October 30, 2026
Dear Carl Sandburg Middle School Families,
Thank you for partnering with us and supporting us in creating a positive culture at our school! I am excited to share our school designation with you for the 2025-2026 school year.
Carl Sandburg Middle School has earned a Commendable designation on the ISBE School Report Card! This milestone reflects our students’ dedication, our staff’s hard work, and our families' incredible support. Thank you for partnering with us in your child's success.
We have much to celebrate this school year, starting with our multilingual students and educators on the ACCESS assessment, where proficiency exceeded the state average by 5%, alongside higher program exit rates than schools across the state. Overall academic growth also showed strong momentum: Language Arts proficiency surpassed the state average by 4.1% and increased 8% from the previous school year. Math proficiency grew by 2.3%, and the overall percentage of students meeting their growth target beat the state average. Most notably, last year’s seventh-grade students outperformed the state average growth by 9.4%. We exceeded the state average for the number of eighth-grade students passing Algebra 1. Finally, our student absenteeism rate is 21.8%, below the state average of 23.5%, thanks to our front office staff’s dedication to strong family communication. These accomplishments would not have been possible without the dedicated teachers and staff of Carl Sandburg Middle School.
Looking ahead, we are focusing our improvement efforts on mathematics. We are in a curriculum review year to identify a stronger resource that better fits our students' needs. In addition, we are looking for professional development opportunities for math teachers as well as all staff.
We have a lot to celebrate from this past school year at Carl Sandburg Middle School. We will continue to support and train our dedicated staff to grow as professionals to better suit the needs of all students. I’m grateful for the collaboration between our families and our staff. We are looking forward to an even better 2026-2027 school year and, as always, Live The Tiger Code.
Sincerely,
Mr. Dan Bryant
Interim Principal
Carl Sandburg Middle School
Parent Letter PDF (en español)