Dear Parents, Students, and MPHS Community:

The 2011-2012 school year is off to a great start. It has been a very busy 1st quarter with the annual Ahwatukee Memorial Bowl and Homecoming taking place in a two week span for the second year in a row. Thank you to our staff, students, parents, and school community for their continued support as we all work together to make Mountain Pointe High School a world-class school. As we continue to move forward I want to remind everyone of our vision: Purpose, Pride, and Performance. These three very powerful words guide our every
move as the school focuses on innovation and continual improvement.

Our first priority remains helping every member of the Pride succeed at a high level. You have received numerous emails this year informing you of the many academic assistance programs that are available for our students. We are excited to have Academic Lab back this year two days a week (Tuesday and Thursday after 2nd period). A new tool to help monitor student achievement is our new student information system. Genesis contains features called ParentVUE and StudentVUE which are much more user-friendly. All parents and students should have received their activation letters. If you or your son/daughter have not, please contact me so we can get your account set up.

Mountain Pointe has received significant recognition for several programs in the last couple of years. The most recent was being named a National School of Distinction in Arts Education by the Kennedy Center for the Arts. For 2011, we are one of four schools in the nation to be honored. We also want to congratulate junior Jesse Smith for being named to the USA Junior National Judo Team and freshman Kiana Brown for being in the top four (45,000 entered the contest) in a nationwide talent search for Kids Star USA. Kiana will find out if she won later this month. Our outstanding faculty continues to receive accolades as well. Patti Duncan was named the Fulton Homes/KNIX Teacher of the Week, K.R. Scott received the 2011 Yale Educator Award, and Brandon Buck has been named a top 10 finalist for Arizona Teacher of the Year. Way to go!

Our staff is also hard at work looking at ways to improve student learning. We have embraced the Professional Learning Community model for school improvement. Each teacher participates in 2 PLCs during the school year. One PLC is content specific to what they are teaching. The teacher may select their second PLC from one of four areas: Response to Academic Lab, Academies, Freshmen Experience, and Academics. The purpose of each of these PLCs is to look at where we are now and where we want to go in the future.

It was recently announced that Mountain Pointe High School had seven students who achieved National Merit Semi-Finalist status. This means that these seven students scored in the top 1% of all students in the country that took the PSAT last year. Congratulations to Joshua Anolick, Tommy Bello, Ryan Hoffman, Ajay Karpur, Alexandrea Martinez, Sean Sannier, and Frank Zhang. This is truly a great honor. Next the seven will compete for National Merit Finalist status. Good Luck!

As the 2nd quarter continues I encourage our students to continue to strive for excellence and never settle for anything less than their best efforts. Parents, thank you for all your support. We are blessed at Mountain Pointe to have a supportive community that believes a quality life starts with a great education.

Sincerely,

Bruce Kipper
Principal