Dear Vega ISD Community,
On Monday our 5th grade students were on a Math scavenger hunt throughout the building solving problems to warm up for their STAAR test. I visited with several of the groups while they were working on their problems and asked them how it was going. One of the groups asked me for help getting started on one of their math problems. I was reminded of that TV game show from several years ago, “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” when I was trying to explain to her the steps to solve the problem (while hoping I wasn’t saying something different from her teacher!). I was sweating it for a moment and wasn’t quite sure how this was going to work out. Fortunately for everyone involved, the answer we came up with was one of the multiple choice options! Our students and teachers have worked hard this school year getting ready for the STAAR test so our students can showcase what they have learned. The good news is that we will finish up with STAAR testing this week as our elementary and junior high students in grades 3-8 take their Math test.
As we enter the final few weeks of the school year, our students continue to be very busy with their school and extracurricular activities. The Area 1 FFA Scholarship Interview and FFA Banquet are this week. Many of our students are taking field trips this week - 1st grade is going to the Quarter Horse Museum while the PreK and Kindergarten are going to the Fire Station and Library.
Last Friday was the PreK and Kindergarten Round-Up. It was a great day for our staff to meet our new students for next school year. We had 13 PreK students enroll and we had 3 new Kindergarten students enroll for next school year.
The State Track Meet is this weekend, so we want to wish our qualifying students good luck as they travel to Austin at the end of the week. Be sure to check out the district’s website and Facebook page for pictures and more information.
Congratulations are in store for our Vega High School UIL Academic Regional Qualifiers who competed last Friday in Canyon at the Regional UIL Academic Meet. So many of our students improved on their scores from district and had a very successful meet. We also had students place at Regionals and advance to the State UIL Academic Meet. Congratulations to our State-Bound UIL Academic Students - Abi Vincent (1st place Copy Editing), Diego Martinez (2nd place Computer Apps), Addie Carlson (1st place News Writing), and the Accounting Team who won the wildcard spot and will advance to the State Meet! Be sure to check out the district’s website and Facebook page for pictures and more information for students who placed but did not advance to State.
Our band hosted its Spring Concert last week and played a series of songs from various movies such as Jurassic Park, The Greatest Showman, and How to Train Your Dragon. The songs were fun to listen to and our band students had fun playing them. We really appreciate Vega High School graduate Mary Clarie Spinhirne for stepping in this school year and helping out so our students could have a band experience this school year. Last Saturday many of us were able to attend the Longhorn Shootout in the Vega High School gym. This was a great fundraiser for our boys basketball program. It was a lot of fun to see our boys play basketball games against different schools throughout the day. Our boys were worn out after playing four games in one day - it was good to get a preview of next year’s teams and see the boys playing together.
Thanks to everyone who completed the stakeholder survey. We have been sharing the trends we received from the different questions on the survey. This week we will look at the question:
“As Superintendent, what should my top priorities be this first year?” The most frequent response was: “Just get to know and learn about us”. Additional frequent feedback was: bring the band back, work on the deficit budget, and have fun. The entire process for the stakeholder feedback has been very helpful to me and I appreciate all of the feedback provided and the opportunity to share the results. As a reminder, these survey results have been shared with our staff back in March during a staff debrief meeting. These survey results have been shared publicly one question at a time in the Longhorn Weekly articles over the past two months. And these results have been shared during School Board meetings as well.
As you know, our district has kicked off a transfer campaign on our website and social media in order to increase our student enrollment. An increase of 25 students throughout the district (that’s about two students per grade level or about eight families of three school-age children each) would go a long way in reducing our deficit budget. Please note that to be eligible to be accepted as a transfer student to Vega ISD, all students must be in good standing with their current school district, have good attendance, and have no discipline issues. Check out our transfer landing page on the district’s website that talks about our school and how to apply for a transfer. If you feel comfortable doing so, please “like” the social media posts and share them on your own social media pages. If you need any help in doing this, please reach out to our office. We would be glad to help.
More students means more funding from the state. An increase in student enrollment is one of the ways the state allows school districts to gain revenue since there was no increased funding provided for public schools in this past legislative session.
As always, if you have any questions or if we can help in any way, please reach out to your campus principal or to my office.
Thank you,
Jerry Adams
Superintendent
Vega ISD