SVDP Newsletter

Dear SVDP Community,

School is in full swing and in our September newsletter, we wanted to share some important data. This year SVDP welcomed 272 students and 171 families. Our student population is nicely balanced with 47% boys and 53% girls.

SVDP Administration

Last week, parents had the opportunity to complete the WCEA-WASC parent survey. Thank you to the 67% of families that participated in the survey. Here are some highlights.

These three elements ranked either first or second in your responses:

Academic Excellence 53%

Catholic Values 28%

Safe Environment 26%

Most respondents commented that the school community was overwhelmingly the best thing about our school.

1) Facility upgrades with a focus on security and safety: Please visit Envision the Future at SVDP for updates.

2) Curriculum and instruction -- differentiation in the classroom and co-curricular integration: Effectively utilizing technology to support this goal has lead the school to transition to school owned iPads in the 5th and 6th grade classrooms and TechHUBs in Kindergarten through 4th grade. The purpose of this transition is to promote a more equitable learning environment where students have access to comparable devices which are then managed by the school. The approach is also more learning-centric where the school can mitigate potential issues in real time and minimize misuse of devices on campus.

3) School communication: We hear you! Beginning September 30th, we will consolidate flyers and announcements from outside groups into a weekly digital Family Envelope via Beehively.

In comparing the data from the parent survey in 2014 to this year’s data collection, our overall rating on curriculum and instruction has improved. There was a pronounced shift from Somewhat Effective (SE) and Ineffective (IE) to Effective (E) and Highly Effective (HE) across the curricular disciplines.

We believe that these improvements are a reflection on our WCEA/WASC action items created in 2014 which continue to be developed and implemented.

• Integrate technology across all grade and curricular areas.
• Implement strategies to differentiate student instruction.
• Modify science curriculum maps to make certain they are vertically and horizontally aligned with Next Generation Science Standards and integrate these new standards into the science curriculum.

STAR assessments provide teachers with data to guide their instruction and pinpoint areas of growth for our students. STAR assessments are administered four times a year and we just closed our September window. Here are the results: 79% of our students are meeting or exceeding the archdiocesan benchmark for math and 65% of our students are meeting or exceeding the archdiocesan benchmark for reading.

We look forward to reporting out the progress that our students achieve periodically throughout the school year.

Email: administration@svdpsf.com
Website: svdpsf.com
Location: 2350 Green Street, San Francisco, CA, USA
Phone: (415) 346-5505