Collaboration, cooperation, dedication and hard work, those are the keys used by Principal Dean DeSantis and the staff at Grant Middle School. Principal DeSantis took those keys, instilled an expectation for high achievement in his students at Grant and used that combination to unlock the door to unprecedented success school-wide on state mathematics tests last year.
Grant Middle School saw an almost 11 percentage point improvement in mathematics scores in the 2011-2012 school year. It was a shift that took them from one of the lowest performing schools in the district to one of the most-improved schools in the district, but that shift did not happen overnight.
“First we established a number of procedures in the classroom and around school. We created a safe and positive learning environment that had structure and allowed our students to develop strong relationships with their teachers,’’ DeSantis said.
