Students, staff key to successful first quarter

Lisa Weigel
Posted 10/22/24

It’s been a super busy nine weeks at Guernsey-Sunrise Schools! As we round out our first nine weeks of our school year, I want to take time to highlight all of the incredible work happening …

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Students, staff key to successful first quarter

Posted

It’s been a super busy nine weeks at Guernsey-Sunrise Schools! As we round out our first nine weeks of our school year, I want to take time to highlight all of the incredible work happening across our school district. Students and staff returned to many district building improvements, thanks to the work of our amazing custodial/maintenance staff and our department and building leaders across our district. We are very proud of our new commons area improvements, as well as the new cafeteria design which allows for much safer, comfortable spaces for students and staff. Our weight room improvements feature a larger space for safer use as well as state of the art wellness and fitness equipment for both students and staff. Lots of collaboration among our staff, students and leaders in bringing such innovative design and improvements to fruition. We are also so fortunate this school year to be part of the Food Service Community Eligibility Program and are just thrilled that our students are able to access our breakfast and lunch program free of charge.
Our entire staff has worked extremely hard to ensure our students had a safe, positive, and a smooth return to our school year. Our new staff members have been great additions to our team and have been surrounded by great students, staff members and families- thank you for making them feel so welcomed.
We have also increased some of our building safety supports as well as safety training for staff- recently we moved through a reunification safety drill and the preparation, feedback and debriefing that was part of this process was very well done from our school leaders, to staff members, to students as well as our School Resource Officer and Camp Guernsey team.
We have also continued to increase our mental health supports for both students and staff this school year. This month we had outstanding mental health trainers/consultants work with our school teams surrounding supportive strategies and resources to assist in schools and classrooms. Make sure to check out our District Strategic Plan to see how much of our work aligns to our focus areas.

This past month our district was part of a five-year Wyoming Department of Education peer review process, and our visit included two days of team of eight school, district, and state leaders reviewing and seeing firsthand several areas of our district work. This was a great process and allowed us to hear feedback on the systems, supports, and positive outcomes for students and staff that we are working together to achieve in our continuous improvement work.
We have also launched an innovative statewide initiative, “ReImagine and Innovating the Delivery of Education.” A team of our staff is leading this work and expanding on some of our “choice” ready pathway options for students to include work internships, leadership skills, employability skills and trades. We will be hosting a celebration in early December highlighting much of our student and staff achievements- stay tuned for our celebration details
Next week, October 29th at 8:30 am in our gymnasium, we will be receiving the Purple Star Recognition from State Superintendent, Megan Degenfelder and many Military Dignitaries due to the strong partnerships and supports we are part of to support military families and the work our military folks lead in our school community.
We are also looking forward to hosting the 1A East Regional Volleyball Tournament on Nov. 1 -2. A huge thanks to our staff team and for the entire community for rallying together to make this such a great experience for our student athletes, staff, coaches, fans and community members.
Be sure to join us for our annual Veteran’s Day Program on Monday, November 11th. Thank you to our VFW partners for teaming with us for a great celebration.
I continue to be grateful for the opportunity to serve in this “special community” and appreciate so much the kindness I see and feel each and every day from students, staff, and families. Together we are “growing” great things! Thank you for sharing your children with us- they truly are the BEST part of our days.