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August 14, 2019
It is a Great Day to be a Wolverine!
I hope that all of you have had a wonderful summer. We have been working throughout the summer to prepare for our students to have their best school year yet. I would like to give you a few updates on all things happening at West Potomac over the summer. I would like to start by saying congratulations to our teachers and students who worked hard this past year. Student scores increased in a number of areas. Our school is fully accredited under Virginia’s new standards of accreditation! We share this accomplishment with all of you, as your support of the West Potomac community has made this possible.
West Potomac is currently fully staffed. We are excited about our new hires who will bring energy, commitment and care for our students. The 2019-2020 school year promises new learning and engagement with student laptops and we are excited to begin the journey. Thanks to an amazing technology staff and student summer techs, we have begun a very smooth and efficient process of laptop distribution this summer. Please check the school website and twitter for dates and times of distribution. Teachers have been hard at work for the past two summers to develop their blended-learning strategies and to develop their Google classroom site to support instruction.
As many of you know, our student body continues to grow; and with overcapacity comes teaching and learning challenges. We have been working closely with FCPS Design and Construction, the Office of Safety and Security (OSS) and our school board members. Ms. Corbett Sanders has advocated for a comprehensive school capacity review/usage enhancements, security audits and a traffic study of Quander Road. We are working with our facility staff to find ways to alleviate the number of teachers floating between rooms throughout the day. We have converted three lab spaces into small classrooms to support my efforts of lowered class sizes as well as arranged for utilizing other space available throughout the campus. We want to ask those who do not have a parking permit on campus, to please take the bus. There are significant traffic challenges along Quander Road and within the surrounding neighborhoods that would be greatly allieviated by students taking their assigned bus.
Architects and engineers have been evaluating the feasibility of providing a connector between Quander and Spring Bank and enlarging the cafeteria. We will soon share with the community plans for the capacity enhancement that address many of the community’s concerns. We will also continue to fund our sixth security assistant and pursuing continued county funding support for the position. OSS is working with us to restructure our current security staff duty plan. OSS is also funding more cameras to be installed along the perimeter of the campus. Lastly, OSS will conduct a comprehensive security review of the facilities and student movement throughout the day. This will support administration to improve our student management plan.
We can not wait to see our students on August 26th and are excited to welcome our freshman class. We are going to have a Wonderful Wolverine 2019-2020 school year. Lets Go West Po!
Sincerely,
Tanganyika H. Millard
Principal
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