Welcome

Denise Rehm

Welcome Pelican Families! 
I am so excited to begin the 24-25 school year, as we will “Outthink, Outlearn, and Outperform” as we embrace the Survivor Theme at Cherbonnier for this school year. Our vision at Cherbonnier is to educate all children to their fullest potential in a nurturing environment where educators challenge and encourage students to strive for academic and social excellence through teaching and learning. 

We plan to build upon the structures that we put in place during the 23-24 school year in order to accomplish our vision. Our students have a daily job and there are three parts:

1. Be on time 
2. Help Keep it Safe 
3. Most Importantly to Learn 

In order to focus on the first part of their job, students must be at school by 7:20 a.m. each day. Students cannot have 14 or more unexcused absences or they will not be promoted to the next grade level. In order to encourage our students to be at school on time each day, we will acknowledge the grade level “tribal team” who has the most students in attendance each month with an attendance party. Each nine weeks students who have perfect attendance will receive a special recognition. 

The second part of the student’s job is to help keep it safe. Students will continue to earn Pelican Bills to shop in their class store and to purchase school activities/prizes. We will also have our monthly “You Did It” events for students that earn the charm for not having a major office referral or three minor infractions for the month. The August “You Did It’ will be a snowball with free dress down. September will be the much anticipated after school dance for 6th - 8th and an in school dance for Pre-K - 5th. These are just a few of the events that will take place this year. Furthermore, we will also continue with class jobs and 8th grade school wide jobs for our students. Our students will also have presentations by guest speakers on bullying and cyber safety. 

The third and most important of our students’ job is to learn. Students will continue to have access to high quality instructional materials and high quality instruction. We are so excited that we saw academic gains in our ELPT scores, LEAP Assessment Index, LEAP Mastery percentage, and we maintained our LEAP Connect Scores for the 2023-2024. However, we know that there is still much work to be done. Therefore, this year we are committed to meeting the academic needs of our students through targeted in school interventions through our Math Interventionist and Literacy Coach as well as other faculty members. We will also offer after school tutoring in the Fall and in the Spring. Students will track their own progress on Benchmark assessments, exit tickets, and other assessments. The “WOW” wagon of prizes will be used once again to recognize students scoring Basic or Above on Benchmark assessments. We also will have “tribal” academic competitions to acknowledge the grade levels who improve the most as well as have the highest scores. One critical area of focus is our early literacy in grades Kindergarten through third grade. The LDOE has revised Bulletin 1566 in which students in third grade for the 24-25 school year must score on grade level on the end of year Literacy screener if the student does not then he/she will be retained in 3rd grade. We will have several meetings during the school year to help parents support their child with reading at home and to explain the Bulletin. One way to help your child is to have him/her read with you or an adult for 15 minutes every night. 

We know that the way to ensure our students succeed and to help them fulfill their job is by having collaboration among all stakeholders. Our first opportunity will be on Monday, August 5th at 4:00 for our Meet and Greet at our school. We are also looking forward to our 2nd Annual Community Fall Festival which will be held on Saturday, October 19th from 11:00 am - 4:00 pm. We are committed to improving communication this year with all of the stakeholders. 

We look forward to working with our community partners and families to ensure that this is the best school year ever. Our Pelicans will S.O.A.R. (Strength, Optimism, Action, and Respect) with all of us working together.
 
Your Partner in Education, 
Denise Rehm 
Principal