COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY UPDATE

On Monday, March 26th, teachers met in grade level teams to analyze data from goals set at their

January Collaborative Inquiry meeting. Teachers celebrated their students’ success and brainstormed

strategies to continue working with students not yet proficient on the identified skills.

Congratulations to our students and teachers on fabulous growth!

RESULTS FROM FEBEBRUARY 27 C.I. GOALS

Grade Level C.I. Goal % of Students

Proficient:

Beginning

% of Students Proficient:

Ending

6th Troublesome Verbs 27% 68%

5th Capitalization/Punctuation 31% 94%

4th Metaphors 10% 78%

3rd Contractions 57% 97%

2nd Syllabication 13% 92%

1st Long Vowels/Vowel Digraphs 39% 80%

Kindergarten Word Spacing 8% 74%

Grade level teams then collaborated around data to set new goals for their students, based on areas

of greatest need. Below are the new goals for each grade level.

6th Grade: By May 7, 2012, 100% of 6th graders will score 80% or better on a teacher created

assessment relating to solving addition and subtraction problems with positive and negative

numbers.

DATE

Thursday 29 Spring Play, 6:30pm, Multi-Purpose Room Friday 30 Ukelele Club – Canceled Today Saturday - Monday 31 - 9 SPRING BREAK! Monday 9 GATE testing, 9:00am,Turnstone campus

Rocklin Academy Wednesday Weekly

Robin Stout, Principal http://turnstone.rocklinacademy.com

David Patterson, Ed. D, Superintendent Wednesday, March 28, 2012

5th Grade: By May 7, 2012, 100% of 5th graders will score 80% or above on the grammar unit

assessment for capitalization and punctuation (sections 5-8).

4th Grade: By May 7, 2012, 86% of 4th grade students will be able to identify four types of

figurative language, i.e. personification, hyperbole, simile, and metaphor within a text passage

created by the fourth grade team.

3rd Grade: By May 7, 2012, 100% of 3rd graders will be proficient in understanding unknown words

using the 5 most common suffixes as clues.

2nd Grade: By May 7, 2012, 90% of all 2nd graders will score proficient when using quotation

marks and identifying their proper use in reading passages.

1st Grade: By May 7, 2012, 100% of 1st graders will score 80% or better on the “r” and “l”

controlled vowel portions of the core phonics assessment.

Kindergarten: By May 7, 2012, 100% of kindergarteners will be able to write uppercase and

lowercase letters of the alphabet independently, attending to form and proper spacing.

AB 1576 WILL HELP CHARTER SCHOOLS COPE WITH THE

STATE’S LATE PAYMENTS

Public schools in California have been hit with billions of dollars of funding cuts for the last four

years. All schools have been hit hard, including charter schools. However, the state is also hurting

schools because they are paying the reduced funding very late. More than one third of this reduced

funding will be paid to schools AFTER the end of the school year. In other words, Rocklin Academy

has to run our outstanding educational programs on reduced funding AND we don’t get one third of

the funding until months after we need it to pay teachers, buy educational supplies, and pay for our

facilities.

Assembly Bill 1576 will help charter schools deal with this late state funding by allowing them to get

short term cash flow loans from the County Treasurer in the same way that other non-charter school

districts do so already. AB 1576 is co-authored by our own Assemblywoman Beth Gaines.

Assemblywoman Gaines has been working with Rocklin Academy and other charter schools in our area

to help us access this funding, and we are appreciative that she is co-authoring this bill.

More information about the bill is available at the California Charter Schools Association’s (CCSA -

our association) website - http://www.calcharters.org/advocacy/statewide/current-legislation.html.

As we have done for other bills as they move through the legislative process, you may get a call to

action about this or other charter school bills from CCSA in the next few weeks. Please look for it.

Your voice makes a difference!

David Patterson, Ed.D

Superintendent

TARDY POLICY Academic success is directly correlated to attendance and tardies. Administrators, teachers,

students, and parents/guardians must work together to make sure students are present and on time

to class each day. There must also be a strong effort by each person in our community to help

students arrive to class on time and be prepared to learn.

