Jeff Berger South Tama Schools Superintendent

It’s been a bit since the last column. It seems to go that way once you get past October with all of the holidays. So this column is a little bit of everything.

Thanks to those of you who came out to our Project 60 event. We had, by our estimate, around 220 of you attending and it was great to meet many of you personally. I greatly appreciate my staff members and students who worked to make this a nice event. It is important to me that the school stay connected to those of you who no longer have children in the school system. The school is an important part of the community and we want you to feel welcome.

Having been raised in a culture where multiple generations lived in the same house, I understand the wisdom and life balance that comes with years of experience. Our youth today benefit from any support they can get from those of us who have lived some, so I think we want to do more of this type of event in the future. If you have any interest in volunteering in the schools, even if it is just to read to students or help in a classroom, we are happy to have you.

The State of Iowa and the Iowa Department of Education recently released the 2017 version of the Iowa School Report Card.

You can find that report by going to the Iowa Department of Education web page and looking under Data and Reporting. You can also use this link: “http://reports.educateiowa.gov/schoolreportcard”>reports.educateiowa.gov/schoolreportcard .

As with all report cards, there are bright spots and areas we need to work on. And it seems like the more diverse you are as a community, the more areas you have to consider. The report card did reinforce that some of the work we’ve started is the right work.

We are working to get our curriculum house in order. We are upgrading programs like Special Education and ELL so that we are providing the necessary supports for those students. We are working on “how we teach” through our Instructional Coaches and Model teachers.

But as with everything, notable progress takes time. To really make a difference, we need to sustain our efforts for a series of years and that is our plan.

We currently have 28 groupings of surplus materials we are attempting to sell on GovDeals.com. You can simply go to that site, type in South Tama in the search bar, and it will show you everything we want to move out. Most of these groupings are posted as a $10 sale, but the site is a bid site like eBay, so hurry or it is gone. Anyone can register on the site and bid for these materials.

We are going to start using Social Media more for passing along good news. I know, I know many of you may not even be on your computer much or even own a computer!

But to keep up with the times, we want to cover all of our bases. On Facebook, you can search for South Tama County and “follow” that page. On Twitter, we are @STCTrojans. On Instagram, we are @stctrojans. On Snapchat, we are STCWeb. And of course, our web site is www.s-tama.k12.ia.us .

Please follow us or hand this off to your child or grandchild and they can help get you connected!

And to be fair, I’ve recruited a couple of our finest students to help me with this process!