• CONGRATULATIONS to our students who represented Elkins Pointe Middle School at the STATE Science Fair this year! Rahil Patel, Saif Ali, and Samin Islam examined the effect of sterilization method on bacterial colony counts. They placed second place at the state level competition, up against some of the best Science students in the state of Georgia. We are so proud of their work!! And once again, let's celebrate Charles Fiske and Ramtin Mahmoudkhani who studied the effect of aeration on water quality during an algae bloom - placing first at the state level competition. We are so proud of all of our students that participated and especially these fabulous five Titans!
• We are so proud of our Orchestra students Nathan Gay and Morgen Dehaan!  They both auditioned for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Talent Development Program. The audition process is very rigorous with students having to pass three highly competitive rounds.  Both Nathan & Morgen passed the first round and performed very well in the second.  Nathan has been passed to the third round where he is one of only 8 left out of an initial field of close to 100 kids!  At this point, Nathan is being assigned a private teacher from the Atlanta Symphony.  He and the other finalists will take a month of private lessons and undergo a deep evaluation.  Following the lesson month, the ASO will generally take 4 or 5 of the finalists into the program.  Good luck Nathan!
• Congratulations to the EPMS Track Team on an excellent track meet at the Fulton County MS Meet on 3/29/14. The students were ready to compete and did quite well. A special congratulations goes to Carlos Esqueda for placing 1st in his heat in the 100m dash and Nathaniel Wonsley for placing 1st in shot put.

• On Monday of next week, the state school scores will be released to the public (CCRPI). Due to the significant changes to the calculations for the 2012-2013 school year, the state of Georgia decided to go back and re-calculate 2011-2012 so that parents would have an accurate point of comparison as they look at these two years. Under the new calculations many schools experienced a lower score for the 2011-2012 school year than the original calculation, including Elkins Pointe Middle School. We did experience a small drop in our 2012-2013 school score by comparison. As I've shared with you before, this is a concern that we have been aware of since August of 2013 and have already addressed and improved upon for this entire school year. While I cannot tell you what the score is yet, I would like to point out that our Achievement Points INCREASED during 2012-2013, meaning that we had a higher percentage of students who were meeting or exceeding expectations on their state tests. This is excellent news! The areas that we experienced drops are separate - which I will be able to explain more once the scores have been released. Click here for more details about the calculations and an explanation from the state about their decision to change the calculations.

Have a great weekend, Titans.

Your partner in education,