Due to an excessive amount of tardies in past years, Rocklin Academy researched surrounding policies

and created the existing tardy policy.

From experience, we have learned that the first moments of the day are critical to the way the whole school day goes. Having everyone present at this time is essential. Please be on time every day. Students who disrupt class by arriving after 8:10 must check in at the office. The third time this happens, the student will lose a portion of their morning recess. Please take this seriously and organize your mornings so your child is on time every day. (Page 17 of the Student Handbook) We are excited and pleased to report that the implementation and enforcement of the tardy policy

has been a great success. As can be seen from the charts below, late arrivals have decreased by

nearly half for each trimester at both campuses when comparing tardy rates for the 2010-2011 year

with the rates for 2011-2012.

Turnstone Campus Trimester 1 Trimester 2

2010-2011 2011-2012 2010-2011 2011-2012 408 373 653 393

Meyers Campus Trimester 1 Trimester 2

2010-2011 2011-2012 2010-2011 2011-2012 421 223 505 218

The support of parents and stakeholders has been instrumental in making this policy a success. And

while we are trending in a positive direction, we cannot stress enough the importance of getting your

child(ren) to school on time. A quality education can only be provided if attendance is a high priority

to both families and the student.

SCHOOL PLAY, COZY CORNER, TOMORROW, 6:30 PM Rocklin Academy presents Cozy Corner, an original play specially adapted for school aged

children. Written by high school students, the musical is a story about being open-minded,

with themes of acceptance and friendship. Through the use of music, dance, wit, and

humor the characters in the play address the age-old topics of stereotyping and

segregation, choosing instead open-mindedness. It tells how differences between people can enrich

their own lives and lead to friendships.

Come watch our young performers tomorrow, Thursday evening, 3/29, at 6:30pm at the multi-

purpose room.

SPRING BREAK NEXT WEEK! Please mark your calendar! Next week, April 2-9 is Spring

Break. School will resume on Tuesday, April 10th. We hope you enjoy

the week off with your family!

GATE TESTING - APRIL 9TH Rocklin Academy will be offering GATE testing for students in grades 2nd – 6th on Monday,

April 9, 2012 at 9:00 AM at the Turnstone Campus. (April 9th is the last day of Spring

Break.) If you are interested in having your child take the test, please fill out the

attached form and return to Mrs. O’Brien or Mrs. Bomgardner in the office by 8:00

am tomorrow, March 29, 2012. Your child must be signed up by tomorrow, March 29th

in order to take the test. The test will take about one hour. Please have your child bring two

sharpened #2 pencils, and a book with them on the day of testing. Testing is expected to last one

hour.

WSCA RECRUITMENT We are having a recruitment meeting for Western Sierra on Tuesday, April 10th, at 6:30 PM,

in the Administration area (just outside Principal Kling's office). We could sure use your help

and we hope you can make it! We believe the best way to recruit great families to WSCA is

to join forces with our own great families that are already in the Rocklin Academy Family of

Schools! Please bring a friend; the more volunteers, the better!

PERFECT ATTENDANCE, TRIMESTER-2 Congratulations to all of our students with perfect attendance for the second

trimester!

Turnstone: Brayden Baker, Dylan Black, Brooke Byrd, Max Frantti, Sienna Hsu, Christos Kotsiopulos,

Ayden Little, Noah Lopez, Anika Maragathavel, Joel Tajiri, Aubrey Costello, William Davis, Emma Dye,

Brenden Freethy, Stephen Huang, Nicolas Nijmeh, Prachi Padiyar, Colin Parenti, Dylan Ream, Diego

Sandoval, Jack Segers, Tatum Tillery, Alexandra Watts, Jenai Bryant, Chloe Budd, Allison Carroll,

Athanasia Delis, Nicholas Frantti, Traeger Harrison, Rayan Holmes, Kinsey Hsu, Mason Lew, Kern

