New Dimensions Charter School

SCHOOL GRADE:

The current school year has been very rewarding at New Dimensions. Our students have been able to experience an inviting educational environment where outstanding teachers are providing first class instruction day in and day out. Our students have also been given the opportunity to experience hands on learning through several beneficial field trips.

As we move forward with a new school year, we need to look back at last year’s state test results. One of the benefits North Carolina public schools offer parents and community is transparency. Public school accountability is a standard practice for North Carolina going back to the early 1990s, and the North Carolina School Report Cards provide parents and community with information on such key issues as student performance, teacher experience, and school safety. Data are provided at the school and state levels to enable parents to compare the performance of their student’s schools with others across the district and state.

Legislation (G.S. §115C-83.15) passed during the 2013 long session of the North Carolina General Assembly provides an additional measure of school performance in the form of School Performance Grades. Beginning with the 2013-14 school year, the annual North Carolina School Report Cards display a letter grade of A, B, C, D or F for each school in the state.

The School Performance Grades are based 80 percent on our school’s achievement score (student proficiency) and 20 percent on students’ academic growth. Scores across the state varied with this year’s release of school performance grades. Among public schools, approximately 8% of schools graded as A’s, while almost 22% were rated as D’s or F’s. We are very proud to announce that the performance composite for New Dimensions for the 2018-2019 school year is a “B”. This is the highest score ever for the school and an indication of great things to come.

I want to personally thank our entire staff for their hard work along with our parents and especially our students for all they did to be achieve this status. We are very pleased with our progress but not satisfied.

One of our top priorities for 2019–2020 is to improve our School Performance Grade. There are a number of key elements that we will put in place to help improve student performance. These include:

• A possible Pre-K Class
• A Reading Specialist to Provide Training in Reading Strategies
• The Warrior Before and After-School Program
• A Daily Intervention Program called Warrior Time
• Academic Clubs and Activities
• Tutoring Through the Burke Augustine Literacy Project
• Reduced Class Size (1 to 16) in Grades K-5

We encourage our community to closely follow our students’ academic progress and work with our teachers to help ensure that all of our students stay on track academically. Working together as a team, we can improve not only how well our students are performing individually, but how our school is performing as a whole.

Helping us obtain this success have been many community supporters who have donated food, door prices and other items for our students and staff. A special thanks to all our community sponsors for their tremendous help this year:

1. Bucks Pizza
2. Timberwoods
3. Friday Friends
4. Sain’s Barber Shop
5. Arbonne by Julia Norman
6. Burke Industrial
7. Lowes Hardware
8. BUCM
9. Rico Guilien and Farm Bureau
10. The Grind
11. The Purple Pig
12. Celebration Worship Center
13. Morganton Public Safety
14. Thomas Dentistry
15. All our Parents Who Provided the School with So Many Things We Need

There is nothing more important to our faculty and staff than ensuring that our students are ready for the next step in their academic career. We look forward to working with our entire community to make sure our students are on track for success.

Sincerely,

David Burleson, NDS Director