Superintendent's Message

On behalf of the Susanville School District Board of Trustees and all of the staff in our district, I welcome you back to school for the 2009-2010 school year. As we face the new challenges this year will bring, we, as always, will keep our focus on the important mission our school district serves.

Our District's mission is to educate all students to their fullest potential, and to promote responsible, self-reliant, independent, caring students who have the skills and attitudes necessary to become successful and productive citizens. We believe that all children can learn and experience success in school. We also believe the community's influence is an important part of a child's life.

The hard work of district staff, when combined with the work of the Board and the ongoing partnerships among our district, parents, guardians and our community as a whole, enable us to meet our mission.

California's ongoing financial crisis is hitting our community hard. Many of our families are directly and adversely affected as the State furloughs its employees, and reduces services to families. With the uncertainty of what the future will bring, particularly in a city such as Susanville, where so many families are directly employed by state agencies, our District, with our own financial struggles, does not want to compound the stresses families in our District already face.

Amid huge cuts in the funding our district would have otherwise received, and with ever increasing costs of many services provided by our district, we are looking for ways of doing the same, and in some cases doing even more, with less financial resources than we enjoyed in the past. We are spending less money on building maintenance, supplies, and, most notably, salaries as we have reduced staff this year. We have no choice but to increase class sizes, and to look at further cuts in programs such as home-to-school transportation.

Nevertheless, we must and we will remain focused on our mission to educate each child to his or her fullest potential. Our partnerships with parents, guardians and our community are now, more than ever, needed.

While we work to meet our financial challenges, we are doing so in what we expect to be our last year of having two schools on the Meadow View School campus. With thanks to our community for your support in our efforts to secure funding to renovate Diamond View School, our community showed overwhelming support for the passage of a school bond in November 2008. We have developed and submitted plans to the Division of the State Architect (DSA) and we hope to have approval of those plans by early in the fall. Once our plans are approved, we can hire a contractor and begin the work we need to do to have Diamond View School open at the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year. All work on the Diamond View School project will be funded by the proceeds of the sale of school bonds, and will not affect the operation of any other school programs.

This is the beginning of my third year as superintendent and I have appreciated all of the support and involvement of the families of our students and the support of our community. We have much to be thankful for and to be optimistic about. We have already worked through many challenges, both large and small in the last two years, and I know we can rise to the challenges we will face this year.

It is my privilege to serve the Susanville School District and our community. I look forward to seeing growth in all our students' achievement as we all begin this new school year.

Sincerely

Gary L. McIntire, Ed.D.

Superintendent

Susanville School District