It has been an honor to serve as the Gardenhill principal  for one full year .  This dedicated school community has made tremendous strides in academic achievement and I am committed to continuing on the same path of excellence.  Our school is celebrating an API score of 886!  This outstanding achievement is due to our hardworking teachers, students and parents!  The continued focus on professional learning communities, high quality instruction in literacy, critical thinking, writing, differentiated instruction, and meaningful assessments are all part of our success.  These strategies will continue to help ensure that in the future all students will meet or exceed standards.  As the children of Gardenhill progress through their K - 5 school career, our school strives to instill in them a lifelong love of learning.  Through cooperation, resilience, excellence, creativity and dedication, our school community will continue to provide a challenging and rewarding academic experience for the children of Gardenhill.

We accomplished many things in 2008 - 2009.  We established a parking committee that met several times during the school year.  This committee is comprised of a Public Safety Officer, two officers from the Sheriff's Department, parents, teachers, and administration.  We appreciated the communities input on our Parking Committee Survey.  The committee was charged with trying to create safer parking situations before and after school.  With 85% of parents being in agreement to drop and pick up their child(ren) at a designated gate that corresponds with specific grade levels, the team designed drop-off and pick-up points for each grade level.  We know many families have several children at Gardenhill, so it is important to choose a drop-off and pick-up spot that is the safest for your family.  We are asking that Kindergarten and First Grade Parents use Heflin Drive as their designated area for drop-off and pick-up.  Second and Third Grade Students may be dropped off on Gardenhill Drive or in the parking lot on Gardenhill Drive.  Fourth and Fifth Grade Students are asked to use Valeda Drive as their drop-off and pick-up points. Students may use the walkway ramp on Burgess Drive and the back stairs on Valeda Drive to enter the campus.  Also, the Heflin parking lot will now be reserved for Teacher parking and the Gardenhill parking lot will be for visitors. We thank you for you input in helping us design a safer parking situation at Gardenhill.

A 6th Grade Committee also met in 2008 - 2009 regarding the possibility of future 6th grade classes on the Gardenhill campus and the results of the Committees Survey are in. Thank you all for your participation. Our Gardenhill community overwhelmingly supports having 6th grade at Gardenhill with 89% of those surveyed agreeing with having 6th grade in general.  However, 49% surveyed would not support having only one 6th grade classroom.  With 89% supporting multiple 6th grade classes, we will need to wait until space is made available at our school site for multiple classrooms.  At this time, Room 61, our staff development room, is the only empty room.  In the future, if space becomes available, we will consider having multiple 6th grade classes at Gardehill. 

At the end of the year, we began the campaign of "Parents as Partners."  Due to the huge budget cuts for the 2009-2010 school year, we are asking parents to partner with us in many areas. In 2008 - 2009 Gardenhill was given a budget of $102,000 and in 2009 - 2010 our budget is now $41,000 for the next 4 consecutive years.  At Back to School Night you will be able to sign up for different ways you can help support our school and help us to continue to maintain an excellent education for your child(ren).  We will be doing several fundraisers, asking for volunteers and partnering with our parents to continue our outstanding professional learning community.  At Gardenhill we believe that children are best served and supported when parents and teachers work as partners, and we are excited about enhancing the home/school connection at Gardenhill.  Parental involvement in a school is an extraordinarily valuable positive feature!

I look forward to another great year working in partnership with the Gardenhill community achieving academic excellence!

Sincerely,
 

- Eileen Burkholder, Principal