Community Connection

We are looking forward to a great year and wanted to remind you that we have scheduled our Back to School Nights throughout the District. We are hopeful that you can find time to attend these events to learn more about our academic programming and to connect with our incredible staff. See below for the schedule, and please feel free to reach out to your child(ren)’s school(s) if you have any questions.

• August 31st - Eisenhower and Horace Mann

• September 1st - Ben Franklin and East Pike

• September 7th - Junior High

• September 8th - Senior High

These events will start at 6:00 pm and conclude at 8:00 pm. In addition to learning about our academic programming and meeting our staff, we will have a variety of county service providers in attendance to provide interested families with information regarding their services. As you may know, we conducted an event on August 10th regarding mental health and had more than 100 people in attendance. This is simply another avenue to connect families to some of the valuable services that exist in our community.

We are excited to once again see our schools filled with our students, and we look forward to working with you in making this a terrific school year.

The Indiana Area School District is partnering with Veterans Affairs of Indiana County to conduct a “Salute to Heroes” Night on Friday, September 23rd. We are asking our community to consider purchasing an Indiana “Salute to Heroes” apparel item (t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, or sweatshirt) by 5pm on September 5, 2022 to wear to that night’s game. Proceeds from the sale will go to local veterans' initiatives.

The IASD Athletic Department will host a pre-game presentation to recognize our local veterans prior to the varsity football game against the Highlands Rams on September 23rd. Students, staff, families, and community members are encouraged to wear the “Salute to Heroes” apparel or other patriotic attire when they come out and cheer on the team to victory.

Click on the link below to access the online store. https://www.fasttimes.us/shop/product-category/schools-sales/indiana-area-school-district/

Click here to review the company's checkout process for directions on shipping. Local pickup is free and that means that you will pick up the order at Fast Time's store. If you are interested in shipping the item directly to your house, the flat rate is $12.00. Due to processing fees, Fast Times has informed us that the flat rate option is non-refundable.

The District is pleased to announce that we have partnered with the IUP Athletic Department to conduct another Youth Day scheduled for October 22, 2022. On this day, all IASD students in grades K-8 will be admitted into the IUP football game for free. Parents will need to pay for their own admission to the game. Families are encouraged to have their children wear their Indiana apparel to the game to cheer on the Crimson Hawks as they face Seton Hill at 2:00 pm.

At IASD we value building meaningful relationships with our students and families. Those relationships include keeping parents and students informed about not only what we are doing in the classroom, but why we are doing it.

In order to best serve your student, we need to constantly measure where they are against where they should be. We use a variety of tools to accomplish this task, but the most significant are our benchmarking assessments. Benchmark assessments are strategically placed checkpoints throughout the year designed to evaluate students' knowledge and skills relative to longer-term learning goals. We use two major systems for benchmarking, depending on the grade level. At the elementary schools, we use the Acadience Benchmarks for both math and reading development. These tests provide teachers with specific information about each individual student's strengths and needs, allowing them to develop lessons targeted at specific skills that still need developed. At the secondary level we use the Link-It! Benchmarks for English, math and science. These assessments are aligned to the PA State Assessments (PSSAs or Keystones) and are proven to have strong predictive results that the teachers can use to target specific state standards which the students may still need to master. This "data-informed education" ensures that we understand exactly what your student needs so we can maximize their growth.

Unlike state level standardized tests that require students, parents and schools to wait several months for scores, LinkIt! and Acadience Benchmark results are available as soon as the students complete the assessment, providing immediate actionable feedback. Additionally, in comparison to traditional tests that gauge mastery of concepts and skills after students have received instruction, these benchmarks primarily serve as pre-learning and progress monitoring assessments FOR learning purposes, rather than OF what students have learned. As such, parents should not necessarily be alarmed by low scores on initial baseline assessments because they measure student knowledge in subject matter that they may not yet have been taught. You and your child, will continue to receive additional feedback from the winter and spring benchmark administration and should notice significant improvement.

Benchmarking results, combined with other information about your child's academic performance, help to inform individual goal setting, scheduling, strategic differentiation, and measurement of growth on specific standards and the overall curriculum. Please talk with your child's teacher about these assessments and help us help your students by encouraging them to try their very best on each of these assessments so our teachers will have the most accurate data when making instructional decisions for your students.

Website: www.iasd.cc
Location: 501 East Pike Road, Indiana, PA, USA
Phone: (724) 463-8713
Facebook: facebook.com/IndianaAreaSchoolDistrict
Twitter: @IndianaAreaSD