Pleasant Valley Middle School

Principal’s October Newsletter

Dear Pleasant Valley Middle School families,

Welcome to a new year at Pleasant Valley Middle School. I am very excited to have the opportunity to be your new principal and work alongside Krishna Smith, our assistant principal, and our great staff members. I have heard nothing but fantastic things about the school and community, and have already felt the positive culture and the warm welcome from families.

A little about me. This is year 22 for me in education. I was a primary school teacher for the first 12 years and have been a principal for the last 10. Five of those years I served as principal of Amboy Middle School, and prior to that I was assistant principal at Glenwood Heights Primary. As a building principal, I believe that communication is a key to the success of student achievement and building operations. With that said, please reach out either in person or by email or phone to talk with me about any topics and/or questions that you may have. I am here for you and our students.

Safety
Sticking to the communication theme a little longer, I also want to emphasize the importance of reporting safety concerns. Specifically, please report safety concerns to me or one of our school administrators or office staff. We have the power to investigate and look into concerns, but we cannot do that if we do not know the concern exists.

To follow up on recent incidents that have occurred in our Pleasant Valley School community, I want to reiterate that the safety of all our students and staff is a top priority. We take all appropriate measures if confronted with a safety concern. If you have something to report, and cannot reach me or a staff member (perhaps because it’s a weekend), our district uses the online SafeSchools incident reporting system. Families can use the online tool to report anything concerning, such as bullying, intimidation, harassment, weapons or drugs: https://bgsd-wa.safeschoolsalert.com/. This is an effective tool for both families and our district.

School goals for 2018-19
Finally, let’s look inside the classroom. As a district, we have two common goals for the year: (1)All schools will develop strong social-emotional skills to equip all students for academic excellence and success in life. (2)All schools will implement high-quality instruction in every classroom to improve student learning. At Pleasant Valley Middle we work to positively impact these goal areas through the use of our Advisory program and our late start Wednesday’s dedicated to Professional Learning Communities. Advisory is a time to connect with a trusted adult and peers with the use of a program called Second Step. Themes and positive attributes are focused on throughout the school year. Professional Learning Communities allow teachers time to focus on student data and best teaching practices for student success. I hope to see many of you at our parent-teacher conferences coming up Nov. 6-9. This may be another opportunity to meet in person. Thanks and GO PATRIOTS!

I look forward to a great year at Pleasant Valley,

Principal Mike Maloney
Pleasant Valley Middle School