Dear SWA School Community,
Welcome back to the 26-27 school year! It is wonderful to see all of our PK-12 faculty and staff gathered together, energized and ready to welcome our students back to our classrooms and hallways.
Before we look at the year ahead, I want to share some truly outstanding news! Thanks to the relentless dedication happening across every single grade level in our district, our High School has just been ranked #99 in New York State by U.S. News & World Report! Furthermore, we are officially ranked #2 in the entire Glens Falls Region behind only Queensbury CSD. This achievement belongs to all of you—from our early childhood educators building the initial foundation to our high school staff guiding our seniors across the finish line - it is truly a PK-12 team effort and I am truly honored to be a part of such a dedicated team of educators and support staff.
As we build on this incredible momentum, our district vision remains our constant north star: Every Student Future Ready. To ensure we bring that vision to life every day, our daily work will continue to be guided by our Blueprint for Excellence which outlines three core priorities: Community Connection, Supportive Environment, and Academic Success for All.
To keep us actively focused on those priorities, we have established three specific district goals for the 2026-2027 school year:
Portrait of a General: We will start the work this year of developing and preparing to implement a district-wide K-12 strategic alignment plan to transition to the New York State Portrait of a Graduate framework. We will rely heavily on grade-band teacher visioning and multi-channel stakeholder input to drive this transition and demonstrate measurable progress. This will be a multi-year initiative with the goal of full implementation by the 2029-2030 school year.
Digital Device & AI Guidance Framework: With the rapidly changing technology and AI landscape, we must consider appropriate use of AI and devices in how we will support our instructional programs. This year we will collaboratively develop, adopt, and implement a K-12 framework to establish developmentally aligned device protocols across all grade bands. By partnering closely with teachers, tech staff, parents, and secondary students, we will define acceptable use standards for Artificial Intelligence and ensure 100% compliance with student data privacy laws.
School Culture and Climate: We will continue our work to strengthen the district-wide culture and climate for both students and staff by actively addressing target areas identified in our end of the year survey data and feedback that we receive from students, staff and parents. By continuing to focus on transparent communication, targeted school-level action planning, and evidence-based wellness initiatives, we aim to see positive upward movement in our school climate and culture. The desired end result is a safe, warm, caring and positive school environment for all students to achieve success.
Finally, I want to give a shout out and a special thank you to our amazing 12-month staff who worked tirelessly throughout the summer to ensure our buildings, systems and supplies were ready for this week. We are deeply grateful to our facilities (stand up facilities crew), transportation, business office staff, clerical staff, CSE office staff, Supt office staff (Gina) and administrators for their essential hard work in preparing for the new school year.
As I close, I want to thank you for your unwavering commitment to our students and to each other. Let's make this a phenomenal year.
Sincerely,
Julie A. Collier
Superintendent of Schools