Superintendent

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November 7, 2025

GLPS Families,

As students enter into the long weekend, staff are hard at work today, learning and collaborating with one another. We spend a lot of time talking about student learning, but it is also important for our professionals to model being lifelong learners as well. As an organization that values education, we all have a responsibility to grow in our practices, and that is what these professional learning days provide for our teams.

Today, our secretaries and bus drivers worked through a book study that is helping them better understand how to work with students’ unique needs to create calm environments, while our teacher assistants, health care assistants, and paraeducators learned about CPR and first aid, as well as strategies for helping students become better readers. Our teachers, too, were engaged in a variety of learning that was grade level specific, from literacy instruction for our elementary team and Hayes ELA teachers to instructional practices around essential learnings and proficiency scales at the secondary level. Our support staff, including counselors, deans, interventionists, and multilingual learner teachers, also had dedicated time to continue to create consistency across district programming. Finally, after leading this learning throughout the morning and early afternoon, our principals and central office administrators will come together to end the day to learn how to better support teaching and learning. All of this work was rooted in collaboration and engagement across the district, and all of it helped our entire staff continue to grow to meet the needs of our students.

An important part of our learning process is also gathering data. We examine academic data, like tests and grades; behavior data, like attendance and discipline instances; and survey data. To those ends, this month, secondary students will have the opportunity to participate in MiStudentVoice again, a statewide survey that asks students to give us feedback on our schools and programs. Through our partnership with an organization called Boldly Moving Education Ahead (BMEA), our district leadership team is sending surveys to staff to better understand climate and culture. In addition, we would like some feedback from you! Please take a moment to fill out this brief survey about how our schools support you and your family. The data we gather from you will help our leadership team better meet your family’s needs around relationships, communication, and support. Thank you for taking the time to tell us how we are doing!

We truly appreciate all you do to help support learning here at GLPS. It is only through strong school-family partnerships that we are able to maximize learning for students and staff, and we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with you and your children every day. GLPS is an incredible place to learn and grow because of the outstanding people here and the value we all place on education and programs. It is because of you, our community, our students, and our GLPS team that, as always, I am #proudtobeacomet!

Dr. Bill Barnes
Superintendent of Schools