I hadn’t thought much about Hollday’s future until the PTO meeting the other night, but it seems that now is a really good time to do that. Holladay is such a cool school, with our performing arts, student and classroom gardens, great teachers and staff, and parent community – it would be a shame to let anything happen to us.
But, apparently we’re close to a danger zone, like a lot of in-town schools are. We are about at 72% enrollment and if it goes under 70%, we could be ‘on the chopping block’. Even at the current level, we are in some danger of losing resource staff – and that could mean Coach Legan or Mrs Draper. So its a good time now to take some steps to build our school up for the next year.
1) Teri Melendez came and talked to us about choosing a Focus for Holladay. This could be something like Artful Learning, Expeditionary Learning, Inquiry-Based Learning, Project-Based Learning, that sort of thing. The idea is to give each school a main focus, so that families can choose the school that fits their child’s style. This would help Holladay in several ways: attracting families to the school, direct funding for the focus, and – not least – enhancing our children’s education!
2) There is a possibility of extending the school to more grade levels, or merging with Naylor Middle School near 29th and Columbus. If we want to do either of those things, we need to decide soon – like before March. There will be an opportunity to visit Naylor in the near future for a Martin Luther King Day performance (I’m not sure if the performance is on MLK day or near it).
3) Old-fashioned marketing, letting people know what is special about Holladay. One way to do that is thru a website. We can use this one for now, and also need to get the official school site up to date.
4) Continuing the conversation about where we want our school to head. I’d like to use this ‘unofficial’ site for a constructive (not necessarily pollyannaish, notwithstanding the above) discussion on what to do next. The decisions will get made likely at the Site Council meeting, but it may help to hash things out a bit online or via emails.
Note, this site is not sponsored in any way by TUSD or Holladay school, its just an independent site that community members are welcome to contribute to.
Just drop a note if you’d like a password to post entries on this site, the more the better! Photos and art welcome, just make sure if there are kids in any photos that you have the parents’ permission to post them. I would love to get some of the kids’ artwork up, photos of the gardens, if its ok with them maybe some of the teachers and classrooms.