Welcome to Howard School! I am very proud to be the principal of Howard Elementary School, which serves 450 preschool through sixth grade students. Howard is a special place where high expectations and an emphasis on effort and hard work pay off in high student achievement. Our staff is dedicated to the success of each child and is relentless in doing whatever it takes to help our students to be successful in school and in life. We are the proud recipient of the Title One Academic Achievement Award, California Distinguished School, as well as earning the honor as a Gold Ribbon School. Additionally, we have been awarded the California Business for Education Excellence Award for two consecutive years. During the 2023-2024 school year, Howard earned the Platinum PBIS Implementation Award. The fundamental purpose of PBIS is to establish clear school wide expectations with incentives and consequences, teach our students the Positive Behavior Expectations, and create a recognition system for students doing the right thing. At Howard, our Behavior Expectations are Respect, Responsibility, Kindness, and Integrity.

Howard is a safe and caring setting for student learning. We take time to get to know our kids well and offer a variety of extra-curricular activities to help children to engage in school. Some of these activities include noon-time soccer, volleyball, basketball, Reindeer Run Practice, choir, instrumental music, spelling bee, Crazy Contraption, poetry day, Science Fair, and Math Pentathlon. Evening events, designed to bring our families to school for fun, are offered each trimester. These include: Class O’Treat, Sports NIght, and Art Festival.

We know that students achieve better when they are on time to school every day and our attendance rate is high. We work as a community to stress the importance of attendance and provide assistance, when needed, to make sure families and students feel supported on attendance.

Working with families to support students is a major emphasis in our school and parents are asked to take an active role in their child’s education. We are proud of our 100% attendance at Parent-Teacher conferences and know that this home-school connection is critical to our success.

Howard School, located in the southern portion of the City of Montclair, is one of thirty-three schools in the Ontario-Montclair School District. Howard serves 450 students in grades Pre-Kindergarten through 6. Our Head Start Preschool program enrollment is limited to 16 students each, for am and pm sessions. Grades TK, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are kept at the 26-to-1 student-teacher ratio, kindergarten are kept at 24-to-1, and with grades 4-6 being limited to 32 students. All Howard’s students receive free lunch and breakfast. In 2010 Howard was named a California Distinguished School and earned the Title I Academic Achievement Award.

We are looking forward to a terrific school year. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at Kelly.Guillen@omsd.net. Thanks for visiting our webpage.

Sincerely,

Kelly Guillen