Superintendent's Corner

• A Brief Welcome Back!
• Finances & Facilities - Join the Conversation!
• CHAMPs - Being BRAVE
• Join the PTC!
  

I won't go on long, but I am excited to see all of our students on Wednesday, August 23rd. It's been a beautiful summer, but as an educator, nothing is more exciting than greeting our learners back to the place we love best with them.

While our students can live our mission anywhere, we can only live it together when we are at our amazing schools. To "Inspire Curiosity, Cultivate Academic Growth, Nurture Diversity" comes straight from out community and we love sharing it every day with our kids.

I look forward to seeing you all soon!

For all of last year a committee of staff, parents, guardians and community members poured over our District's finances and facility needs. In June, the committee issued a 35-page report.

Based on its assessment of the finances, facilities, and learning environments, the committee concluded that taking no action was unacceptable and that some kind of referendum would be necessary at the very least. The short and long term viability of our students learning environments is at stake.

As a result of that work, the Board has decided to seek extensive community feedback on three options that would raise the necessary revenue to sustain the district's finances and facilities for the long term.

The process will include a Facilitating Team made up of approximately 25 members - parents, guardians, community members, and staff - who will convene Community Engagement events and deploy surveys to every household in the community, so that they can gather feedback on the three options presented.

The Team will send out extensive communications in September and hold Community Engagement events and focus groups in October. The Committee will report to the Board in November and the Board will make a decision about which option to pursue in December.

The most important thing that can happen is that you are educated on the options and that your voice is heard by the Board of Education.

Please stay tuned for more communications about events and bring your neighbors.

If you have read either of the principals' early messages, you will have heard about BRAVE and CHAMPS, the core of our approach to positive student behavior at the schools in 2023-2024.

Developed by Safe & Civil Schools, CHAMPS is a proactive and positive approach to classroom and school behavior. It starts with identifying core principles. Ours are rooted in the acronym BRAVE.

BRAVE stands for those values that guide our behavior and relations with each other every day. You can see that they are derived from our Portrait of a Graduate, which was developed through our community engagement process in 2022.

Whether guiding behavior or responding to behavior that is counterproductive, we rely on BRAVE.

When we provide explicit instruction on specific behavior - in class for a certain activity, on the bus, in the hall - we use CHAMPS as a starting point.

Our staff has been provided professional development on this approach and time and resources for collaboration. Together, that is an unstoppable combination that will make for a positive school environment. Be on the lookout for how you can support BRAVE and CHAMPS this year.

Whether you are new or your membership has lapsed, Avoca's Parent Teacher Council (PTC) is part of the beating heart of our district.

From volunteering for classroom gatherings or teacher luncheons or fundraising for Innovation Grants, the PTC is a difference maker.

Go to their website to pay the very affordable membership fee and learn more.

Email: osburnk@avoca37.org
Website: www.avoca37.org
Location: 2921 Illinois Road, Wilmette, IL, USA
Phone: 847-728-4128
Twitter: @OsburnSupt