Dear Families,

I hope everyone had a great first week of school! I was fortunate to visit each of our schools on Monday. It was wonderful to see all of the smiling faces as our students started the school year. Kicking off a new school year does not happen without the support and hard work of everyone in the district. I’d like to thank our operations and custodial teams for ensuring that our buildings were ready to welcome back our 7,000 students, our Transportation Department for planning and adjusting our bus routes and getting our students to and from school safely, and our teachers, support staff, and principals who created a warm and welcoming environment as our students returned. 

With the new school year came two new safety and security procedures at our schools. We rolled out our new visitor management system at all buildings and a new student pick-up process at the elementary level. As with any new process, there were some bumps this week as our students, staff, and parents learned these procedures. As the week progressed, it seems that we have worked out many of the issues. We will continue to make adjustments in the coming weeks to ensure that the visitor check-in and elementary student pick-up process runs as smoothly as possible. In the end, I truly believe both of these procedures will help keep our students safer. I want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding as we roll these out.

We had a great summer with the Highlander Reading Express, our mobile library. Over the summer we checked out over 2,000 books, which is double the number of books that were checked out last summer. If your child still has books from the Highlander Reading Express, please have them return the books to the main office of their school. Additionally, if your child received all nine stamps in the Reading Passport, please have them write their name on the front cover and turn it into their school’s main office. In the coming weeks, we will be visiting the schools to award the final Reading Passport prize for those who received all nine stamps. 

With the school year underway, Homecoming 2019 is just around the corner and planning is underway for this year’s parade. Our new bus tracking app VersraTrans MyStop has been getting excellent reviews from parents. This morning the State of Michigan released the 2019 M-STEP results. I have shared more on each of these items below.

Please remember that there is no school tomorrow, Friday, August 30 or Monday, September 2. I hope you have a relaxing long weekend!

Save the Date Homecoming 2019

This year’s annual homecoming celebration is set for Friday, October 4. The homecoming parade will begin at 5 p.m. and travel west down Grand River from National Street to Center Street. Following the parade, the Highlanders will take on the Salem Rocks at 7 p.m. at Howell High School’s Memorial Stadium. Homecoming is always a great community-wide celebration, and we hope that you will join us.

VersaTrans MyStop Bus App

To better serve our families, we have implemented a new mobile app, Versatrans My Stop for all of our busses. Versatrans My Stop provides parents access to bus information such as a child’s assigned bus, bus stop location, and real-time updates on the estimated time of arrival at the bus stop. This will allow parents and students to plan for late or on-time arrival, and prevent missed pick-ups. To learn how to download and set up the Versatrans My Stop app, please click here.

2019 M-STEP Results Released

This morning, the Michigan Department of Education released the results from the 2019 statewide summative assessment, the M-STEP. On the 2019 assessment, Howell’s scores remained relatively consistent with previous years. The district saw slight increases in student proficiency as well as some small declines. This trend was similar in many districts in Livingston County and across the state. As the district works to improve its student growth and proficiency rates, there are several initiatives underway. To read more about the M-STEP scores and the various initiatives underway, please visit http://bit.ly/2PoeJI1. To view all of the district’s M-STEP data, please visit www.mischooldata.org.