The Mission of Westgate Community School

Westgate Community School is a small school of innovation that seeks to serve gifted and creative students who would benefit from a creative, collaborative and less traditional educational environment.

Vision Statement

At Westgate Community School, gifted learners will explore their passions and develop their knowledge and skills, achieving success by focusing on individualized goals in a community centered on academic,  personal, social, and technological excellence.

Guiding Principles

The Westgate Community School is founded upon a set of guiding principles that help define our vision, goals, and daily practices.

Our vision is a school that welcomes and provides opportunities for all gifted learners, including highly and profoundly-gifted, twice-exceptional, divergent and creative gifted students to pursue their intellectual growth through cooperative relationships between educators, parents, students, and the community.  At our school, gifted learners will explore their passions in ways that encourage academic excellence and individualized learning in an environment focused on imparting critical social, personal, and technological skills.

Westgate Community School will:

1. Create a small community school designed to meet the intellectual, social, and emotional needs of exceptional gifted learners.
2. Establish a program that includes research based practices in gifted education, including acceleration, enrichment, curriculum compacting, and flexible grouping so that each student is challenged to perform to his or her potential.
3. Provide a learning environment where diverse learning styles are understood, accepted, appreciated, and employed.
4. Promote learning experiences that allow students to authentically and meaningfully apply their knowledge, interests, and skills through community involvement, in-depth study, and problem based inquiry.
5. Foster an environment that allows students to recognize and accept their own capabilities, interests and needs while also recognizing, accepting and appreciating the needs and achievements of others.
6. Provide a learning environment that is both structured and flexible enough to match the strengths and needs of individual students.
7. Promote a culture that values open communication, critical thinking skills, transparent decision-making, and active goal-setting for all.
8. Create and maintain a safe, respectful, and compassionate learning community for students, parents, and staff.
9. Define and measure success in a variety of ways that may include self-assessment, performance assessments, criterion referenced assessments, and standardized measurement instruments.
10. Invest in ongoing adult and professional education opportunities to enable our staff, board, parents and community to enhance their ability to meet the needs of our gifted students as we strive for continuous improvement.