April 30, 2008
 

Dear Colleagues:

As I write this month, we are just beginning WASL testing and are in the midst of a campaign to focus on the community’s children called Our Kids:  Our Business.  Both of these major events impacting children have something in common.  It is obvious to the 4,500 employees of Spokane Public Schools that kids really are our business: children are at the center of our Strategic Plan, our building-level School Improvement Plans, and most of all, our day-to-day work.  

While the community continues to look at those social services that can be wrapped around our families, we are in the unique position to be able to provide our students with the academic skills they will need to be successful in a 21st century world.  Our children need to be ready to compete, not just with each other and the 30,000 students attending our schools, but with the millions that are growing up in the rest of the United States, in China, and in India.  We are faced with a unique challenge.  We are preparing our children for jobs that don’t exist yet, to solve problems that haven’t been identified, using technology that hasn’t been invented.  We are truly preparing our students for their future, not ours.

The WASL is an important benchmark, but it is just one measure of how much progress we are making as we try to meet the challenge of preparing all students for their future.  More significant than the WASL itself are the high academic standards that we need to hold for each child so that all students leave our high schools successful and ready to compete in a global world.   

Kids really are our business . . . every day!

Sincerely,

Nancy J. Stowell, Ph.D.
Superintendent