Buena Vista Elementary School offers a challenging, progressive, character-building curriculum and environment that enables students to become self-directed learners. Our students become creative problem solvers and independent thinkers who are prepared for the challenges of the 21st Century. We are a very culturally diverse school with over 40 different countries represented by our students, faculty and staff.
Our academic goals remain the same each year. Our staff strives to enable all students to master the South Carolina State Standards in English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies. The results of our most recent state assessments rank our school as one of the district’s and state’s top elementary schools in English Language Arts, Science and Social Studies and Mathematics. We take great pride in being an academic leader, in fact, 85% or our staff has received Gifted Certification or have taken the courses necessary for the certification.
Our goals for the SC Ready state assessments in grades 3-5 call for the percentage of students Meeting/Exceeding expectations on math will increase from 79% to 82% and for the percentage of students Meeting/Exceeding expectations on English Language Arts to increase from 75% to 78%.
In an effort to enhance our ELA instruction and student achievement and to motivate us as readers, our SIC has led an initiative to focus efforts of all stakeholders on building a stronger literacy community. Pieces of this initiative included a book drive, family and community online book clubs, a social media campaign linked to #for the love of reading, a March Madness book competition at all grade levels and participation in the Battle of the Books program. Our entire staff has received professional development in the area of balanced literacy with special emphasis in Guided Reading and word study.
We have tremendous strength in the area of technology. Buena Vista was one of the first ten schools to be a part of the Digital Learning Community. We have been 1:1 Chromebooks in Kindergarten through fifth grade for the last three years. We have also utilized two Virtual/Distance Learning Labs along with a STEAM Lab that all students have utilized.
Buena Vista has been recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence, a Palmetto Gold Award Recipient and has an overall achievement rating of excellent. As we focus on our World Class Skills one of our highlights is that every student at Buena Vista has utilized one of our 8 3D printers at least once in the last two years. In fact, we have created and printed many items in our STEAM Lab. In one opportunity we held a competition to create Adirondack chairs. Three were selected and we partnered with one of our local Career centers to build these Adirondack chairs out of the wood from our 3D prints. From ideas to actuality, the chairs are on our campus and being utilized by our students, faculty and staff.
