Dear Centerra Mirage Community,

It is with great enthusiasm that I welcome you to the 2021-2022 school year at Centerra Mirage STEM Academy.  As I reflect on the past year, there have been many challenges and also many successes along the way.  The resilience, courage, creativity, and determination that our students, staff, and community have shown is a testament to what makes Centerra Mirage a special place to be.

I will forgo reflecting on the past year in favor of looking at the potential that lies before us.  As we move into a new academic year, CMSA staff are more determined than ever to ensure that academic achievement is increased for every student.  This effort began over the summer when we hosted 93 students for summer school.  Seventy-three percent of those students showed growth in English Language Arts and eighty-one percent showed growth in Math.  What a great boost to start our school year!  

As we focus our efforts on academic achievement, I am reminded of how critical daily attendance is in order for students to grow academically.  Did you know that missing two days of school each month, totalling 18 days, equals 10% of the school year?  Did you know that being tardy ten minutes each day equals a student missing 6.9 days of school in a year?  Absences and tardies add up quickly and truly do impact student learning.  We are asking parents to partner with us to ensure that students are on time and present in school as often as they possibly can be.  This will help us meet our goal of increasing academic achievement with every student.  

CMSA will also continue to focus on STEM education.  As a part of that commitment, we continue to be the only school in our district to offer STEM classes daily to all grade levels as a special area class.  Additionally, students in Kindergarten through 8th grade will be engaging in our new KidSPARK mobile STEM lab curriculum.  Early lessons focus on foundational fluencies that include reading step-by-step instructions, symbolization, measuring, patterns, and symmetry. Then students transition into more challenging concepts like how to make things move, how to make things strong, applied mathematics, the design and engineering cycle, and other foundational fluencies key to building their STEM identity.  We are excited to offer this new curriculum to our students!

In addition to our academic and STEM focus, we will also support students by engaging them in our new social and emotional curriculum at all grade levels.  As we return to in-person learning, we want to ensure that all students have the social and emotional skills to transition back into the school setting successfully.  We will also continue our Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) program.  Through this program staff members acknowledge students for being respectful, responsible, or solving problems.  This, in turn, encourages positive behavior and decreases office discipline referrals for students.  

In closing, I am incredibly excited for all of the potential that this new school year will bring.  We look forward to partnering with you for another successful year at Centerra Mirage STEM Academy! Thank you again for your continued support! 

Respectfully,

Casey Frank, Principal

Centerra Mirage STEM Academy