Welcome back Chieftains! Though it doesn’t feel like it yet, September is here! Fall sports have already begun, our first home football game is tonight, and your teachers are back to work preparing for an exceptional year. We return with a lot of new faces at Utica High School. Not only do we welcome nearly 500 Sophomores this year, but a number of new staff members as well.
And we enter the 2016-17 school year with a great deal to celebrate. Our class of 2016 was one of our strongest yet. We had students heading to local schools like Macomb Community College, Oakland and Wayne State as well state and regional institutions such as Michigan Tech, Michigan State and the University of Michigan. Utica also saw graduates headed to Harvard University and the University of Chicago to name a few. With over 90% of students matriculating to 2 and 4 year institutions and nearly 100% of graduates attending post-secondary programming that consists of college, university, our Armed Services or apprenticeship programs, we’re confident that our Academic program continues to build off of the proud and storied foundation.
That foundation has a renewed Mission to being the 2016-17 School year. The mission of Utica High School is to develop successful learners with the support of our community of educators, students, and parents. Our diverse student body will have an equitable, rigorous, and comprehensive education in a safe and supportive environment that promotes self-discipline, motivation, and excellence in learning. We aim to cultivate individual learners with active and creative minds, and a sense of understanding and compassion for others. That Mission focuses on the process by which students learn, the rigor of the learning, the environment in which students learn, and importance of creativity and compassion in their learning and understanding. That mission guides our seven School Improvement Plan goals that drive our teaching and learning.
Our mission also relies on the investment and cooperation of our most valuable partner, our parents, families and friends of our students. Very few students succeed without the support from home. We will provide the world class learning at Utica High, but we need your support. Last year, we saw attendance issues continue to rise dramatically. We saw a spike in students being placed on Credit Review, and the simple reality is, kids cannot learn if they’re not at school. Poor attendance was also the most direct correlation to poor grades. Higher than almost every other variable. There are only so many actions we can take to deter attendance issues, and we will continue to take those as well as provide incentive for students to attend. One of those incentives will be participation in our Dances, Competition Assemblies, Productions and Athletics as well as capacity to drive and park at school. My administrative team will work with coaches, directors, and our AD to assure this happens. Students who have 20 tardies or 3 unexcused absences will not be able to participate in those activities. If a student purchased a ticket, they will not be refunded the price of that ticket just as if they have a parking permit, and fail to regularly attend school on time, it can be revoked. Students cannot learn when they are not in their classes, engaged with their peers and teachers, and doing the work of learning.
Communication is a critical dynamic of the school-home partnership. We start the 2016-17 campaign with a new website and a very important new “UCS App” for your Smart Phone that is linked to that website. The synergy between those two tools will allow you effortless access to a host of constantly updated information. Though the website can be accessed at http://uticahigh.uticak12.org our existing address, http://uticahigh.org continues to work as well. You will also find under the parent (or student) menus links to other tools such as PowerSchool, Naviance and a variety of other tools. We continue to rely on PowerSchool to communicate grades and attendance with parents and guardians. Our teachers regularly use and update their PowerSchool gradebooks making progress reports and reports almost outmoded. We will continue to delve into the Naviance system as well. This program will allow parents to shepherd the College Application and Scholarship Application process. This is not just a task for junior parents, but one that must begin in 9th grade and continue through senior year. Naviance College Match allows parents and students to find the best opportunities based on a number of inputs and paired with Naviance Scholarship Match, significantly increases access to ever-important funding for those post-secondary choices. Naviance can be as simple as a place to request transcripts, but used to its fullest, it provides UHS students with unprecedented access to college readiness and post-secondary opportunities. Parent access can be found at https:// bit.ly/UHSNavianceFamily
We will continue to support that foundation of learning at Utica High School by deepening our work on existing priorities. Utica will continue to be one only a few schools in the state of Michigan to offer the AP Capstone Program. In 2016-17 we go into year two of this pilot. Last year’s Seminar class taught students how to approach research questions and problems from different perspectives. This year, it’s about the research project itself. In addition to the Capstone, UHS will continue its work in the College Board ELA 11 Pilot Program. Utica High teachers will continue to co-develop curriculum and work with other teachers from around UCS and the state on this project to improve English Language Arts instruction. Finally, we will continue to deepen our work with AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) which identifies students that have the capacity to be highly successful college-bound and AP level students, and providing them with the tools to get there. Our work is truly exciting.
Finally, though our foundation for Utica High began over 100 years ago, we are constantly changing. Last spring and this summer, we celebrated the retirement of five exceptional educators. Mr. Rick Farr (ELA), Mr. Rob Machak (Sociology/Law Enforcement), Mr. Jim Kilgore (Social Studies), Mr. Tom Ignasiak (Mathematics) and Mr. Jim Konnie (Science/Mathematics) all finished celebrated careers, many that spanned more than two decades at Utica High. And, will start the building with two well-loved staff members taking roles in other buildings. Ms. Holly Bommarito will be leveraging her expertise to take on an expansion of the LCCE program at Stevenson HS. Though only here for a year, she left an indelible impact on Utica High. Also leaving us is Mr. Albert Hodge. Mr. Hodge has spent a number of seasons as the Choir Director for Utica High, and will be taking his skills to other schools around the district.
We also celebrated the advancement of Mrs. Kim Hodsdon to Acting Associate Principal at Stevenson High School. Though we are incredibly excited about Mrs. Hodsdon’s well-earned opportunities, we realize that she has left behind incredibly fashionable, but large shoes to fill. The effort to identify a staff member to take on that role has begun, and we will certainly expect our tradition of excellence in student leadership to continue. Mrs. Hodsdon has left us with an incredibly gifted and capable Executive Board that is ready to help bring our next Student Council Advisor up to speed. Congratulations Mrs. Hodsdon!
Joining us in Social Studies is Mr. Clayton Sumner, in Counseling, Mrs. April Raupp, in CTE Ms. Lacie Smith and Mrs. Jennifer Starking, in Spanish, Mrs. Maria Rajewski, in English, Ms. Paula Ballard, Mrs. Jennifer Gard-Eret in Choir, and finally, returning to Utica High, in Physics, Mr. Geoff Clark. We also welcome Dr. Ritu Aggarwal back to Utica High, but this time in Special Services rather than in Food and Consumer Sciences. We’re excited to welcome a number of exceptional veteran teachers to our team, and are confident they will provide continuity of the exceptional instruction and caring rapport that is Utica High’s hallmark. Certainly, our award winning Arrow Newspaper will do exposes on all of our new Chieftains.
It’s September, and we’re ready to go! We’re excited to have your students back in the halls of Utica High School, we’re eager to meet the new students joining us in the class of 2019, and eager to begin learning. Welcome back Chieftains, we look forward to another exceptional year!
Sincerely,
Tom Lietz
Principal
