we eagerly applied. We’re delighted that we had funding awarded to serve an additional 500 students with preschool services. Should the state make additional funding available to expand O.E.K. services, we will certainly do all we can to be awarded those funds as well.

Thanks for the comment and thanks to Student Learning & Support for assistance in responding.

Our Kids

Hello all,

Over the past couple of days, patrons and employees from across the district have shared concerns and even anecdotes with me.  I’d like to take the opportunity to address those concerns.

As a personal matter, my father’s family came to America in 1633, nearly 150 years before there was a United States of America.  On the other hand, I was born only five years after my mother immigrated to this country, having twice fled her home – once when it was reduced to rubble by bombs and once for political reasons.  I was born here in America and served in the United States Army, including a deployment in Europe during Desert Storm.  I am fiercely patriotic and a proud and loyal citizen of the United States.  My own story is not very different from many, if not most, stories across our great country. 

Part of my pride in the United States is our fundamental constitutional commitment to providing equal protection to all under the law.  Not many years ago, one of our sister states sought to exclude children residing in their state without proper documentation from attending school.  The United States Supreme Court, in holding that children cannot be grouped and then excluded from school or otherwise treated differently in school because of documentation or some other status such as race, religion, national origin, gender, disability or political views stated: “It is difficult to understand precisely what the State hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime.” 

It is consequently unlawful and inappropriate for children in schools to be treated differently from other children on the basis of some status.  Behavior yes, status no.  There is no such thing as “our kids” and “their kids” or “those kids.”  All kids are “our kids.” 

I call on all of our employees, teachers and administrators alike, to let no student feel that they are somehow second class or at risk of losing something because of a status.  I encourage parents, patrons and community members to do likewise.

Thanks for the great job you all do!

Martin

Superintendent Snapshot – School to Career

Welcome to the latest Superintendent Snapshot. To submit a question, send an email to supsblog@graniteschools.org.

Superintendent Snapshot – Two Challenges

Welcome to the latest Superintendent Snapshot. To submit a question, email supsblog@graniteschools.org.

Question – Future of Formative Assessments?

Question – Will we be using Acuity next year or the SAGE formative assessment piece?

Response – Granite District will not be using the Acuity delivery platform at all this coming year – neither for universal screening assessments nor district quarterly benchmarks. Our district-created quarterly benchmark assessments will be housed as a Granite specific library of assessments on the state SAGE Formative platform. Information and training in support of this change will be provided for both administrators and teachers as the school year begins.

Thanks for the question!

Question – Standards Based Report Cards

Question – Is there any plan for the District to move to a standard based report card?

Response –  Several elementary schools in Granite District have pursued various versions of standards-based report cards during the past decade.  Over the past three years, a district committee has met fairly regularly about the possibility of implementing standards/proficiency-based grading at the secondary level.  More recently, the Utah State Office of Education convened a task force to make recommendations to the State Board of Education regarding graduation requirements; one of those sub-committees made detailed recommendations in support of a statewide grading policy based on student proficiency in state standards.  Granite District has not moved to create our own such policies as we have waited to see the direction that might be pursued by the USOE.  Since no requirements have yet been prescribed by the state, Granite is likely to begin implementation of such an approach in the near future.