Superintendent's Welcome

Dear Community -

It is my pleasure to welcome our students, staff, parents, and community to the 2011-2012 school year. We are truly excited about the great challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for all of our students.

I thank you for taking the time to visit our award winning web site. Please take the time to visit our WOW Refrigerator and see examples of the most important aspect of our school district which is the student work itself. I would also urge you to visit the school sites and read the building school improvement plans. These documents will allow you to become very informed about the actual plans that each school has put in place to improve student learning in our district. Also of great use are the events and athletics calendars which are intended to keep our community informed about opportunities to become even more involved in the great things that are happening around the district. Please be sure to check out our district blog that allows for you to give feedback and affirmation to our students and staff about the great work that they are doing in our schools. This year we would like to really encourage you to engage in our relatively new communication forums which are Twitter and Facebook. I will be posting updates to exciting things happening around the district on my Twitter page. Please click here to view and access the ability to follow along on our journey through another great school year in Fife. You can also see my most recent tweets on the right side of this page. I plan to post photos of district walkthroughs and exciting samples of student work as well. Our district facebook page can be accessed at: www.facebook.com/fifepublicschools.

We are very excited about the coming school year. We are striving to become even better and continue to need your support and input to ascend to ever-higher levels. We will recommit our promise to you this school year of continuing to build quality programs while operating in a fiscally responsible manner. This year we will implement the second year of the technology levy that the community was so supportive in once again providing to our learning community. This continues to be a time of great challenge financially as we are certainly impacted by the sluggish economy which is coupled with a gap of funding from the state with regard to transportation and special education. As I have mentioned in my communications to you last spring and early summer, we will be experiencing a slight rise in class sizes but we committed to doing whatever is necessary to accommodate the best learning environment that we can with existing staffing. We are pleased however, to maintain a solid fund balance (district savings account) of 3% or just over one million dollars in order to ensure that the district remains financially strong.

I look forward to seeing several of you at one of our many activities this fall and throughout the school year. Thank you again for your steadfast support of our important efforts in Fife School District.

Dr. Stephen McCammon
Superintendentt