The 2021-2022 school year was another successful year of learning at Ladson Elementary School. Our school continued to provide a safe, nurturing environment where students are academically challenged in CD through 5th grade. We continue to place academics and student achievement as priorities and our school is helping all students develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by providing a variety of opportunities for students to create and collaborate. In a typical school year, examples of our students employing these skills could be found on our morning news show, our recycling team, our robotics team, and our chorus. Many of these activities had to be paused due to Covid.  This year, we began slowly bringing those activities back.  We reinstated the robotics teams, and also launched two new programs: GLAM girls and the Ladson Running Club.

This year we have also increased our efforts towards ensuring that all students are reading on grade level by focusing on data-driven, skill-targeted small group instruction combined with goal setting and progress monitoring at all grade levels.  We have also increased our intervention efforts through the hiring of additional interventionists and a partnership with an organization called Heart Math Tutoring.  Through these initiatives we were able to intervene with approximately 150 students in 1st through 4th grades in reading and 25 students in grades 2 through 5 in math.

At Ladson Elementary we recognize that parent and community involvement is integral to what we do. We strive to engage our families and school community in the educational process as much as possible. This year we employed virtual options to engage our families and were able to end the year with an in-person 5th grade moving up ceremony. We held virtual parent information sessions, a holiday book drive-through, a Family Literacy Night and a Math Night, and continued our annual Science night. Staff and community members worked together to create engaging activities that families could participate in at home with us via Zoom. Parents were kept informed through school agendas, school wide texts, weekly call-outs, and social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Remind. With the leadership and support of our Parent Advocate, parents are linked with community resources and volunteer opportunities within the school.

At Ladson Elementary School we believe that it is our responsibility to develop all aspects of our students so that they have every opportunity to excel in today’s society. We continued to provide a safe, challenging, and caring learning environment while nurturing the skills necessary for our students to graduate college and career ready.

Janet Brown, Principal

Blaze Johnson, SIC Chairperson