Welcome to our new digital version of the Pioneer Pages! During the 2022-23 school year we produced two printed versions of the district-wide Pioneer Pages. We will continue with the two mailed pieces in 2023-24, but are also adding a monthly e-version, which will be shared through email and the district's social media channels.

Each month readers will be able to see highlights from all five school buildings, as well as a message from the superintendent, announcements, and upcoming dates of significance.

Enjoy!

Dear Jonathan Alder Parents and Guardians,

Welcome to the October edition of our Teaching and Learning newsletter.  As the leaves change colors and the air turns crisp, we are excited to bring you updates and resources to enhance your family's educational journey this fall.

Literacy Updates:  October is Dyslexia Awareness Month.  You can read more from the National Center on Improving Literacy’s Understanding Dyslexia: Myth vs. Facts page to understand some common misconceptions and misunderstandings about dyslexia.

Our fall benchmark assessment data collection window has come to a close.  We administered multiple assessments at each of our buildings over the past few weeks in order to determine areas of strength and improvement for each of our JA students. We will use this information to help ensure continued growth and achievement for our Pioneers. 

As part of Ohio’s Dyslexia legislation, our Teaching and Learning department will send results of the Dyslexia Screener home in the coming weeks via US mail to our first through third grade families.  We will also share a letter with families of students in kindergarten through fourth grade who qualify for a Reading Improvement and Monitoring plan as part of the Third Grade Guarantee legislation.  The notifications, assessment updates, and individualized plans that will be shared at parent-teacher conferences allow us to work closely with our families in order to raise literacy achievement for all of our students.

Reading with Your Child at Home: A very helpful activity is reading books of interest to your child that may be above their ability to read independently.  This builds vocabulary and background knowledge.  If your child has brought home a text to read to you, here is a Video Link with tips for when your child reads to you.

October is Digital Citizenship Month: Help support your child’s digital decisions through quality conversations.  Here are some ideas you might use to get those conversations started.

Partnership with Columbus State: As part of our college and career readiness work, the high school counselors and administrators will be engaging with leaders from Columbus State in order to learn more about preparing our students for jobs of the future.  One opportunity for students that our families might be interested in learning more about is the partnership between Intel and Columbus State for the semiconductor and electro-mechanical engineering programs.  

Did you know about the April Total Solar Eclipse?  April 8, 2024, marks the first time since 1806 that Ohio will experience a total solar eclipse.  Plain City is in the path of full totality.  This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to view this as the next total eclipse in Ohio will be in the year 2099!  We will be sharing information in the very near future about school plans for this important date.

2022-2023 State Test Results: The Ohio State Report Card was recently released from the Ohio Department of Education.  The improvements made on the 2022-2023 state report card are a testament to the hard work and dedication of everyone involved in our educational community.  Jonathan Alder’s overall rating for the 2022-2023 school year is 4.5 out of 5 possible stars which is in the “exceeds state standards” category.  The state report card highlights that our students met or exceeded growth expectations across many of our grade levels in key subject areas such as mathematics, language arts, and science. Our performance index grew from 92.4 to 93.5.  Jonathan Alder significantly exceeded state standards in closing educational gaps and in graduation rates. The  report card demonstrates that Jonathan Alder LSD is providing a quality education to our students at a great value for our taxpayers. We are using our resources wisely and investing where it matters most, in our students.  We will continue to build upon this solid foundation, striving to provide an even better learning experience for our students.

Gifted Review: We recently started our gifted program review in collaboration with experts from the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio.  We will be working closely with our staff, students, and families in order to identify areas of strength and ways we can improve our gifted and accelerated programs.  This review will provide us with recommendations that will be presented to our Board of Education in the spring. 

Staff Professional Development: Our September 25th professional development day was very successful.  All of our staff members engaged in collaborative discussion and learning around the topic “Who are our students and what do they need?”  We spent time discussing ways that we can better support our students’ academic and social development.  Our next professional development opportunity will take place on November 7th.  Our entire staff will engage in learning from an expert in the area of safety.  We will then apply this knowledge by engaging in tabletop safety discussions that will help us be better prepared to respond in the case of an emergency or threatening situation. 

Please note the dates of our remaining professional development days for the 2023-2024 school year.

