Submitted by Mr. Ethan Sickels

Rock Port R-II School Superintendent

Time flies when you are learning and having fun … it is already October on the calendar, and Blue Jay Nation is certainly off and flying. For the past seven weeks you couldn’t find an evening or weekend that didn’t involve some aspect of our kids working hard, competing, and giving their time to represent us well. I don’t envy, but certainly appreciate, many of our parents who have to keep up with challenging schedules of their own . . . and then come and cheer on our students, teams, and groups throughout the week. Thank you for your dedication and support of Rock Port R-II!

Soon it will be time to hand out report cards and discuss how our students did in the first quarter this year, with Parent-Teacher Conferences being held all day from 8:30 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 17. We wanted to try this to see if it helped parents who worked in the evening make it to conferences. Our attendance for conferences has always been fantastic, and I do hope you can make time to come and hear how well your student(s) are performing this year.

Speaking of report cards, our school has not received ours from the state for the 2018-19 school year. They are still indicating that information will be released in October. It appears one big change is that we will no longer receive a percentage score as we have the past 19 years. This school district has worked hard to maintain a 90% or higher score all of those years, including a perfect 100% last year. From an example released this week, it appears the data is not disclosed in that manner anymore. By the time my next article rolls around I hope to not only have our results, but try to let you know in some manner how we stacked up against the state average.

That’s about it from my end . . . I am thankful we have such a great student body, staff and principals that do such great work every day. Sure makes life much easier on me! We appreciate all of our positive support from our community, and thank you for what you do for our students and school as well. If you have lived here a while you may not always realize it, but you have a community and school district you can be very proud of.

As  always,  I  leave  you  with  three  important words . . . GO BIG BLUE!