Blacksburg Primary School is helping all students develop the World Class Knowledge, World Class Skills, and Life and Career Characteristics of the Profile of the SC Graduate by providing students with a safe, caring, and academically challenging learning environment. Our school motto is: "Where we play, learn and grow together!" Our vision is Every Child Every Day.  Our goals at BPS are to:

• We ENGAGE in authentic and rigorous learning opportunities that honor individual differences and learning styles.
• We SERVE others and make the world a better place.
• We CONNECT by building positive relationships in a safe and caring community.
• We EMPOWER the whole child through academics, social, emotional, and physical well-being.
• We COLLABORATE to impart knowledge every day. 

We believe the following:

• Every student deserves a quality education.
• Every student can learn.
• All students are unique and are provided with opportunities to reach their full potential.
• Every child deserves a community and school support system.
• The environment should support the emotional, social, cultural, and educational needs (of the whole child).

At BPS we believe that the whole child must be accounted for in order to teach children.  We set up our schedule, our vision and mission statements, and our daily activities to reflect this.  We are currently working on our PAIDEIA national certification.  We have had all teachers complete PAIDEIA training that centers on student voice.  All students are granted a breakfast and lunch free of cost.  We do not turn down any children, even if they come to school late.  We focus on the whole child from the time the students enter the building until the time they leave.  We implement best practices at BPS.  We have given out hundreds of books as part of our PBIS practices using our state-of-the-art book vending machine.  Teachers have used the science kits purchased from Engineering is Elementary and the science lab.  We will continue to grow this at BPS.  Our reading coach has worked on coaching cycles related to Orton Gillingham and reading knowledge.  We stayed hyper focused on data and let the data guide our decisions.

We have reached out to many community partners that have helped us buy more books for students, support our economics projects in second grade, and help with individual teacher and interventionist's needs.  Teachers participate in staff development to focus on reading, writing, math, integrated curriculum, differentiated instruction, RtI, and are constantly seeking new strategies to use in the classroom such as Project-Based Learning, Reading Interventions, Fountas and Pinell Phonics kits implementation, Orton Gillingham, iReady, GOLD, Dial 4 testing, STEM, Print Concepts, Jan Richardson's Guided Reading, Leveled Literacy Intervention and data analysis at the class level to help drive the instruction. We are proud of our academic progress this year and know that we can grow even more.  We plan to focus on Tier 1 instruction and going deeper than just surface-level learning next year.    

Professional development is provided for teachers on a regular basis to focus on raising scores in all subject areas.  Data notebooks, MTSS (RtI) data, LAP folders, Intervention cards, running records, and anecdotal notes are kept on each student. The majority of our 2nd graders met or exceeded in reading and met or exceeded in iReady.  We started the year with 11 percent of students on grade level and ended with 43 percent on or above grade level.  Thirty-seven percent of students were two grade levels below at the beginning of the year and only 16% were two grade levels below by the end of the year.  While we recognize that we have work to do, we are proud of our accomplishments.   We will continue using LLI to target Tier II and III RtI students.  RtI data will be recorded in our Enrich system and used to keep our processes systemic.   

We have implemented Boosterthon for the past four years to fund professional development needs and to build every classroom's library.  We will host the Boosterthon Fundraiser in the Fall this coming year to raise much-needed funds for math and science purposes, another need we are passionate about at BPS. 

BPS will plan family events such as parent reads, parent workshops, math nights, and family fun nights (hopefully COVID stays at bay). This year, we were again selected to participate as 1 of 32 Collective Leadership Schools in the state.  As stated above, this initiative has seen all staff become leaders and serve as key decision-makers as well as choose parent stakeholders to take on leadership roles at our school.  Again, we have some work to do but have tried hard to listen to our stakeholders and make subtle changes.  Parents remain instrumental in this process by reading with their child(ren) every night.  The SC Dept. of Education collects data from surveys regarding learning environment, social and physical environment, and home-school relations.  We use these results to shape our relations with parents, students, and teachers.  This year we were lucky to have Future Forward tutors in our school who worked with Kindergarten students on basic fundamentals.  

Technology is another focus that we schedule through our related arts computer teacher.  Chromebooks, robots, iPads, and laptops are available daily. We have a great Computer Teacher who will be entering her second year at BPS.  We look forward to implementing many more technology activities, including using a drone for marketing our school.  Teachers also, with the help of the technology teacher, use current up-to-date technology in the classroom to facilitate instruction, such as coding activities and the Dash and Dot Robots.  The district purchased all new Promethean Boards last year that supported instruction.  We have four national board-certified teachers.  Our Teacher of the Year is Halee Batchler (2nd Grade Teacher) and our Support Staff of the Year is Kayla Pursley (Title I Coordinator/Parent Liaison). 

We cannot wait to continue our journey!  We are BPS.

SIC Chair: Kristen Sarratt; Principal: Michael Bender