Garinger Elevated News

Well, Garinger Team, we are quickly approaching the end of 2025 and about to embark on a new year. In two weeks, we will begin our Winter Break. When we return the new year will be here. When you think about 2025, what did you accomplish? Where was your impact? In 2026, what do you want for yourself on a personal level; on a professional level? It's not about resolutions, but about elevating our mind, body, spirit, and actions. One questions I've been asking myself that I will continue to ask is Why do I do what I do? This means, what is my motivation for doing the things I do, or saying the things I say? There is a reason for every action I take and every word I say. I ask myself, are my motives pure or are they self-serving? Are my words what should be said, or what I want to say? Are my actions serving others, or serving me? Am I doing this because its the right thing to do or because it's what everybody else is doing? I want my motives to be from a place of service to others, not about me. I want to ensure what I do and say come from a pure place, and not tainted by what I want or even what I feel unless it is about creating better conditions for others. If what I want or feel is only about me, I've missed it. And there are days when I have to admit that I miss it. I don't always get it right, but I shouldn't keep making the same mistake over and over again. My goal is to go beyond the surface of what looks good and ensure it is truly good because my motives are pure. My goal is to elevate, to get a little better everyday. If we can all get a little better everyday at the things that are important for us, our 2026 will be amazing. Let's go for it!! Let's get better; better for ourselves and others personally and professionally.

Let's get into this week! We have a lot going on these two weeks before our break. Please read through this newsletter so that you so not miss anything. This week, we are celebrating our students with 90% attendance for the month of November. We are making plans to bring AVID back next school year, and we are jumping into registration for the 26-27 school year.

School Budget Planning

We have been waiting to receive our CSI allotment to know if we will be able to rehire some of the positions we lost due to low enrollment at the beginning of the school year. Just in case you don't know, we lost 9 positions after the start of the school year due to lower enrollment. We were projected to have 1964 students this year, but we were actually closer to 1728. Because of this, we lost 9 positions. There were positions we had not hired, so thankfully nobody lost their position. But this means we cannot hire those positions. Our hope was to receive our CSI allotment and be able to hire those lost positions.

When I arrived at Garinger last school year, we were working to spend about $400,000 in CSI funds. We knew funds this year would be less, but we did not know how much less. Our allotment this year was just over $168,000. This is a major difference from previous years and not enough to hire back those positions. I want to share this with you so that you realize we are not working with the same amount of money as in previous years. This means, we have to watch our pennies a little closer. We are meeting with our School Improvement Team on Monday afternoon to discuss how we will allot this money for our school. As always, my goal is to be transparent and keep you in the loop of what's happening. If additional funds are received, we will be grateful and keep you posted.

STAFF SHOUT OUTS!!!🎉

Shoutout to Mrs. Bourne for bringing Othello to our seniors. What an awesome opportunity to partner with UNCC and share this with our students.

Shoutout to our Counseling Department for planning and working to make registration run as smoothly as possible.

Shoutout to the Admin Team for preparing pancakes for the staff. It's nice to be appreciated by our leaders.

Reminders

• With the changes in weather, please be prepared to move to remote learning if needed. Mentor teachers, please work with your beginning teacher to make sure they have Canvas set up and are ready to shift if the need arises.
• We still have students who are not coming to school because of fear. Please be reminded that we should have assignments available on Canvas for any student who is absent from school. When students return to school, they have time to complete their assignments. Student attendance is no longer tied to grades. It is about students mastering the content. Please make sure you make content and assignments available on Canvas. It helps you and our students.
• As we prepare for December 19th, please clean out refrigerators, throw away food items, make sure windows and doors are locked, and unplug any items that do not have to be plugged in.

Here are the happenings for this week. We will share updates as needed.

Monday, December 8 - We have our Electives Fair during lunches. Because of the weather, we are going to take this Fair indoors and utilize the back portion of the cafeteria. Department Chairs, as we discussed on our last meeting, you will work with your department to ensure your classes or the person who is attending the fair has their classes covered.

