Dear SVHS Students and Families -

Welcome to the 2024-2025 school year! We are excited to return as your administrative team and can’t wait to welcome you to start the new school year. Serving as Principal the last two years, it has been a joy to continue to work with our students, families, teachers, and staff, and I'm looking forward to continuing to work in partnership with you so SVHS can provide the best possible high school experience for our community.

This school year, our focus will be on engagement in the classroom and continuing to build community. Our theme for the school year is Instruct to Soar: Dragon Scholars Leading the Way. We have a new bell schedule this year to help support our areas of focus and adhere to our required instructional minutes. A couple of highlights of the bell schedule are: 

• SEL Time: once a week students will have an extra 15 minutes with their 5th period class where we will focus on community building

• Dragon Time: once per week for 45 minutes students will go to one of their current classes (each week a different period will meet) where they will have a chance to review material and get additional support with their teacher

I encourage our students to get connected and involved at SVHS. We have an amazing school community with numerous opportunities for student engagement, including leadership opportunities, sports, the arts, clubs, tutoring, and more.

We look forward to partnering with you to ensure the safety and academic success of all our students. To that end, if you can please review our Behavior Expectations with your student - we will also be going into classrooms starting the second week of school to review these with all students. Some important areas to review are the policies regarding off-campus, parking lot, cell phones, attendance, and being in good standing. 

Parking Permits: Any student parking on campus is required to have a parking permit. They are free, but an application must be filled out to get one. Students can pick up a parking permit application at Back to School Registration at the Student Activities table. They can also pick up a parking permit application once school starts from the Student Activities Window. Parking spots will be assigned, students will be able to pick their preferred spot for the school year when they turn in their completed application. Starting Monday, August 19, assigned parking spots will be enforced and students without parking permits will have to park elsewhere. Students can only park in student parking, if students park in a staff or visitor parking spot there will be consequences including detentions, and loss of parking permit for repeated issues.

We encourage you to access the multiple communication platforms we use to communicate with families.  Follow us on Instagram @svhs_official and stay informed.  We also want to remind you that for our school-to-home communication at Sonoma Valley High School we use ParentSquare. This unified communications platform is designed to keep parents and guardians informed and encourage greater engagement and connection with SVHS.  Each week, we will share our Digital Bulletin via ParentSquare and this is a useful resource with updates and information regarding events, activities, and opportunities for our students to get involved.  We encourage our families to participate in family engagement nights and activities. We are grateful for your partnership and THANK YOU for supporting our students.

Here’s to a great 2024-2025 school year at SVHS!

Sincerely,

Molly Kiss
Principal