Shah, Rachel Tajiri, Aiden Tebbs, MacGregor TeSelle, Keiji Watanabe, Karina Andersen, Sawyer

Baker, Shiloh Bruckler, Gino Buencamino, Riley Carroll, Gabrielle Daniel, Ethan Dye, John Freethy,

Isabelle Hanson, Brandon Parenti, Anjali Suthahar, Layne Swenson, Kathryn Chappell, Luke Dowden,

Shawn Everson, Jack Goodman, Colton Harrison, Marcus Higashi, Kiriakos Kotsiopulos, Ava Maeyama,

Kareena Patel, Patrick Rebollo, Derek Segers, Vraj Shah, Joshua Tajiri, Nikitha Vancheeswaran,

Matthew Verbeke, Alex Verhaag, Tareq Allan, Julia Bryant, Nathaniel Daniel, Sophia Delis, Margaret

Dye, Apsen Garrido, Charles Holmes, Rebecca Jenkins, Kyland Parenti, Morgan Schaefer, Jayden

Siler, Kristen Smyth, Anabelle Tombo, Catherina Torneros, Kenichi Watanabe, Aaron Wilson, Yu Xia,

Patrick Young, Mia Agbayani, William Dowden, Matthew Ford, Caleb Hanson, Mason Hardy, Kyla

Harrison, Miles Higashi, Emily Manzer, Marie Navarro, Morgan Pfennig, Matthew Pilawa, Sydney

Pooler, Emily Riebeek, Jacob Tipper, Allison Uyeki, Hannah Verbeke, Joshua Verhaag, Matthew

Yoshida.

Meyers: Anooshka Hedge, Jaisleen Kang, John Lachappell, Amitra Balakrishnan, Jovan Bartlett,

Keith Bartlett, Arun Beckhorn, Cassidy Lee, Trevor Scheuerman, Abigail Galmeister, Drew Krawiec,

Arjun Sapru, Tyler Walsh, Adrian Campbell, Javraj Kang, Arvind Srinivasan, Nayana Venukanthan,

Kylie Kubota, Madelyn Lourerio, Daniel Osuna Hoy, Aidan Rich, Zachary Schreiner, Samantha Schwarz,

Deanna Trieu, Jillian Yeh, Emma Accacian, Aidan Baur, Jaikaran Kang, Benjamin Krawiec, Carina Lim,

Raegan Scheer, Bethany Schmidt, Michaela Bodie, Janelle Cruz, Madison Forst, Conner Galmeister,

Gagan Hegde, Julia Mamayev, Cambria Weaver.

THIRD GRADE COLONIAL FAIRE DONATIONS NEEDED Our Third Grade Class is in need of some items for our Colonial Faire which is on May 24th.

Baby Food Glass Jars

We need 80 cleaned and empty glass baby food jars for our butter churning activity. A box

will be in the office to collect these jars.

Colonial Faire Costumes

If you have an older son or daughter who has participated in the Colonial Faire and has a

costume you are willing to donate or loan, we will gladly make good use of it! If it's just

sitting in a box or in the closet, we are happy to take it off of your hands!

If you would like to loan a costume, please safety pin a note to the costume with your contact

information so we may return it to you after the Colonial Faire.

A box will be in the office to collect the clothing. We will be collecting these items until the end of

April, so please keep us in mind!

Your generosity and support is much appreciated! If you have any questions, please contact me at

jasmin.dillon@gmail.com. Thank you!

Jasmin Dillon

Colonial Faire Coordinator

MOTHER/SON DINNER Friday, April 15th will be a Mother/Son dinner at Rocklin Academy. Please look for the

flyer at the end of this newsletter for more information.

PSP OFFICERS NEEDED FOR 2012-2013 We are seeking parents interested in serving on the PSP next year. All

positions are open:

President

Vice President

Secretary

Treasurer

Fundraising

Please contact Lisa Dye at the6dyes@gmail.com if you are interested. Thank you!!

SPIRIT WEAR FRIDAY!, This Friday wear your Rocklin Academy spirit wear!