Principal's Welcome

Dear Cooley Families,

As principal of Cooley I’m happy to welcome you into a school community that focuses on and achieves excellence academically at all levels and also strives to be a school where your family feels welcome and supported within a caring community made up of our staff, parents and students. When I came to Cooley as principal six years ago, I decided to put a very important message on the back of our main sign: ‘Expect Excellence’. I did this so that when each one of us leaves our building, we all reminded of this shared expectation. Through this striving for and expecting excellence we have created a truly dynamic and caring school community that achieves outstanding results. Cooley was recognized as a state of Michigan Reward School in 2017 and ranked in the 89th percentile when comparing all K-12 schools across the state. Cooley earned this status, because of high student achievement compared to other schools similar to Cooley and because of our growth in achievement.

Cooley was also recognized as a Beating the Odds school. In the school rankings Cooley ranked 39 percentile rankings higher in our achievement than expected based on our demographics. Cooley also was only one of ten schools in the state of Michigan to be recognized by the Michigan Association of School Boards and SET-SEG for an Excellence in Education Award in 2017. Cooley won this award because of our Close Reading and Essay Writing Project.

At Cooley our students learn to critically read text and write position papers taking a stand on an issue. We work as a school to write multiple essays a month. Last year all of our students combined wrote over 5,000 essays. At Cooley we are proud of our academic rigor and achievement, but we also focus on helping the whole child and families. Our Cooley Crew is leadership development and mentoring for students through cross-grade level teams (K-5). Students will stay on same Crew all years at Cooley. Crew is designed to foster leadership, improve peer relations and provide mentoring. Our Cooley Crew was recognized as the Waterford Youth Assistance 2015 youth group of the year. Cooley has an outstanding, active and supportive PTO. Families have many additional enrichment opportunities because of the time, money and resources our PTO provides to support student learning, school programs and family activities.

I look forward to having you and your family become part of the Cooley Community. I am always available to answer your questions and to show you around Cooley.

Sincerely,

Mike Batten