Dear CISD Families,

It is recognition season in Coppell ISD, a time when we honor our high-achieving students and outstanding teachers and, new for this year, our alumni with our first-ever Distinguished Alumni Awards.

This week, the Coppell ISD Education Foundation held its annual banquet, where our top 5 percent students, Teachers of the Year and Distinguished Alumni were recognized. Each of the students honored had the opportunity to thank a teacher who has been most influential in his or her life. Our students wouldn’t be able to succeed at the levels they do without their teachers, and it is such a heartfelt and moving moment to have this hard work recognized each year. Our seniors shared the examples of great teaching and the strong relationships that were formed with the honored teachers they recognized at the banquet.  It was a special opportunity to see our core values in action and celebrate the success of our students and staff.

In addition, all of our schools’ Teachers of the Year were honored at the event, which was topped off with the announcement of our District Elementary Teacher of the Year Samira Khan, 5th grade teacher at Richard J. Lee Elementary, and our District Secondary Teacher of the Year Cathy Douglas, CHS9 science teacher.  I congratulate Samira and Cathy for receiving this high honor.

The success of our alumni is one of the best examples of our story.  So, this year we launched our first-ever CISD Distinguished Alumni Award. The stories of the first recipients of this award —  Dr. Toral Patel (Class of 1999), Clay Phillips (Class of 1978), Jacob Schick (Class of 2001) and Pete Wilson (Class of 1965)— personify the character, integrity and success that our students can achieve and are so inspiring.

This time of year is also the season of college acceptance notifications. Many of our students have been accepted to Ivy League colleges, including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Penn, Columbia, several military academies and the major Texas universities including UT, A&M, Baylor and TCU. Many of these relationships begin at our College Night at CHS in the fall, where we have several Ivy League and other elite universities attend to recruit our students.  With a 99 percent graduation rate, many of our students go on to college or careers, thanks to our Career and Technical Education program, or the military, and I am proud of each and every one of them!

Enjoy the weekend with your family.