1. Davis Bay Elementary School Growth Plan 2011-2012

2. Setting Directions Goal No. 1 For Davis Bay to continue to flourish as a small community school using an innovative Science based themed approach to attract new families and students to our school

3. Setting Directions Goal No. 1 (cont) To renew and thrive as a small community school by taking advantage of the talents of our staff and our unique situation that finds us (a) the only K-5 school in the district and (b) surrounded by diverse natural environments that provide rich opportunities for learning.

4. Objective To enhance the viability and sustainability of the Davis Bay Elementary by developing and publicizing its unique and treasured aspects. (We see Davis Bay as being very “sustainable” by delivering academic programs by utilizing our natural surroundings, i.e. ocean in the front, forest and creek behind the school.)

5. Rationale After the district reorganization in the 2009/10 school year, the school is in the process of reinventing itself and must respond to meet the needs of our new K-5 school. We have begun to address these factors in the current school year and fully recognize the strong foundation that presently exists.

6. Rationale Continued… Davis Bay Elementary offers a cohesive and connective family oriented culture that supports the development of children. It’s organization allows for flexible groupings that allow us to better respond to the individual needs of our students, multi-age classrooms that support continuous learning, and a school size that allows for considerable whole school focus and activity.

9. Discussions amongst staff and parents have revealed a strong commitment to developing a thematic curricular organization centred around its rich, natural setting.

14. School-wide 'writes' to monitor improvement

16. Parents could assist us in our outdoor oriented curriculum.

21. There has been general support and excitement about new directions and possibilities as evidenced by staff and the PAC. •There have also been a number of formal and informal discussions that fully support these initiatives.

23. Leadership As a small school with a deeply committed staff and parent body, this kind of leadership naturally occurs. This quality of the school must be recognized and fostered. As well, we must be vigilant at being inclusive and ensure that all voices are valued and heard and all ideas considered; no one is left feeling marginalized. It is the belief of the current school leadership that when parents, staff, and students are being heard and their input acted upon as appropriate to the goals of the school, satisfaction and school development and, most importantly, enhanced student learning will be inevitable results.

24. Achieving Results Results will be monitored both informally – i.e., enthusiasm and attitude toward the subject areas by our students, and formally – report card marks, FSA results and Performance Based Standards Parental input will also be used to help assess the success of each goal. Open dialogue between administration, parents and staff is critical to gauge this type of informal assessment