Welcome to the Savanna School District

Where Today's Learners Become Tomorrow's Leaders

Welcome to the 2023-24 School Year! 

We have much to celebrate as we look forward to the coming school year in preparing Today’s Learners to be Tomorrow’s Leaders!  We’re excited and eagerly anticipating the 2023-24 school year, continuing to focus on helping our students to achieve their potential with our commitment to continuous learning and unwavering excellence.  We have much to celebrate with our return and can’t wait to get started!

As we continue our focus on academic excellence for our students, we will enhance our concentration on the implementation of our English Language Arts/ English Language Development and Mathematics programs, ensuring the needs of all of our students, and especially our second language learners, are met.  Working to ensure students have foundational skills upon which to build is a priority for the 2023-24 school year.  A combination of a rich, well-rounded curriculum, highly qualified and caring staff and a long-standing commitment to excellence is ensuring that we prepare our students to meet the demands of an ever-changing global society and help to shape the workforce of tomorrow.

We’re excited to move into the second year with Amplify Science. We witnessed much excitement as science was brought to life through relevant, real-world problems; students learned much as they investigated scientific phenomena, engaged in collaboration and discussion, and developed models or explanations in order to arrive at solutions.  The engaging, captivating lessons sparked many students’ curiosity and ignited their passion for learning.  They are truly on a path toward becoming the next generation of scientific minds and engineering enthusiasts as we prepare Tomorrow’s Leaders!

The launch of our all-new W.I.N.G.S. Program in 2022-23 was a tremendous success, providing an opportunity for nearly 600 students across the District a safe, engaging, and fun environment for extending their learning and participating in activities they may not have otherwise experienced.  The level of student engagement was overwhelming as W.I.N.G.S. staff helped to connect children’s in-class learning to after school activities in which they gained new skills, participated in a myriad of sports and relevant activities, completed homework assignments, and built lasting friendships and bonds. We’re grateful that we’ve been approved to provide the supper program to our W.I.N.G.S. students, ensuring their nutritional needs are met. Through these experiences, we are further insuring our students are prepared with 21^st Century skills.

We’re eager to introduce our all-new Preschool Program that will begin August 7!  The B.R.I.G.H.T. Learners Academy, which stands for Build • Realize • Imagine • Grow • Harvest • Thrive, will be structured for two, three, and four-year-old children in both half-day and full-day formats. The B.R.I.G.H.T. Learners Preschool is open to all children meeting the age criteria living within our boundaries. 

Because student and staff safety are paramount, we are continually assessing the safety and security needs of our campuses and are proud of the systems we have in place. We have consistently undertaken measures to ensure the safety of our schools in the past and will continue to do so. Furthering our commitment to student and staff safety, additional cameras were added in a variety of areas throughout the District. We will continue with the implementation of Navigate360 in order to provide immediate, real-time access to all the information and tools staff need to help ensure the safety of students in an emergency situation.  We’re extremely grateful that we’ve been able to complete much-needed enhancements that will provide students and staff with safe, secure facilities to meet the demands of 21^st Century learning. These projects and more will impact our children's education and our community for generations to come.

With the evolving needs of school sites, students, and staff have driven projects that we’ve consistently undertaken.  Thanks to monies from the sale of Perez School, state school bond reimbursements, and a variety of state and federal funding sources, we’ve been able to complete a myriad of projects, bringing parity among school sites, upgrading our infrastructure and devices available to students.  We know just how important it is for students to use technological tools to enhance their learning; throughout the 2023-24 school year teachers will use SeeSaw and Google Classroom to support the instructional program. By providing the opportunity for all third through sixth grade students to check out a Chrome Book for home use, students will be able to utilize the online features of our curriculum for homework as well as for in-class assignments.  As we continue moving forward with technology, we are indeed preparing Today’s Learners to become Tomorrow’s Leaders.

As important as the physical safety and security of our campuses is, the social-emotional security our students need is critically important.  We will continue with the implementation of Second Step, our social-emotional curriculum, where students are learning to cultivate a growth mindset, recognize emotions, develop empathy toward others and practice problem-solving skills.  Our partnership with Care Solace will continue to provide an additional layer of care for our students, parents, and community to connect with mental health care providers and substance use treatment centers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  With Care Solace, families gain access to a myriad of personalized support services quickly and confidentially with multilingual teams of providers. In addition, we’ve partnered with outside agencies to ensure that families are connected to community-based services quickly.  Our schools’ commitment to exemplary programs that create safe and inclusive environments for all students can be evidenced at each site, some similar and others to meet the unique needs of the students, parents, and staff.  Each school has embraced Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) implementation, ensuring positive behaviors throughout the campus. Programs such as these are essential in ensuring our students have the support of the entire community to assure their success!

Partnership programs have involved parents in school activities, from serving as greeters in the parking lot to assisting children at lunch, from volunteering in classrooms to reading with children throughout the school day, from welcoming dads as Watch D.O.G.S. to a school-level VIP Club, our students are demonstrating good citizenship along with social and emotional growth that will help them to become the leaders of tomorrow. Through partnerships, we’re able to offer parenting skills classes, provide high school-aged ‘big brothers and big sisters’, and enhanced counseling and anger management classes for students and families in need.  We are deeply indebted to our school community for its ongoing support. Truly, our successes are YOUR successes; it takes a village to raise a child and our children are so very fortunate to be part of this great community and the many partnerships that support them. These partnerships demonstrate our commitment to ensuring today’s learners will become tomorrow’s leaders.

When I reflect on what makes a good school district a GREAT school district, I recognize that it is “people;” people like our staff who are committed to what they do each day to ensure student success that we can be proud of; people like our parents who provide the home support for our students so that they can reach their potential; and people like all those in our community who continue to contribute to our successes in so many ways. Because of all of the support from a wide variety of people in our community, the 2023-24 school year will be the year that will help to propel today’s learners toward becoming amazing future leaders!

--Dr. Johnson

Click here for the May 2023 edition of the Savanna School District's School News

Click here for the 2023-24 Superintendents' Issue of School News

Click here for the Title I Parent and Engagement Policy