Greetings! 

Seasons greetings from all of us at Uplift Education. It has been quite a year, from building playgrounds in six inches of snow with the NBA Cares team in February to celebrating the opening of our newest schools in summer's 100° heat. Thank you to everyone who came out to support our schools.

As a thank you for making this a great year, we would like to share three sweet moments from our students with you: an inspirational speech, some holiday caroling, and original artwork and poetry.

               
Looking back, 2010 has been an amazing and busy year. In January, 13 of our North Hills Prep students kicked the year off with a trip to Singapore to compete in The Hague International Model United Nations (THIMUN) conference.

Spring was an exciting time as we prepared for the opening of our two newest schools - Heights Prep in West Dallas and Laureate Prep in downtown Dallas. We also had our largest bond sale to-date, $56 million, to help expand our schools and reach our goal of serving 10,000 students.

With our inaugural graduating class of 26 students from Peak Prep, May brought a series of heartfelt moments for many in the Uplift family. We proudly celebrated Peak Prep's 100 percent college acceptance rate with our first ever College Signing Day, and the excitement continued with commencement ceremonies. Mayor Tom Leppert addressed Peak Prep's first graduating class in a packed Crum Auditorium at SMU, and Dr. Frank Lazarus, President Emeritus of the University of Dallas, joined North Hills Prep as its keynote speaker for commencement.

Despite being on break, there was no slowing down in the summer. Uplift joined with state legislators and other leaders in the charter movement to celebrate the 15th anniversary of charter schools in Texas. North Hills Prep was once again named to the top 20 best public high schools in America by Newsweek magazine and 14 of our 15 schools were rated Exemplary or Recognized by the Texas Education Agency.

September brought with it exciting news of a $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Teacher Incentive Fund and the accreditation of North Hills International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme, making it one of only 21 schools in the Americas to offer the full K-12 IB programming.

The fall semester has been full of fun and hard work at our schools. Six seniors and one junior from Summit International Prep earned the AP Scholar distinction, five North Hills students have been named National Merit semifinalists, Ms. Holden from Hampton Prep was featured in The Dallas Morning News, and members of the Bush family visited Peak Prep to celebrate the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy's essay writing contest.

As we enjoy our winter break, we see steel framing going up for new buildings and college acceptance letters already flowing in for the class of 2011 - our first year with graduating classes at all our high schools. We were also recently applauded by the State of Texas comptroller's office for our balance of student achievement with highly effective spending with five-star marks for our two campuses reviewed in its Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST).

Thank you for being a part of our family in 2010. None of our accomplishments would have been possible without your support.

Happy holidays,

Yasmin Bhatia, CEO

P.S. Follow us on Facebook for more cute videos and pictures of our scholars in action.