DeVonda Cheeks

Greetings

Welcome back to school! It is with great honor and enthusiasm that I greet you as we kick of the 2024-2025 school year. I hope each of you took some time to share with family and friends, and to relax and refresh for the bright minds of our incoming and returning students.

As I reflect on last year, I must applaud you and thank you for your hard work and dedication. I am continually grateful for the level of planning, instruction, and guidance demonstrated among the staff. It will take a renewed mindset and focus to meet the challenges we face in growing our students, and I invite you to think innovatively toward stretching the students’ minds and their capacity for learning.

This year, as we “Build on Excellence while Blazing New Trails,” I challenge each of you to bring your “A” game each day, to rethink how we teach and what we expect from students; to empower students to think deeply and analytically; to move beyond recall and memorization; and to develop a skill set that prepares them to maneuver the paths of secondary education and into the careers awaiting them in the future. 

We will focus this year on the intentionality of our efforts: promoting positive culture school-wide, engaging our parents and community to understand their roles and importance in the lives of our students, and supporting and empowering the staff to be instructionally sound and effective each day, while continuing our pursuit of excellence in all things dear to HPMS.

It goes without saying that our love and passion for educating and impacting children is what fuels us to remain in this profession. Let’s use what drives us, to do what we say we are passionate about! 

You are critical to our success, and I look forward to the heights we will reach together during this 2024-2025 school year.