Superintendent's Message
Dear Parents and Guardians,
Summer break has wound down and final plans for the start of the 2023-24 school year are being put into place. We are very excited about what is to come for our students and staff and we look forward to another successful school year. In early August we will open our eighth TK-8 district school, Evelyn Costa Elementary. It will welcome approximately 500 students and will gradually fill in as development proceeds in the Neighborhood B section of College Park. In total, our district has nine schools and we project just under 7800 students on August 3, the first day of school. Mountain House High School is expecting to house 2250 students alone in its ninth year of existence. We want to welcome our new site and district administrators to our leadership team: Adam Auerbach, principal Mountain House High School; Karen Perez, principal Wicklund Elementary School; Michelle Bautista, principal Hansen Elementary School; Corinne Pacheco, principal Costa Elementary School (formerly principal at Hansen Elementary School); Aparna Grace, vice principal Mountain House High School, and Kristin Ward, vice principal at Altamont Elementary School. Also, we welcome Ben Fobert as Director of Education Services (former principal at Mountain House High School) and Travis Manley as Director of Special Education (former principal at Wicklund Elementary School). Our district leadership team is strong and the new members will contribute greatly to the district’s culture of achievement.
The Board of Trustees wanted to reach out to the Lammersville Unified education community to express their deepest gratitude for the supportive commitment to education we have experienced over the years. With your support, we continue to provide students a high quality educational experience and exceptional opportunities in extracurricular activities, be that academic, athletic, or VAPA. We will continue to strive to build upon the established programs and will endeavor to find new and exciting ways to inspire our students and highly trained staff.
We are proud of the foundational program available to our students. This includes our progress building and implementing initiatives that are designed to fit within the three district goals: 1) Systematic Closure of Student Opportunity Gaps 2) Instruction and Curriculum Efficacy 3) 21st Century Outcomes and Stakeholder Communication. In the 2023-24 school year, there will be three focus areas that fall within each goal districtwide. Goal 1: We will strengthen the District’s Professional Learning Communities (PLC) by modernizing its practices through the Impact Teams model; Goal 2: We will re-emphasize the best practices in “good first time teaching” based on our award winning professional development programs. Goal 3: We will implement programs and strategies based on the 2022-23 analysis of instructional programs’, the programs’ impact and how each are benefitting LUSD students. This effort is intended to identify the impact our systems have on students who do not meet standard or students who need additional opportunities to access our educational programs.
Lammersville Unified School District offers its students many award winning programs ranging from the Early College Pathway Program to Project Lead the Way; Science Olympiad to Mock Trial; Speech and Debate to HOSA (Health Occupations Students of American); Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) to Athletics. There are currently over 100 active clubs at Mountain House High School and well-rounded elective opportunities at each of our K-8 schools. Our teachers work diligently to provide high level instruction daily and many then provide academic, VAPA, or athletic opportunities after school.
We anticipate another year of positive results based on last year’s state assessments as unofficial early data show that our status as the highest achieving school district in the County continues. In our region, Lammersville Unified School District sits at nearly the same level as the historically high achieving East Bay districts of Pleasanton, Dublin and San Ramon.
Dr. Kirk Nicholas
Superintendent