The following letter was sent home to Woodland Heights families on March 20th ....
Dear Woodland Heights Parents,
I am writing today to express my appreciation for the opportunity to serve as your principal at Woodland Heights School for the past four years. Over the course of this time, we have undertaken major school improvement initiatives in the areas of:
1. Pioneering a 21st Century Learning Community at Woodland Heights that changed that way we thought of ourselves as educators, focusing most on what knowledge and skills students will need to be successful in the learning and work environments of the future.
2. Strengthening our Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment programs, such that our students are demonstrating exponential growth in academic achievement levels as demonstrated on the AIMSweb and NWEA-MAP assessments.
3. Developing a strong teaming concept among our staff supported by implementation of the ‘Professional Learning Community’ (PLC) model which fosters focused conversation about the teaching and learning process, and how best to meet the diverse learning needs of students in our classrooms.
4. Creating and maintaining a ‘Child-Centered School’ in which we honor the uniqueness, ability, and value of every student, and work to cultivate their intellectual capacities and character development by personalizing learning using the systems of Differentiated Instruction and Response to Intervention.
5. Conceiving ‘Project Wildcat!’, our comprehensive system to promote a safe, orderly, and focused learning environment at WHS by implementing The Responsive Classroom Approach uniformly across all school settings, developing and administering a school-wide student behavior system, and celebrating the many things that are great about our school.
6. Engaging and partnering with parents in new and productive ways to better ‘wrap our arms around’ students and make certain that they are adequately supported by the adults in their lives so that they can learn and thrive optimally in our school setting and in our community.
7. Carefully reviewing and revising our comprehensive school safety and security program such that students and staff can be safe in our school all day, every day, and in any circumstance.
Having accomplished so much as a learning community over the past four years, and feeling that I have done all that I can to help us ‘get to the next level’, it feels like an appropriate time to step down as your school principal and make way for new leadership at Woodland Heights School. I will be resigning as your school principal, effective June 30th, 2014.
Your Superintendent of Schools, Terri Forsten, and members of the Laconia School Board have already begun conversations about a process for selecting your next principal at Woodland Heights School. As soon as the principal search process and timeline are finalized, Mrs. Forsten will be communicating important details to our community, including how you could participate in this important process.
It has been a true pleasure serving the City of Laconia as the principal of Woodland Heights School – “a special open school, on the hill”. I am certain that there is no school like WHS on the planet. You are special, you are unique, and what you do for the children of our community is nothing short of amazing. Please know that the time spent at WHS has made me a better educator, principal, and person. I have learned and experienced a great deal at Woodland Heights that will enrich the rest of my life. Serving as your principal at WHS has afforded me an opportunity to do the most important and best work of my career. Thank you for allowing me to join your school family for the past four years. It has been truly wonderful at Woodland! Go Wildcats!
Very warmly and sincerely,
Dennis W. Dobe, Principal
