Friday, September 16, 2016

Week 1 -- Welcome Back Students

Mound Westonka DECA is starting a chapter project titled Because I Said I Would which asks people to commit to making and keeping promises.  One of the DECA advisors is promising to revive the #MWHSPride blog and have a member of the Westonka community contribute to the blog every Friday.


Today's post is a welcome back to students from Westonka Superintendent, Kevin Borg

Welcome back! We have launched into another exciting year in Westonka Schools. I hope you all had a relaxing, rejuvenating and fun summer and are ready to hit the ground running this fall.

During our time apart, a lot of work has been done to ensure that this school year is even better than the last. I want to highlight a few of these efforts for you:

You are top in state, again. We accomplished a lot together during the 2015-2016 school year. Overall, Westonka was ranked #1 in the state in reading and #4 in the state in math on the 2016 MCAs. Our schools were recognized as top academic performers at the state and national levels, and our students and staff earned numerous individual and team accolades. But we know that we can continue to improve.

Hard hats required. In August, we broke ground on a new early learning center at Hilltop Primary School that will house our 4-year-old preschool program. Being on the school campus will be a great benefit to some of our youngest learners, and the new facility will give our expanding program room to grow. This was accomplished without a tax increase to the community.

Designing our future. We also spent time these past months researching and touring athletics and performing arts facilities around the state to help us design two new facilities at Mound Westonka High School. Thanks to the generous support of the Westonka community last May, we will start construction on a community athletics and recreation center and a 600-seat performing arts center this spring.

Improved areas to learn and play. Already this fall, you may be enjoying new flexible learning spaces that were put in place over the summer. These inviting spaces are great places to collaborate and connect with your peers. You will also have noticed changes to MWHS Field 2, which (when completed) will provide a Haddorff Field-quality playing experience for our student-athletes.

You’re connected. Your teachers have continued to find ways to personalize learning for each student. Every Westonka student in grades K-12 now has a mobile device, allowing for greater personalization and differentiation in our classrooms. We will continue our personalized learning approach this year, which focuses on offering greater student choice and customized learning paths.

We are improving. Westonka continually looks for ways to innovate and embed 21st century skills to better prepare students for college and careers. New for this year is a high school STEAM class (science, technology, engineering, art and math) that will allow students to learn physics and art in new and engaging ways. We will also continue to offer opportunities to take classes in our expanding high school engineering program and to participate in STEM classes in all grades at the elementary and middle school levels.

There’s a lot of great work going on, and I can’t wait to see everything that we can accomplish together this year. Thank you for giving me so many reasons to have Westonka Pride!



If you have a story that you would like to share, please email mwhspride@277apps.org for more information! We would love to hear from you!

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