Week 2: Setting Our Benchmarks

Happy Friday! Thank you to every teacher, bus driver, custodian, food service worker, office staff member, paraprofessional, maintenance worker, administrator, tech team member, and volunteer for the dedication you showed throughout this second week. This week gave us the chance to move beyond the introductions and routines of the opening days. Now routines are taking hold, classrooms are settling into rhythm, and our campuses continue to hum with the kind of purposeful energy that comes from students and staff who are ready to work. Your steady effort in building relationships and reinforcing expectations this week is the foundation that makes everything else possible. Tracking Our Performance Targets If this is your first time reading this Wrap-up, welcome. Each week in the Wrap-up, we track three performance targets that guide our work as a district: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. These three measures are not just numbers on a page — they represent whether our students are learning, present, and supported, which is the whole of our mission in a sentence. Because we are beginning a brand-new school year, we are also starting our tracking over from zero. Last year’s totals do not carry forward; every week from here builds a fresh record for 2026-2027, and we will share our progress against these three targets regularly so everyone can see where we stand. In the coming days and weeks, our start-of-year assessments and screeners will begin returning results. Those results will give us our first academic benchmarks of the year, the starting line from which we will measure every bit of growth to come. These measures, along with the engaging teaching and learning we are already seeing, will help us keep a clear view of where we are and where we need to go. Building Improvement Plans Each of our buildings just submitted its 2026-2027 School Improvement Plan to the state, and I want every teacher and paraprofessional to be familiar with theirs. They are posted here on our district website. These plans are built using a Plan-Do-Check framework and cover the same core areas at every campus: Literacy, Math, Science, and Engagement (attendance, behavior, and family/community involvement). For each area, the plan lays out a SMART goal, the strategic objectives behind it, the specific instructional and intervention steps staff will carry out, and how progress will be monitored, whether through ATLAS interim data, common formative assessments, PLC reviews, or quarterly reports. These plans are not a compliance document to file away. They are our shared playbook for the year, connecting the goals we track in this Wrap-up to the day-to-day decisions happening in classrooms and PLCs, from how intervention groups are formed to what gets discussed at your next team meeting. Knowing your building’s plan helps you see how your classroom work connects to our schoolwide targets and gives you a head start on the data conversations, PD topics, and support structures you will see throughout the year. Building principals will be sharing your specific plan, and I would encourage you to read it closely and ask questions. High-Impact Tutoring This week, we submitted our application for the state’s High-Impact Tutoring Grant, a LEARNS Act program that helps districts fund during-school Math and ELA tutoring. Our proposal focuses on literacy support for grades K-2 and 6-11, pairing an experienced certified elementary teacher with our grades 6-11 literacy intervention tutor to provide up to 68 concurrent tutoring placements, three 30-minute sessions per week per student, built entirely into the school day without displacing core instruction. If awarded, this program would give many of our students exactly the kind of frequent, targeted support that helps early gaps close before they widen. We expect to hear back around September 1, and we are hopeful. For Our Teachers A few opportunities and reminders worth your attention this month: * Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is offering free K-12 learning experiences this school year, including free admission, transportation, and substitute reimbursement, and complimentary lunch for facilitated visits. * The Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators grants page maintains a running list of grant opportunities for classroom and school needs. A few with near-term windows include the ASTA Teacher Scholarship and Classroom Grants (up to $500, deadlines March 31 and October 31), Gravely and Paige Grants for STEM Teachers (up to $2,000, rolling applications), and Spark Good Local Grants (up to $5,000, next quarterly window opens November 1). Take a look and see if something fits your classroom. * Through a partnership between the Arkansas Department of Education and NIET, all of us now have access to the Arkansas Calibration Content Library in EE PASS. It offers hundreds of resources, including professional learning modules, TESS and LEADS calibration tools, and instructional video exemplars, available 24/7 for individual learning, coaching, collaborative planning, and PLCs. Whether you are looking to strengthen your own instructional practice or calibrate expectations as an evaluator, this library is worth exploring. Visit next.eepass.org and use the Contact Us tab to request access. Each of these opportunities is designed to invest in you and to support your work with students. Closing Celebrations On the athletics front, our Bearcats and Ladycats opened the week strong at DeQueen. The Bearcats won 3 of 5 tennis matches, picking up wins in both singles and doubles play, while the Ladycats swept all 5 of their matches, with two doubles teams remaining undefeated on the season. On the links, our golfers opened the week against Greenwood, Van Buren, and Lavaca, with the Bearcat boys finishing 3rd as a team, highlighted by a medalist finish, and the Ladycats posting two personal records on their way to a 7th place team finish. The boys followed that up with an even stronger showing at Magnolia on Thursday, placing 3rd out of six teams and upsetting a higher-ranked Hamburg squad to climb to 10th in the state 4A rankings, while the Ladycats added another strong individual finish. Both squads are back in action Tuesday, August 25th at Waldron and Thursday, August 27th at DeGray Country Club in Arkadelphia. Last night, our Bearcat football team took the field for a scrimmage against Bismarck and Poteau. The Bearcats looked sharp against both opponents and are ready to open the regular season next Friday, August 28th, at DeQueen. Also last night, our Ladycat volleyball team took the court for a benefit game against Van Buren at the Union Bank Center. It was a great tune-up before the season opener next Tuesday, August 25th, at Greenwood. Looking further ahead, Bearcat and Ladycat cross country will open their season on Tuesday, September 8th, at the Tom Stuthard Stampede in Acorn, kicking off a full fall schedule that runs through the state meet at Oaklawn on November 6th. We also want to recognize the generosity shown to our students and staff this week. Mena First Assembly of God treated the Holly Harshman Elementary staff to breakfast as a small thank-you for all they do. A group of parent volunteers fed our Bearcat cheerleaders before Thursday's football game. And Ouachita Hometown Realtors partnered with the Office of Child Support Enforcement to donate backpacks and school supplies to students at Holly Harshman Elementary. Thank you to our churches, businesses, and parent partners for investing your time and resources in our students and staff. In Mena Morphology Matters, our Week 2 root is vis, meaning "to see." Students across all four buildings are exploring words built on this root, from visible in our K-2 and elementary classrooms to vision in middle school and supervise in high school, along with word family members like revise, visual, and television. Watch for this week's Bearcat Word Detective Challenge and see how many vis words your student can uncover. It was a good week of groundwork at Mena Public Schools. At Mena Public Schools, our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident. Continue Leveling-Up, and have a great weekend! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bearcatwrap.substack.com