Annual Report to Parents

This school year, our SIC continued working on ways to better communicate with parents.  We created a link tree account that helps parents access information from a variety of sources.  From the link tree account, we can pull data on how many times parents access our information from the different social media accounts.  We can tell what time of day and from what type of device they are accessing the information.  This data will help us know when and where parents are more likely to engage with school information

One of the big goals from last year and moving into this year was for parents to be able to access school information in their native language.  Mr. Shipley worked on building a website for parents to access that can translate information into four different languages.  He took the four main languages, other than English, that our families speak and made sure they could access school and district information in their language.  

We met our goals for academic achievement.  Our percentage of students meeting grade level expectations for reading increased by 10% and math increased by 4%.  These increases set us up to meet our School Improvement Plan goal by 2027.  Our students and teachers are working hard daily to learn essential standards students need to be successful at the next grade level.  Our retake policy and ECU program require students to complete assignments and demonstrate mastery of standards.  Not allowing students to opt. out of learning teaches them that they can do hard things, and causes large improvements throughout the year.  

SIC meetings are open to ALL of our parents. If you are interested in attending a meeting, we would love to have you. If you are interested in being part of communications to our parents and community next year, please let us know and sign up to join SIC. We would like an SIC that also sponsors informational nights for parents on relevant topics.
 

Christy Matkovich
Principal

Cardio Mack
Assistant Principal

Scott Sinclair
Assistant Principal

Amber White
PTO President/Parent

Elizabeth Lee 
Booster Club President/Parent

Mickey Joslin
SIC Chairperson/Parent

Sarah Meyers
Parent

Logan Hudak 
Teacher

Garrett Shipley
Parent

JoAnne Walker
Parent

Mia Arnautovic
Student 

Finnegan Bridges 
Student 
 

• Continue as a Partner School with Winthrop University. We’ve had numerous interns in our building throughout the year.
• Job shadowing for 8th grade, and Career Days for 6th and 7th grade was successful.
• Seventh grade was trained on the SC Occupational Interest System (SCOIS).
• Sixth grade received an orientation about the high school career clusters through SCOIS.
• We started a Rachel’s Challenge club after hearing about Rachel’s Challenge.  Rachel was a young lady that attended Columbine High School.  The diaries they found after she was killed, challenged all of us to be kind in this world.  We are hoping the club will play a larger role in our Anti-Bullying mission over the next year.  
• Brooks Harper, a College and Workforce Readiness speaker spoke to all of our students.  
• We began our incentive program with Mustang Bucks.  Students were able to earn Mustang Bucks each day and then spend them every Friday during lunch at the school store.  
• Ms. Hayward led the first ever “Miss Mustang Pageant.” 
• Ms. Keiner is our 23-24 Teacher of the Year 
• Ms. Hall is our 23-24 Support Staff of the Year

• Our band was awarded Superior at the state concert performance assessment! Superior is the highest award you can receive.
• The 8th Grade Band will perform at Universal Studios.
• The Band received a Superior rating at the Carowinds competition..
• Our Band and Chorus performed a wonderful concert in December at Springfield.
• African American History month included a Door Decorating Contest with many outstanding depictions of Black History.
• An African American, Hispanic, and Asian Assemblies were created by a group of our students and teachers.  Ms. Gossett led the Hispanic and Asian Assemblies.  
• Springfield Out Loud (SOL) is our honors show chorus. They performed numerous times at pep-rallies and in Florida at Universal Studios.
• The seventh-grade honors chorus performed at Carowinds and earned a Superior Rating.
• Students performed the school play “How to Get Away with Murder.” Our student actors and behind-the- sceners are SO talented. 

• Twenty 8th graders were designated as Junior Scholars.
• Our Academic Team finished the season 7-1and was the regular season runner up this year in the OEC.  
• Four students competed in the Great History Challenge and they all qualified for the regional tournament.  Of the four, two competed at regionals and both scored high enough to qualify for the national tournament. Those two students are Jake Olinger and Evan Elfert.  
• The SMS Yearbook Crew was nationally recognized for design and journalism by Jostens. This is the 6th year in a row they’ve been recognized.
• Chinmayi Venkatesan won 1st place in the Optimist International Oratorical Contest for the Fort Mill Club and 1st place for the Zone 1 Oratorical.  She will go on to compete at the state level.  
• Varad Lahokare won 2nd place at the state Agriscience competition.

