Week 1: Time to Level Up

Happy Friday!The first Friday of the 2026-2027 school year is here, and after another summer that felt like it passed in a blink, our campuses are once again filled with the energy that comes when students and staff return to Mena Public Schools. I want to sincerely thank every teacher, bus driver, custodian, food service worker, office employee, paraprofessional, maintenance team member, administrator, and volunteer whose preparation made this week possible. Your work behind the scenes over the summer set the tone for a smooth and successful start.This year, our performance targets remain the compass that guides our daily work: continued academic growth, attendance at or above 93.5 percent, and steady improvement in behavior and school climate. Everything we do in this Wrap-up, and throughout the year, will circle back to those three measures because they represent what matters most — students who are learning, present, and supported.It Is Time to Level-UpAs we begin the 2026-2027 school year, Mena Public Schools has chosen “Level-Up” as our district theme. The phrase is energetic and easy to remember, but our purpose goes well beyond a slogan. Level-Up means building on what is working, learning from what can be improved, and challenging ourselves to take the next step. It means helping every student grow from where he or she begins while continuing to raise expectations across our district.Leveling up will look different for every person. For a kindergarten student, it may mean developing confidence as a reader. For a middle school student, it may mean attempting a difficult problem without giving up. For a high school student, it may mean earning college credit, completing an industry-recognized credential, improving attendance, or making a plan for enrollment, employment, or enlistment. For our staff, it means continuing to collaborate, studying evidence, refining instruction, and building the relationships that make learning possible. You know… doing the small things that Jason Curry emphasized to make improvements, and building self-efficacy within our students and collective-efficacy among ourselves, as communicated to us by Jeana Williams.We will not define Level-Up as simply doing more this year. We will define it as doing the most important things with greater clarity, consistency, and purpose. We will celebrate progress without becoming satisfied, address challenges without losing confidence, and keep students at the center of every decision.A Strong Foundation to Build OnWe enter this year with good reason for confidence. Although Arkansas has not yet released the official 2025-2026 school report cards, our latest ATLAS results and independent statewide rankings point to meaningful academic progress.SchoolDigger’s 2026 rankings place Mena School District 45th among 251 Arkansas districts, an improvement of 28 positions from last year and ahead of approximately 82 percent of districts statewide. Mena Middle School rose 45 positions to rank 59th among 327 middle schools, while Mena High School climbed 51 positions to rank 71st among 293 high schools. Our mathematics results provide another reason to celebrate. Districtwide Algebra proficiency reached 57.4 percent, compared with 36.9 percent statewide, and Mena Middle School recorded 100 percent Algebra proficiency among the students tested. Holly Harshman Elementary also posted science proficiency of 54.8 percent. These results did not happen by accident. They grew from focused instruction, collaboration, careful use of assessment data, and the steady work that happens in classrooms every day.We are proud of these gains, but Level-Up also means being honest about the work ahead. A ranking is not a finish line, and a test score never tells the complete story of a student or a school. We will continue strengthening reading fluency, written reasoning, mathematical thinking, and students’ ability to work independently with challenging material, and we will use the official state report card, when it is released, to study our progress and identify where additional support is needed.Mena Morphology MattersThis year, we are also launching Mena Morphology Matters, a new K-12 districtwide word-learning initiative built on a simple but powerful idea: when students understand the building blocks of words, roots, prefixes, and suffixes, they gain the ability to unlock the meaning of hundreds, even thousands, of words they have never seen before.The program unites all four of our buildings, Louise Durham Elementary, Holly Harshman Elementary, Mena Middle School, and Mena High School, around one shared root each week. Every grade band studies the same theme with a developmentally appropriate