• Tuesday, November 7, 2023

• Friday, February 16, 2024

• Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Thank you for being an integral part of our district's educational community.  We look forward to our continued partnership.

Warm regards,

Jonathan Alder Teaching & Learning Department
Carla Quick, Assistant Superintendent
Becky Krall, Director of Student Services
Nicole Schrock, Director of Instructional Technology

To the Jonathan Alder Local School District Community,

I want to spend some time discussing our financial performance in the previous fiscal year (FY), which ran from July 1, 2022-June 30, 2023. Overall, we had an excellent year financially. Revenues remain strong to help fund the District’s operations. In this report I will be focusing on the General Fund, which is the main source of revenues and expenditures for the District. It is also the fund that is shown on our five-year financial forecast, that is generated and presented to the Board every November and May.

Local sources of revenues remain the single largest source of revenues for our school district. This revenue source comes to us via local taxes paid by our residents, including property and income taxes. The District is on what is known as the “20-mill floor”, which is the lowest legal taxing rate a school district can be while still receiving state funding.

FULL FISCAL YEAR END REPORT

Canaan Middle School Student Council representatives from each grade level have been promoting a canned food drive. Student Council members created posters and made announcements to notify their classmates about the challenge. There is a competition between grade-level homerooms as well, with the homeroom receiving the most donations earning a pizza party. The canned food drive is running from Oct. 2-19.

A successful fundraiser that led to a silly string showdown between students and staff. This year, a group of students who sold 11 or more items in the Plain City Elementary PTO annual Mumkins and Mumsters sale, earned the privilege of participating in a silly string showdown. Mrs. Savage, Mr. Haman, Mrs. Luker, and Mrs. Farmwald unknowingly became the targets of this showdown. The students armed themselves with cans of silly string, ready to unleash their colorful chaos. Laughter filled the air as the countdown began, and then, in a burst of silliness, streams of silly string rained down upon the wanted quartet and a little rain as well! It was a moment of pure joy, mostly for the students, as the experience of silly stringing the principals and teachers will not be forgotten!

Overall, this year's fundraiser saw PCES sell over 3,500 mumkins, resulting in a PTO profit north of $17,000. Money raised assists with items such as teacher requests to software and equipment upgrades, to wildlife or COSI-centered events for students.

The success of this year's annual Mumkins and Mumsters fundraiser was also featured in the Marysville Journal-Tribune. Click here to read the MJT article.

Monroe Elementary began its after-school Spanish Club this month. The club meets once a week, as Ms. Maust and Mrs. Newman teach Spanish to the group of students and staff that expressed interest. 

"I love that there is student and staff interest in learning Spanish and being able to communicate with our Spanish speaking students," stated Monroe Elementary principal, Mrs. Julie Paige.

The first class was focused on where Spanish is spoken and learning colors in Spanish. The class ended with a game of Bingo using the color words in Spanish.

Congratulations to our Boys and Girls Golf Teams who both won the Central Buckeye Conference Championship on Thursday, September 21 at The Elks Golf Course in Springfield.  The Boys shot a 319 and finished the regular season 10-0 and won the Conference Tournament as well to win the outright CBC Championship.  

The Girls posted a 388 to win the Conference Tournament.  They finished the regular season 9-1 and used the Tournament to propel them past the field and win their first ever Central Buckeye Conference Championship.  Congrats on a great season by both teams.

In addition we want to recognize our CBC Student Athlete of the Month, Sarah Sowers, who shot an 87 in the Central Buckeye Conference Girls Golf Tournament and was the medalist of the tournament field.  She finished 2nd overall in the CBC for points standings as an individual for the year and was named 1st Team All CBC three times in her career.  She was also the Madison County Tournament Medalist and helped lead the Girls Golf Team to their 1st every Central Buckeye Conference Championship.

Junior High students have been working with Mrs. Byers, STEM Facilitator, on science and AR activities. Eighth grade science students worked with Mrs. Byers to complete Breakout Boxes focuses on fossils and plate tectonics. Additionally, engineering students had the opportunity to test their egg drop designs. Students were challenged to design a mechanism to protect an egg from a significant fall.

Seventh grade students learned about Greek Hoplites and the Persian Wars through hands-on zSpace AR activities. In seventh grade social studies classes, students competed against other city-states in mock Greek Olympics with competitions around the building, resulting in cheers as awards were shared.