• Our Beta Club students have completed over 2,000 hours of community service this year.  They have done a variety of activities including spending part of their weekends with residents of an assisted living facility.    
• Our Springfield Middle School Families were able to help us find ways to provide a binder for all students that needed one.  Many families stepped up during the third quarter to provide more binders as some of the original ones were wearing out.  
• Our PTO did amazing things for our school, students, and staff under the direction of our PTO President, Ms. Amber White.  They were able to sponsor 12 students for the Washington, DC trip.  They served our teachers in October and February.  All three grade levels were able to have socials or dances. 
• Our Rachel’s Challenge club collected food for the food pantry.  

• Our Springfield Middle athletic teams worked hard this year. We are so proud of their dedication and sportsmanship. 
• Our seventh grade girls basketball team won the regular season championship and the tournament championship.  
• Our boy’s soccer team made it to the championship game in the tournament. Unfortunately, they didn’t walk away with the big win but we are proud of our Mustang athletes who are amazing young men!  Their futures are bright.
• Congratulations to our sports teams for learning and growing as young people! What you learned as a member of a team will be valuable to you. There are many life lessons when you give it your all and compete.
• Our Athletic Booster Club did a wonderful job for our athletes and coaches under the direction of our Booster Club President, Ms. Elizabeth Lee.

Our number one challenge continues to be the mental and emotional health of our students. Student behaviors are still an area of concern. Negative behavior is how some students cope with tough emotions they are experiencing. Many students are dealing with situations that most adults have either never had to deal with or have never faced until they were into their adult lives.  Some students cope with these emotions in an external way and others cope with them in an internal way. Both can be concerning, and it is challenging for teachers and other staff to know exactly how to help in a way that shows support but also maintains classrooms that are conducive to learning for all students. Our guidance counselors, mental health professionals, and staff have worked overtime to help our students.

This year we began our Ci3T journey.  Ci3T is a three tiered approach to teaching students everything from academics to appropriate behaviors in all areas of the school building.  It focuses on students’ needs:  academic, behavioral, and emotional.  This year we looked at rating scales for our students and identified those students that needed extra support in the areas of academics, behavior and emotions.  Students that were identified as needing more support spent time during FLEX period working with staff in their areas of need.  The challenge we have is being able to find quality mentors for our many subgroups of students.  Many of our students need positive role models they can talk to and can lead them into making positive choices.  We have coaches that are around during sports seasons that can play a large role.  Each of our teachers can play a role in that mentoring as well.  However, many of our students need male mentors that understand their culture and have experienced some of the life experiences they are experiencing.  We are currently looking to partner with a business or church that can provide mentors for our students.    

Another challenge we face that parallels the mental health mentioned above is social media. Social media often influences our children to behave in a negative manner and  goes against the values that you as parents and we as a school are trying to instill in our students. Social media can persuade our students to behave poorly or have superficial values.  Of course our students are discovering who they are and who they want to be.  In a perfect world, they would make these decisions based on healthy, positive feedback.  Social media often teaches a darker way to think; it is the ultimate peer pressure.  We love and accept our students just the way they are. We work daily at school to send the message that “the most powerful weapon you have on a daily basis are the words you choose to use with each other. You can choose to use your words to lift others up or tear them down.”  This area is where we need help from parents.  Please stay aware of what your child is doing on social media and provide limits for them.

We continue to have the most diverse group of students among the district’s middle schools and we strive to find ways to meet the needs of our students. This is an ongoing goal and we know we can meet it each year. We aim to provide our teachers with strategies and information about how best to meet the needs of our student body and the community. We have made great strides forward in this area. We have two amazing multilingual teachers that have worked hard with teachers to enmesh these students into our classrooms and to help them feel part of our school community. We will continue to work with all groups of students to help them feel comfortable and valued at Springfield Middle and in the community.