Principal's Message

Dear Highlands Families:

Highlands Elementary School is a culturally-rich community that is committed to helping each student achieve academic and personal excellence.  Our teaching staff is highly qualified and we are continually learning and growing professionally in order to serve the needs of each student.

At Highlands, we believe it is our role to disrupt inequitable outcomes for our students. Staff at Highlands is dedicated to an embedded professional learning model rooted in ongoing collaboration with teams, coaches and administration. Our instruction is designed to position students positively and powerfully as sense-makers and knowledge-generators. Staff at Highlands understands what we do and say matters and deserves critical analysis. Our language and action constructs or constrains opportunities for children to build meaningful, positive and sustained relationships to learning.

Social Emotional Learning is a key component of our instructional program. Students require dedicated time and space to practice appropriate socialization. Highlands has adopted Positive Discipline as our framework for accomplishing this goal. Positive discipline is a shift in our thinking as we have moved away from a compliancy-based system towards a community-based system. We understand that as humans people have a need to belong. Teachers and staff at Highlands work diligently to build strong relationships with each student leading to powerful communities in the classroom and building.

We believe that each student has the capacity to grow and learn the skills necessary to become successful adults.  At Highlands, we believe reaching this goal requires strong partnerships with our families and community.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have concerns, questions, or feedback about our programs here at Highlands.

Welcome to a year of learning and growth!

Alfred DeBlasio, Principal

(425) 204-4600