Friday, March 1, 2013

Desirable District

In the March edition of Delaware Today, in an article entitled Great Places to Live, the writer takes a shot at the Lake Forest School District that is unwarranted, unsubstantiated and insulting to those who love Lake Forest.  "Pinehurst is in the less-desirable Lake Forest distrrict", it says.


Here are a few facts that would suggest that observation is in error.

In the past 14 years the voters of the Lake Forest School District have approved 5 referendums and defeated none. That is hardly a sign of a less than desirable school district.

In 2012 100% of the schools in Lake Forest met Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the State of Delaware. Not many K-12 districts can make that claim.

This year the folks of Vision 2015 released a list of the 24 schools that, in their words, are "beating the odds". By that they mean these schools have a higher than state average level of low income students, yet they also have a higher than state average student performance on the state test. Of those 24 schools listed, 4 of them were Lake Forest Schools.

In recent years, all of our Title I schools have been recognized and two are National Distinguished Title I Schools due to high student performance.

W. T. Chipman Middle School will be recognized this year in the Superstars in Education program and has hosted visiting teams of teachers from schools throughout the Vision network.

We are an Early College school district. Our goal is for 90% of the class of 2016 to have earned some college credit prior to graduation. In November of 2012, 90% of our seniors made application to the college of their choice.

Year in and year out, more students choice into Lake Forest School district than choice out.

Less desirable? The evidence suggests highly desirable. That’s why Lake Forest is the best choice for so many.