Plaza Elementary

Virginia Beach, VA

Dr. Mary Daniels Principal

Dr. Sheila S. Magula, Superintendent

Plaza Elementary School serves a student population of about 400 students in the Virginia Beach City Public School District. The community is a mixture of military and blue-collar workers, with a majority of its students working at nearby military bases or for companies providing services to the military. Most of the students have families with two incomes, with birth parents working.

The mission at Plaza is “In cooperation with family and community, to ensure every child maximizes his or intellectual by providing multiple opportunities for mastery of literacy and content.”

Plaza moved to a year-round calendar in 2004 and since then the staff has work diligently at improving scores on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests. Students in third and fifth grade are given high-stakes tests in the areas of Reading, Writing, Math, Science and Social Studies.

Since the adoption of the balanced calendar, third grade scores have risen from 71% to 84% in Reading, 79% to 89% in Math, 76% to 95% in Science and from 81% to 89% in Social Studies.

The fifth grade results are impressive as well.

The gain in Reading was 81% to 87%, from 87% to 97% in Writing, 835 to 94% in Math, from 85% to 93% in Science and from 73% to 96% in Social Studies.

Plaza is an active supported of Year-Round Education, with its administrators, teachers, staff and parents serving as advocates and ambassadors for the programs. All have spoken to the local school board and have sung the praises of Year-Round Education.

Plaza’s intersession model has proven to be the standard for other Year-round Schools in the area. A booklet outlining the intersession to be taught at Plaza has been distributed to parents in the Plaza community as well as parents in surrounding communities, This year the school approved 25 out-of-zone requests for parents of students in those other zones who wanted heir children to attend a year-round school.

The school is particularly proud of its intersession programs that begin at the end of the first, second and third grading period. It allows for remediation and enrichment programs every nine weeks. Students are selected for either remediation or enrichment classes based on report card grades, teacher recommendation and reading levels. All students are invited to at least one intersession