Principal's Message

Tierra Bonita Elementary School

Dear Tierra Bonita Elementary School Families,

On behalf of our staff at TBES, I am happy to welcome you and your Cheetah(s) to the 2023-2024 school year!  I am so excited to start the year with all of you! We have a lot of our old traditions and some new events this year to bring our community closer together. 

We have new members on staff, Kami Cotterell-5th Grade Teacher, Rachel Huerta-Education Specialist, Anna Andrews-Instructional Aide, and Norberto Nazareno-Night Custodian, Jill Lynch-Impact Teacher and Site Subsitute Teacher. We will be hiring a new Office Assistant and then our school will again be fully staffed. We are looking forward to an exciting year with everyone on board and committed to TBES.  We will be continuing with our commitment to Project Lead the Way, Project Based Learning, Japanese, PE, and STEM for all of our students. We will also be working with our students to support them in small groups and target the areas in their learning that need more support or might need extending. 

This year PUSD will be adopting a new math curriculum called, Illustrative Math. All of our teachers will have gone through the first part of the training by the beginning of the year. We cannot wait to try out this new math curriculum and strengthen our students' math skills. 

We are looking forward to working with our TBES Foundation, TBES PTA, and TBES PAWS  again this year. They provide our students with great opportunities and we hope that our school community will be actively involved by becoming members, participating in events, and volunteering in the classroom. It is our close collaboration with these parent organizations that make us Cheetah Strong!

This past year was pretty awesome, but I’m looking forward to an even more exciting year this year. We are looking forward to a year of fun, calm, and lots of learning at Tierra Bonita. Come join me for an incredible year! Let’s go Cheetahs! 

Your proud principal, 

Michele Tsutagawa Ward