It is an honor and a pleasure to welcome our parents and community members to Palm Springs Unified School District’s 2018-19 school year. Our administrators, teachers and staff members are ready for a new school year sure to be filled with new and innovative challenges as we continue to raise the bar on our quest for academic excellence for each of our more than 22,000 students.

A key mission of our Board of Education and administration this year is to clearly define who we are and how our work will move us forward to better serve our students.  We realized this past year that the foci of the district have not always been as clearly expressed or communicated as we thought.  In order to improve that communication, a broad group of stakeholders from the District staff, called the Guiding Coalition, worked to create a set of belief statements that will help us communicate our shared expectations about how we do our work in the District.  At the same time that this work was being done, our Educational Services Department drafted an instructional map for elementary schools that outlines the instructional expectations and resources for core content areas, lesson design, assessment and the learning environment.  The secondary version is currently in the works.  These efforts comprise the first steps in creating a coherent approach to how our District aligns its valuable resources and creates an environment that supports teachers in furthering their craft and students in furthering their learning.

During a several-hour work session, our Board of Education poured over the work of the Guiding Coalition in an effort to update mission and vision statement for PSUSD. The vision statement they arrived at is both powerful and meaningful – Lifelong Learning Starts Here – and that goes for ALL of us at PSUSD – administrators, staff and, of course, our students! The mission statement is equally relevant and on the mark: “All students graduate with the skills, capacities and confidence needed to succeed in a rapidly changing world.” If each and every one of our students graduates with those tools in hand, then I think we can all agree – we have been successful!

Our staff will be presented with the Guiding Coalition’s belief statements, the instructional map and the Board of Education’s vision and mission statements at our Welcome Back meetings on Monday, Aug. 6, just prior to Wednesday’s first day of instruction. The goal is to get us all on the same page, working together in a clear and positive direction for our students. We hope you will continue with us on our journey and feel free to offer your feedback and input as we move forward.

Thank you, as always, for your support and partnership.

See you next month!

Sandra Lyon, Ed.D.

Superintendent of Schools