Newsletters & School Communications

Letters & Written Communications

Spring Highlights 2026

Highlight Letter Spring 2026 from Dr. Blackwell

May 21, 2026

 

Greetings Centennial uKnighted Community:

 

It’s officially the close of the 25-26 school year at Centennial – a strong, impactful, cohesive year. With summertime knocking momentarily, I’d like to share some highlights of this year along with my deep gratitude for your partnership.

 

My Focus Areas

My goal remains to keep Centennial on an upward trajectory, ensuring students here have an excellent academic and extra-curricular experience. I tell everyone that our students and school community are second-to-none.

 

My primary focus remains building positive relationships, and a significant part of that is ensuring a safe school climate. For the second year in a row, Centennial has been recognized by the GaDOE with their “Ready Georgia Seal of Preparedness” after reviewing our safety/security protocols. Key in our approach is building relationships. I enjoy greeting students at the front doors and fist-bumping them during class change, seeing them during lunch duty, and most importantly in monitoring their academic experience; this year I made 248 classroom visits. I especially enjoyed celebrating them at our monthly perfect attendance celebrations and in our PBIS events like The Glow Party where their positive behavior points turned into rewards. Similarly, I’ve been fortunate to make connections with many of you at events, volunteer efforts, or just waving in carpool. Thank you for your partnership and feedback. Thank you also for creating home expectations that support our work at Centennial.

 

My second focus is on academic practices to raise student outcomes including things like student agency where students do more of the cognitive lift than adults, phasing lessons so teachers aren’t exclusively lecturing, differentiating instruction to meet students’ individual needs, and focused notes to promote content retention and school-wide note-taking skills. Staff has participated in professional development in these areas. Their instructional work – and students’ academic focus – has helped Centennial achieve: a mid-year honor roll recognizing 30% of the student body with a 94 GPA and above, a spring awards night recognizing over 300 students for exemplary academic performance, an Advanced Placement Silver designation for increased AP participation and increased AP results, and 62% of our graduating class of 2026 being Hope Scholarship eligible.

 

The third focus area has been to provide high-level student supports. Our multi-tiered systems of support team was one of three model schools for our district. In MTSS we’re providing mentorship, math and reading interventions, behavioral supports, and caring staff members who work as a team to improve outcomes for students. I’m equally excited about our student-, parent-, and partner-planned Wellness Wednesdays for next year and continued efforts to support student health and wellness.  PTSA, SGC, and the athletic booster are supporting our students’ involvement in school and beyond. I look forward to you plugging in to these important groups next year and donating time, funding, or both to help ensure their critical and impactful programming.

 

Other Highlights

We celebrated Campus Security Associate Mr. James Grantham as Fulton County Schools’ overall School Professional of the Year. Boys Basketball and Baseball made the playoffs. Girls and Boys LAX, Girls Soccer, and Girls Tennis advanced to the Sweet 16. Boys Tennis and Boys Soccer advanced to the Elite 8. Girls Golf, Wrestlers, Track, and Swimmers advanced to state. We celebrated 12 students in April who signed to play at college. All music ensembles received superior ratings at LGPE, and 9 students signed to continue in the Fine Arts at the collegiate level for Music, Theater, and Visual Arts. And student film won second place in “Crazy Eights” at film competition in Tampa!

 

As summertime begins, know that Centennial is thankful for the opportunity to work with your children. For me personally it is my privilege and honor to do the work that I love at Centennial. As always, if you need something, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our summer staff, to my administrative team, or to me. And for our returning students and families, we look forward to seeing you Thursday, July 30^th for Centennial’s back-to-school Open House and on August 3^rd for the first day of school.

 

Sincerely,
 Dr. Opie Blackwell, Principal