Superintendent Dr. Steve McCammon

Dear Community,

It is my pleasure to welcome our students, staff, parents, and community to the 2007-2008 school year. We are proud to continue year eight of the excellent work that has evolved in our district with the National Standard Bearer Network. We truly believe that this work is having a very positive impact and is continuing to push the levels of excellence in teaching and learning to unprecedented heights in our district. In fact, I encourage you to visit our web site and read the national case study entitled: Changing the Quality of Student Experiences; the Fife Way (click to view PDF). This case study reflects back upon the past seven years of our work in this network and illustrates the significant changes that have occurred in our school district as we strive to become better and better each year.

I am so pleased that you have visited our award winning web site. Please take the time to visit our WOW Refrigerator (click to view) and see examples of the most important aspect of our school district which is the student work itself. I would also urge you to visit the school sites and read the building school improvement plans (click to view). These documents will allow you to become very informed about the actual plans that each school has put in place to improve student learning in our district. Also of great use are the events and athletics calendars which are intended to keep our community informed about opportunities to become even more involved in the great things that are happening around the district.

We are very excited about the coming school year. We are striving to become even better and continue to need your support and input to ascend to ever-higher levels. We will recommit our promise to you this school year of continuing to build quality programs while operating in a fiscally responsible manner. This coming year we will implement the fifth year of the technology levy that the community was so supportive in providing. We are also in the process of dealing with consistent growth as many of the new housing developments are continuing to build out. We have made the commitment of hiring several new teachers, mostly at the elementary level to try and keep class sizes as low as possible. This continues to be a challenge in this time of a steadily growing population coupled with a gap of funding from the state with regard to transportation and special education. We are pleased however, to maintain a solid fund balance (district savings account) of 5% or slightly over one and one half million dollars in order to ensure that the district remains financially strong. We will also be entering the first year of a recently bargained teacher contract; one that was agreed to in no more than three very positive sessions which further illustrates the level of trust and collaboration in our district.

We are also excited about the opening of our new SLMS field that has been freshly covered with synthetic turf and is going to allow so much more use to our students and our community as a whole. My thanks once again to the Puyallup Tribe of Indians for their generous support in making this field happen. We have also been hard at work replacing the gymnasium floor at the high school. You will be both amazed and pleased with the new look.

Finally, we will be celebrating new faces in leadership positions this year as well. Assistant Superintendent Brian Aiken has left us to move back to family in eastern Washington. We will miss Brian and certainly thank him for his expert leadership in the area of business services. We will not be replacing the position of assistant superintendent as Ms. Kari Harris will be promoted to Business Manager to take on many of Mr. Aiken’s previous duties; and Mr. Chuck Ziara will take over classified personnel.  Mr. John McCrossin will be the principal at SLMS this year and his assistant will be Mr. Jim Snider. Mr. Kevin Alfano moved to CJHS and will serve as the assistant principal there. Mr. Mark Knight will serve as the principal of Fife High School and Mr. Brian Neufeld has been promoted to assistant principal. We are pleased to welcome Ms. Amanda Fox (a Fife High graduate) as our new Dean of Students at FHS. Ms. Elaine Smith has joined us at the district leadership level in the role of WOW Coordinator where she will provide the valuable service of working with our teachers and teacher leaders in helping us to design more and more engaging lessons that will help to ensure the success of all of our students.

I look forward to seeing several of you at one of our many activities this fall and throughout the school year. Thank you again for your steadfast support of our important efforts in Fife School District.

Dr. Stephen McCammon,
Superintendent