September 2017

Dear Parents
            On behalf of the Pirie Staff, we would like to WELCOME you and your family back to school!  For those families who are new to Pirie, WELCOME to our family!  Pirie has been providing quality education to the Chatham Community since September of 1962.  We are proud and pleased to celebrate 55 years of educating students and preparing them for college and their future careers!

Pirie School’s MISSION is to enhance the academic success of ALL students through the integration of fine arts and data driven instruction in order to promote college readiness at all grade levels.  Our goal is to ensure that every student is given an opportunity to learn in an environment that is safe and provides a challenging instructional program that is differentiated, integrated, and meets the academic and social emotional needs of all students to promote success in future educational and life endeavors.  We encourage all students to be creative in a positive learning community with the goal of enhancing academic success and promoting lifelong learners.

I would like to begin this year by celebrating the success of our students as measured by the Spring 2017 DIBELS and NWEA assessments.  Based on our data results from the NWEA, we had 49% of our students in grades 3rd -6th to meet their growth projections in Reading.  We had 54% of our students meet their growth projections in Math.  Based on the NWEA Spring Data, we had 62% of our 2nd-6th Grade students at or above grade level for Literacy and we had 50% of our 2nd-6th grade students at or above grade level for Math. We had 76% of our K-2 students reading at the proficient or above level and we had 66% of our K-2 students at or above proficient level as measured by the mClass Math assessments. Our student attendance rate for 2016-17 was 94.5%.

We had some decreases in our student achievement for Reading and Math in all grade levels and our goal for this year is to increase the percentage of students meeting their end of the year targets between 5- 10%.  Our students have started out this year on the right track by coming to school each day.  Our attendance rate dropped by 1% last year and we didn’t meet our target of 96%.  We are striving to have the best attendance in Network 12 this year, so we are pushing to have more than 96% of our students in attendance each day!

Parents, thank you for all your support in your child’s educational journey. As we lay the foundation of preparing our students to become college and career ready, we have set some high expectations in the areas of social and emotional learning, academics, and attendance for this school year. We have changed some of our organizations for 3rd-6th grade by adding a Departmental Program which will give students exposure to changing classes and getting prepared for junior high and high school.  With your continuous support and working alongside with us, our students will continue to move in the right direction.  

During the first week of school we sent home several letters and forms that we’re asking to be signed and returned to school by this Friday.  Please read over the parent attendance handbook carefully so that you are informed of the CPS and school wide attendance policies.  A monthly calendar and newsletter will be sent home each month so that you are aware of our monthly school activities and recognitions.  You may also check Pirie’s face book page at https://www.facebook.com/PirieSchool and Website at pirie.cps.edu for information, updates, and school events.
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Our motto for this year is “Stand Together, Build Together…BE THE CHANGE!!”