By Tom Butler 

Atascadero Unified School District Superintendent

Welcome to the 2024-25 school year. We are so excited to begin another great school year and truly look forward to supporting your students to be college, career, and citizenship ready. To that end, it is our goal to build meaningful professional relationships with all of our parents and guardians. We hold a deep appreciation for the role of parents and understand that we can accomplish amazing student growth through this strong partnership between home and school. I encourage all of our staff and parents to reach out early and establish a strong connection that will provide a great benefit to our students.

The Atascadero Unified School District Trustees have set clear and compelling goals for all of us to accomplish. These goals prioritize student academic achievement, student citizenship, academic course pathways that support college and careers, and community partnerships.

The staff of the school district has worked diligently over the last few years to build up an impressive list of course offerings that provide our students with meaningful academic choices at the secondary level. This includes a tremendous number of courses that are approved as Dual Enrollment with Cuesta College and Advanced Placement offerings approved through the University of California system. AUSD is proud to offer nine Career Technical Education Pathways that prepare our students to enter the vocational work force, and we are very pleased to offer a comprehensive offering of visual and performing arts classes.

At the elementary and middle school level we have been able to add counseling services and maintain academic interventions for our students. Through counseling we are able to support the ongoing social and behavioral growth of our students. Each school site is also able to offer academic interventions to students that need a little extra time and support to understand the learning objectives. Parents, please contact your school site at any time if you feel your son or daughter can benefit from these additional supports.

I want to commend our Board of Trustees for specifically setting a goal to continuously improve and focus on student citizenship. We are employing the Leader in Me character education program throughout the school district in order topurposefully teach and reinforce the Atascadero USD Core Values of Respect, Integrity, Teamwork, and Excellence.

Last spring, we were very excited to open the new Atascadero High School Aquatics Center; wow what a beautiful facility that will benefit our students and community for years to come. However, there is still more work to do in orderto provide our students with world class facilities at all of our school sites.

To accomplish this, the Trustees unanimously supported the refinancing of the previous School District Facilities Bond which resulted in an estimated savings of $4 million to AUSD taxpayers. In addition, the trustees have approved a School Facilities Bond for the upcoming November election. This bond will provide the necessary funding to expand, improve, and maintain the highest quality facilities for every school site.

On behalf of the trustees, I would like to thank our staff and parents in advance for forming a strong partnership that I am certain will help our students attain their future

goals.

Thanks for the amazing support you provide for your children and our school district staff. We look forward to seeing all of you on the first day of school on August 14.

Go AUSD!

ATASCADERO NEWS MAGAZINE 

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