With school starting next week August 19th, Kenai Peninsula Borough School District principals and administrators were back in school August 5th preparing for the coming school year. At a gathering at Skyview Middle School, Superintendent Sean Dusek and his colleagues were enthusiastic about the coming year. “It’s a lot of hard work getting ready for a new school year. We have all our administrators here working together to get a great school year underway. We’ve been working on our student evaluation system with student growth maps and that’s a big part of our conversation for the next couple of days. We’re also very focused on collaboration in making that highly effective with a positive impact on the kids. We also have mandatory trainings every year to be prepared for critical incidents should they occur so that our school are a safe place and a happy place to start the school year,” said Dusek.

Athletic programs have already been underway for a few weeks, “It seems to get shorter and shorter every year, but it’s an exciting time and the kids are ready to go. Our coaches are highly dedicated and I’m very excited about how their seasons are going to turn out this fall,” said Dusek. Advice to parents getting ready for the new school year Dusek advised, “The very first thing is to get on the school districts website and locate their school. The supply lists are posted there as well as all the vaccination requirements and each school has their registration dates listed so it’s real important for parents or guardians to take the initial step to get on the web and check it out or if in doubt call the school directly, the support staff is already in place along with each administrator and teachers will be back August 12th.” Dusek says he is anticipating a smooth start up for the New Year, “We are looking forward to the results from past year’s assessments. We’ve noticed that a lot more kids coming out of our high schools are college career ready. We have a lot more career certifications being issued for our students now, more kids are taking advance placement courses and we’re getting a lot of positive feedback from colleges that our kids are ready. So we are seeing good results in our graduation rate that is continuing to tick up and we are seeing a lot of improvement year by year,” he said.

Having a year as Superintendent under his belt now Dusek said, “I’ve been lucky having been in this district over two decades now and always felt that I’ve been part of helping establish a vision for the district from the first day I was here. That is part of the culture of our district that staff and principals all have a voice in the direction of this district. Our people are highly skilled and highly professional so I am part of a long term vision that was established well before I became Superintendent and it is a vision of excellence. I am confident that we will continue with that vision in the coming year. We’ll have bumps along the way but we’ll continue to grow and get better at what we do and that’s credit to the staff that takes a great deal of pride in what they do and that is a positive impact in preparing kids for their future and I’m excited about that.”