Good morning!  I hope you had a great weekend!  Wyvonna and I certainly enjoyed the weekend because we had our two youngest grandsons stay with us.  Our son was in San Antonio for a dental convention and they brought their two youngest sons with them and they got to stay with us.  Great fun and, no more than I get to see them, I really enjoyed it.

This past week we began the dedications of the schools which we opened this year.  On Wednesday night we had the dedication of Robert L. Vale Middle School and on Saturday we dedicated Nora Forester Elementary School.  First of all I want to congratulate Principal Erika Foerster, the faculty, staff, and students of this school on a great dedication ceremony.  Vale Middle School is named for former state Senator and Representative Robert "Bob" Vale.  He served twenty years in state office and channeled his energy and political skill toward improving education, health care, and the environment.  He played an instrumental role in securing funding for the University of Texas at San Antonio, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and the San Antonio State School.  He passed away from brain cancer in 1992 at the age of 60, leaving behind a legacy of passion and compassion that today continues to benefit the state of Texas and the San Antonio community.  Vale Middle School is the 16^th middle school in Northside.  Congratulations to the Vale Stingrays on a great dedication, especially to the students who did such a great job in their performance.

Secondly, congratulations to Nora Forester Elementary School on a great dedication.  I want to congratulate Principal Jeff Davenport, the faculty, staff, and students on a wonderful dedication program.  Forester Elementary School is named for Nora Forester who was a teacher and also the District's first remedial reading teacher.  She was the first teacher in San Antonio to earn the state reading specialist certification.  She also became the District's first Reading Coordinator, and was very active in state and national reading associations.  She was truly a leader and innovator in establishing reading programs in Northside, and her influence extended across the state and nation.  Forester Elementary School is our 60^th elementary school in Northside, and I congratulate the students on a great dedication program.  Congratulations to the Forester Dragons!

This morning I want to encourage teachers to apply for grant monies which are available through the H-E-B Fund for Teacher Excellence.  To be eligible for the grant, an applicant must be a full-time K-12 teacher in one of the public school districts located in Bexar County, must have taught for at least three years, and must be at least three years away from retirement.  Approved applications will result in the award of individual or team grants ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.  Teachers can use this money for professional development programs such as teacher workshops, Master's degree courses, and Advanced Placement conferences.  H-E-B is awarding $200,000 in grants each year for the next five years for a total of $1,000,000 to Bexar County. Applications for this grant are available on our website under the Grants Department or at an H-E-B store, and they are due November 14, 2008.

Also, I want to encourage teachers and principals to submit nominations for consideration under the H-E-B Excellence in Education Awards.  Information about how to nominate someone and the date for closing the nominations are on our Grants website.  Once nominations are received, applicants will be sent an application form to complete, and these will be used in the judging process by H-E-B.  Finalists will ultimately be announced and then a state winner decided.  A state winner will be chosen for elementary principal and for secondary principal.  Teachers will be chosen for the Rising Star Award which honors exceptionally promising teachers with less than 10 years experience; the Leadership Award honors teachers with 10 to 20 years in the classroom; and the Lifetime Achievement Award salutes teachers with more than 20 years experience.

The H-E-B grants and excellence awards are a great recognition of the hard work principals and teachers do each day and the great job they do in educating our students.  Last year Isabel Anaya of Villarreal Elementary was the state winner of the Rising Star Award, and Northside was the first school district in the state named by H-E-B for the Education in Excellence Award.  This is a great program and I encourage you to go to the H-E-B website, our Grants Department website, or contact our Grants Department for more information.

Also, in this Monday Message I want to report to you the base day enrollment figure for 2008-09 school year.  Each year we identify a base day on which we take our student enrollment count and this is the figure we use to compare our enrollment figures from one year to the next.  I am sure you realize our enrollment fluctuates daily so we must have what we call a "base day."  Our base day this year was Sept. 26 and our enrollment was 88,400 students.  Stan Drezek, Director of Resource Planning, makes our enrollment projections for each year and he is always so close.  He had projected an enrollment of 88,596 for base day, so we were only 196 students short of his projection.  Not bad out of 88,400 students!  This is an increase of 2854 students over our base day last year.  I thought we would be somewhere between 2500 and 3000 growth and we were.  This is less than our growth has been the last three years in which we grew between 3500 and 4000 students each of those years.  This is my seventh year in Northside and we have grown a total of 22,683 students in those seven years, and this represents a 34.5% growth for those years.  No doubt we will continue to grow in Northside and this will continue to be one of the challenges we have.  We opened five new schools this year; we will open four new schools next year; then we'll open five more the following year and then three in 2011-12.  Even though our growth has slowed some because of the economy, it appears we will stay on our schedule of a bond issue every three years which would place a bond election in 2010.

The Benefits Annual Enrollment period will end midnight, October 24, 2008.  If you do not go online and make an election, you will automatically be enrolled for health insurance in the CoverageFirst 1500 plan, employee only, with no cafeteria plan tax sheltering.  Any supplemental plans currently held such as Dental, Vision, Supplemental Life Insurance, Cancer, Legal and Income Replacement will roll over for 2009.

Great things are happening in Northside every day.  Thanks for all you do for our students.  The wonderful dedications show how much success our students and schools experience.  "We Believe" in Northside!