Leadership

Dear Tiger Families,

Welcome to the 2024-2025 school year!  My name is Nick Forgette and it is an honor to be your student's principal. I hope you are recharged and ready to start the new school year! I welcome all of our families new and old and look forward to partnering with you and your child(ren). 

 

At Marionneaux, we ARE “Growing Places”! We are very excited about the growth in which our students have and continue to show over the past year. We look forward to the continuation of this in the upcoming school year as well. This past year we grew +2 in ELA proficiency and stayed the same in Math as measured by state testing. In the past two years we have grown +9 in both ELA and Math. We are currently a “B” rated and “Highly Performing School” as designated by the state of Arizona. 

 

Please join me in welcoming Ms. Sue Connell to our team! Ms. Connell will be serving as our Assistant Principal. Ms. Connell comes to us with 25 years of experience from Pre-K through 8th grade and most recently served her previous school district as the MOWR (Move On When Reading) coordinator. She comes to us with a plethora of expertise in instruction and is excited to start building relationships with our students and families.

 

Curriculum and Instruction:

We are excited to  continue our work through our Project Momentum initiative this year. The goal of this effort is to provide a comprehensive school-improvement model designed to assist students, teachers and  staff members in meeting the goals of increasing overall student success. The model focuses on improvements to instructional quality that have proven to advance student learning at a rate needed to offset challenging factors such as the strong correlation between free and reduced lunch percentage and student outcomes on standardized tests. Again this year, MES has further decreased the learning gap between this regression line. 

 

There will be a continued focus on building relationships with our students and families. In order to reach a child’s mind, we must first capture their heart. Students will be highly engaged in classrooms and will continue to utilize Kagan and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) instructional strategies. 

 

Student Placement:

A great deal of time , effort and thought has gone into the process of student placement for the upcoming school year. Careful consideration was given to create our classes. Input from staff and families as well as student learning styles. Classrooms have been balanced academically and socially. Our class lists are 

structured to provide equitable class sizes at each grade level. Moving students is difficult without causing imbalances and inequities. 

 

Thank you so much for being positive with your child and helping him or her understand that it is impossible to place all students with a preferred best friend or teacher. ALL of our staff works hard to make school a positive experience for ALL students. Marionneaux is eagerly looking forward to enriching your child’s life. Thank you for understanding as it can take a few weeks for a child to acclimate to a new year. We look forward to the start of our school year which will begin on August 9th. We are excited to meet and see you again on August 7th, during “Meet the Teacher Night”. Thank you for choosing Marionneaux Elementary School where our Mission is “Empowering leaders and inspiring life-long learners.”

 

Sincerely,

Principal Forgette