Welcome to another exciting school year on the North Slope.

Our teachers and students worked very hard last year, and as a result we made excellent progress toward our goals.

Reading scores are up in every school. Six more schools have made AYP. Our children are scoring above the state avereages in more and more areas and the achievement gaps are closing!

Quayanak-puk to everyone who made this happen.

Our goals this year are for every student to become proficient in Reading, Writing and Mathematics, for the Inupiat values, language and culture to be incorporated into the regular curriculum, and for a communications plan to be instituted district wide.

In order to continue and improve upon our progress, this year we are engaged in many exciting initiatives.

For the first time this year our teachers will receive performance bonuses based on their contributions. Teachers will recieve bonuses for working with parents, for helping each student experience a year's academic growth, for assisting every child to be proficient in reading, writing and math, for demonstrating professional growth related to student achievement, and for making their classrooms and schools a welcoming, challenging and exciting place for students to be.

We are also providing every student in grades 5-12 with an Apple laptop computer to use before, during and after school to assist in their learning. Younger children will have access to Apple laptops in their classrooms. This initiative will radically transform the daily learning experiences of our children, engaging them in constructing meaning and learning in entirely different ways.

We are restructuring our schools to provide teachers time to develop more collegial relationships, and allowing for these teams of professionals to form multi-year relationships with a small group of students and their parents.

We are also working to provide teachers with a series of diagnostic assessments aligned to the curriculum so that they can identify and address specific and individual student needs.

Finally, we are integrating the Inupiat values into our curriculum by celebrating one value a month and using the value as a theme around which we organize school wide celebrations and organize daily learning activities.

We are making tremendous progress toward realizing our goals, and everyone is working very hard.

We are so fortunate to have such a courageous and innovative Board, and such dedicated, professional and energetic faculty.

Our collective learning curve is tremendous, our professional development time wholly inadequate, and yet somehow, it is all coming together.

It is an honor to be a part of such an amazing district, to work with such consummate professionals, and to serve the children of such caring communities.

On behalf of the School Board, teachers and staff of the North Slope Borough School District, please explore these pages with our compliments, and accept our sincere wish that your days are filled with the satisfaction and spirit of community that we enjoy on the North Slope!

Kiita!

Trent Blankenship