Melissa Carruth

Field Report
Name of School District: Novi Community Schools
Name of School: Village Oaks
Mentor: Susan K. Burnham, Principal of Village Oaks Elementary
School
Brief Description of Mentors Duty:
Serving as a K-4 building principal, your job encompasses everything.
She does have 1 secretaries under her, but no assistant principal or
teacher leader within the building. Therefore, Sue Burnham wears
many hats. As a systems leader, she attends all PTO meetings, meets
with grade levels, school improvement, and administration on a
monthly basis. She leads weekly staff meetings three times a month,
and provides PLC time the fourth week, but checks in on each PLC. On
a daily basis, she does car duty both in the morning and after school,
she meets with students about writers wall of fame and birthdays.
She works in the cafeteria to maintain order, monitor the lunch helpers
and to serve pizza on Wednesdays. She makes a presence in all
classrooms each week and conducts all teacher evaluations following
Marzanos iObservation model. She maintains the building budget,
approves classroom supplies, writes grants, and serves as a liaison
between our building and the district.
Description of Environment:
Village Oaks Elementary School is a neighborhood school that has been
serving the Novi community for over three decades. It is one of the
five kindergarten-4th grade elementary schools in Novi that has an
enrollment of 491 student; 246 females, 245 males. It has the second
highest enrollment of the Novi K-4 elementary schools and is the most
diverse elementary school of the five. Village Oaks has an ethnicity
breakdown of 56.21% white, 4.07% Hispanic, 15.68% African
American, and 24.03% Asian American. Village Oaks has more
students that are white, African American, and Hispanic compared to
that of the district average. The district average of the following
subcategories are 51.6% white, 2.5% Hispanic, 8.6% African American,
and 35.3% Asian American. It is one of the two Title One schools
within the district, as it serves 19.75% students who receive free and
reduced meals. This is also above the district average, which is 5.3%.
It is not a school of choice for residents that live outside of the district,
with the exception of children of staff members. Additionally, we are
not a school of choice to parents within the district. Students attend

their home elementary school. After fourth grade, the students of all
five elementary schools will feed into Novi Meadows, which is a grade
five six building. The building has a PTO comprised of six parents
and a variety of school-wide committees that pay for field trips,
yearbooks for all 4th graders and runs school events, like spring fling,
Bingo, and a Hoedown.