Principals share thoughts

As parents and their kids finish up back-to-school shopping, teachers are already in the classrooms preparing for this year’s students.

Like most years, there is plenty of excitement and anticipation for the 2023-2024 school year, especially among Boulder City’s four principals, who shared their thoughts and expectations.

Boulder City High School Principal Amy Wagner

As the new school year approaches, I can’t help but feel a mix of excitement, anticipation, and determination. I am eager to embark on this new journey with our amazing students, dedicated faculty, and supportive parents.

The upcoming school year represents a chance to learn, grow and make a lasting impact on the lives of our students and families. I am looking forward to a memorable and successful school year. We have five new teachers joining us this school year.

We’ll be offering Soaring through BCHS, which is an event for all students and parents/guardians of BCHS. This event will be held on Friday, Aug. 4 from 6-8 p.m. It is designed to give you and your student a chance to discover the BCHS campus for the first time if you are new to BCHS or to rediscover our campus if you are returning.

This open house-like event will give your entire family a chance to meet the staff. Upon entry, students will receive a map to utilize during their self-guided tour. Come anytime from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Student council members and staff will be present to guide you through the building as needed. Students can pick up their chrome book in the library during “Soaring”.

We will be grilling hot dogs in the quad for all to enjoy as long as they last. Class schedules will be available on Infinite Campus prior to this event. Additionally, staff will be selling spirit gear in the main office.

Garrett Junior High Principal Melanie Teemant

I am so excited to kick off the 23-24 school year. The schedule we have created allows students more choices in electives and fine and visual arts than ever before. We have also added more advanced math, ELA, and science courses to really challenge our students. Our sports season starts off right away with flag football for boys and girls, and for the first time, our cheer team will be cheering football games.

Staff is very excited that our construction is winding down and they can get back into the building to set up and get ready for students. Our former band teacher and new full-time STEM teacher, Ben Franke, is so excited to start teaching design modeling, robotics and STEM courses and has been here every day setting up his new classroom.

Students will be able to participate in several STEM classes that are part of our new STEM curriculum as we build our vision to become a Governor’s Designated STEM Academy in the future. All sixth grade students will take Design Modeling and Flight and Space, with seventh and eighth grade students having options of beginning or intermediate/advanced STEM, STEM Explorations, or beginning or intermediate/advanced robotics. All students also choose band, choir, or art as a second elective.

Martha P. King Elementary Principal Jason Schrock

All of us at Martha P. King are so excited to kick off the 2023-2024 school year. We are coming off of a great 2022-2023 school year where we saw academic growth in the areas of reading and math with a significant increase to our math scores.

During the 23-24 school year, we will turn our focus toward science, which continues to be an area of weakness for our school and district. To support the teaching of science, we’ve created a brand-new STEM lab with the help of donations from the Boulder Dam Credit Union and Sunrise Rotary Club of Boulder City. In fact, both Rotary clubs have pledged their support this year in helping us reinvest in science instruction at King. In addition to our academic growth, we’ve also seen a significant increase to our enrollment as many of our private school families returned to King this year. Most importantly, we have put together a great team of new and returning staff members who are excited to work with and serve the families of Boulder City.

Aug. 2 was the first day back for our teachers, but we have already seen so many of them in the school setting up their classrooms and preparing for the coming year. We have an incredibly dedicated staff and I am so thankful that they are willing to come in before their official start date to make sure that everything goes well on the first day of school for our kids.

This year, CCSD has purchased a new reading program for the entire district, and all of our teachers are hard at work learning to use the new material. It is called HMH Into Reading and it comes with a large number of instructional materials, a classroom library, and a new writing program that we believe will really help our students better understand the writing process.

In addition, the district has also purchased a new phonics program called 95 Phonics which explicitly supports the learning of foundational reading and decoding skills as well as the rules of spelling. We hope that these new programs will support the continued academic growth that King saw during the 22-23 school year.

Andrew J. Mitchell Principal Ben Day

Regarding the upcoming school year, I’m as optimistic and excited as I have ever been. We are a couple of years past the time we were at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, so our students are used to coming to school and interacting in the classroom setting. We really have a terrific staff, awesome families, and students who are becoming leaders, so I am anticipating a school year that will be as good as any that we have had since I have been at Mitchell.

I believe the staff is equally excited about the upcoming school year. Many of them have already been in the building and are preparing for the year. They are excited to implement the things that have worked well for us for so many years, and at the same time, they are excited to try new things as well. The feeling that teachers and staff have leading up to the beginning of a new school year is unlike any other. We’re really looking forward to what this year will bring.

We won’t be having any new programs this year. Our mission is to develop every child into a kind and successful leader by teaching them the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, so we are looking forward to continuing our implementation of the Leader in Me process. We’ve seen so much success with it over the years and are looking forward to helping more students become leaders.