By Brooke Loyed, Principal
As L. Frank Baum says, “No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.” This quote reminds us of our Bay District Vision for Instruction with academic ownership, high expectations, strong instruction, grade level content/benchmark-aligned tasks, and student engagement at the forefront of all we do every day. At Patronis Elementary we are extremely proud of our A+ School Grade designation and of our FLDOE School of Excellence award. Our team knows that at the heart of this is our laser focus on reading achievement. We are so proud of our readers for acquiring knowledge every day that can never be taken away.
Not only do our students set personal goals in K-5 for how many Accelerated Reader (AR) points they will earn each nine weeks, but they also track how many books they’ve read. They also keep up with their number of words read in total. Our students have exceeded prior school years at this point in the school year with the number of words read in K-5. Get ready for it! They have read 114,040,965 words as of February 13. You read that correctly. They have read over one hundred million words! Amazingly, we already have 24 Millionaires (each student has read at least one million words just this school year). One of them is a second-grade student! We had 57 students who took AR tests over Christmas Break—even when they were on vacation! Our media center has had over 15,495 books checked out so far this year. To say Patronis uses its media center is an understatement.
We are so thankful to our teachers who keep raising the bar for their students. They celebrate monthly DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) days, and students love dressing up in various themes. Our teachers celebrate our Ten Book Challenge every nine weeks. We are thankful to our PTO and business partners who always keep reading at the forefront of school improvement and help us celebrate reading achievement every nine weeks and in between. Thank you to our parents and families who promote reading at home. We could not do this without you. Last but not least, we are thankful to our media center staff and volunteers who keep things interesting by purchasing new books, holding book fairs, and highlighting achievements on ITV. Patronis is a thriving school for a million little reasons, and we are on the way to breaking even more reading records this year. Please stay tuned.