Tuesday, December 9

• Registration begins!!! Our counselors will share the schedule for registration. PLEASE make sure you bring your class to the Media Center at the time you're scheduled. Be on the lookout for information from our Counseling Team.
• We will EOC have Walkthroughs with our performance area leaders starting 1st period.
• We have our MTSS Kickoff!! We are working to develop our MTSS process that will work for high schools.
• I have an activity off campus with our performance area at 12:30, but I'll be returning for afternoon meetings.
• 2:30 - ILT will meet together. ILT Leaders, please bring your data to this meeting. We will share the location soon.
• 2:30 - Our National Board Cohort begins this afternoon!!! We are excited to bring this opportunity to our campus for our teachers.

Wednesday, December 10 - We will have our Faculty Meeting at 2:30 in the Media Center

Thursday, December 11

• We will celebrate our students who have maintained 90% attendance during the month of November during 2nd period. We heard you and we will spread the love to other class periods for our attendance celebrations. You will receive the list of students who should attend and everything you need to help facilitate a smooth celebration.
• I will be off campus on Thursday to attend a funeral. My cousin passed away and his funeral will take place in Raleigh.

Below is information for next week. This is pretty comprehensive, but we will share any additional information as soon as possible.

December 16 - Data Analysis Day - there will be a team going to look at our data and make plans for how we move forward.

December 17 - PD Day after school meeting

December 17 - Staff Luncheon from you Admin Team

December 18 - Staff Luncheon from our Midwood Moms

December 18 - Title I Curriculum/Family Night. This is also the evening of our Arts Department Showcase! Join us to see our students display their talents and enjoy a chili dinner.

We plan to bring AVID back to Garinger. This is a program that has great benefits for all students when implemented effectively. We are excited to bring this program back. We are looking for teachers who are interested in teaching AVID. Our plan is to offer this option for all students in grades 9-12. We will also offer an honors option for our students who are taking this along with AP courses. If you're interested in being part of this program and/or helping to lead in this program, please reach out to Dr. Clemons by Monday, December 15. We are working on providing PD for those teachers who will teach and lead in this program.

Starting on Monday, December 8 we will begin reciting the Pledge of Allegiance everyday. This is school board policy and we should make this happen each day. At the start of 2nd period, every class should take the first few seconds of class to lead reciting the pledge. As the teacher of the classroom, you should lead this. You can either lead your class in reciting the pledge or you can share THIS VIDEO each day. The video is a little less than 30 seconds.

Things to remember:

• You cannot force a student to stand during the Pledge.
• You cannot make a student recite the Pledge.
• We only ask students to remain quiet during the reciting or playing of the Pledge by video.

Please add this to your sub folder so that teachers who are not on campus everyday will know to make this happen.

We had an incident on campus and it put our safety protocols to the test. As a result, we have made some adjustments to ensure we are handling these situations the correct way. With this situation, we discovered that one of our front office staff was instructed by an administrator to announce a Hold which happened. A teacher then came to this front office person and instructed her to announce a Lock Down which also happened. I have met with all of our front office staff to ensure that they understand the protocols and to be sure to first, take their instructions from an administrator and to understand that once an administrator has shared a directive around our safety protocols not to change unless it comes from an administrator. We also discussed the importance of clear communication over the PA system when an announcement is made. I appreciate the teachers who stayed after school to discuss this incident and help us with understanding where we need to make adjustments. I had not taken time to have in depth conversation with our front office staff about our safety protocols. They play a crucial part in helping to communicate and ensure we follow our safety protocols to fidelity. We had a great conversation and are working to enhance other safety features at our entry. Thank you for sharing your concerns so that we can get this right for our campus.

A Hold is common practice in many schools and is used when we need no movement in the hallways. When we are in a Hold, we do not transition to classes even if the bell rings. Students and staff are are staying in place until the Hold is lifted.

Thankfully, our CSA and SRO's handled this situation quickly and there was no threat to anyone on our campus. We never want to have these situations, but when we do, we want them handled effectively and to fidelity. I appreciate your feedback and if this arises again, we will see a more effective and efficient process.