The evening performance has been moved to June 11 (Thursday) because of a conflict with the Board Meeting which will be held here on Tuesday, June 9. Also, the afternoon performance on June 9 has been canceled. All students are invited to the morning show at 9:30 a.m.(changed from 9:20 a.m.). (5/26)
Student Placement
Thank you again for sharing your concerns and doing it in a way that was very professional and focused on kids as well as unique needs and experiences of staff. I am reflecting on the feedback and will discuss this with the Leadership Team at our next regularly scheduled meeting on May 26. If you have additional feedback or suggestions for solutions please share them with your team leader.
Yearbook Follow Up
I spoke with Crystal today and taking into account staff and PTA feedback, I would like to do the following:
- Yearbooks will be passed out to all students on Friday, June 5. Do not hold on to yearbooks for another day.
- Teachers will receive pre-order books the day before.
- 100 yearbooks will be made available for sale at PTA's Donuts with Dad. They were planning on doing this at the event already.
- A robo call will go out to parents letting them know that the release date has been changed to June 5.
- Any books that are not sold will be made available for sale the first 20 minutes of the day and 20 minutes after school.
- I want grade level teams to talk about how they will approach giving students time to get signatures on their yearbooks. Remember that this is about students and their limited opportunity to connect and share with students at the grade level, not just their homeroom class.
- Lastly....monitor book signing. Actively monitor this after discussing the expectations for appropriate and kind signing.
Variety of Updates
Staffing - Interviews for the 1st Grade, 5th Grade and Associate Administrator have taken place, candidates selected and forwarded for recommendation to the school board. Action will be taken at tomorrow's school board meeting for the first two positions and the second one will be acted on at the May 26 board meeting.
1st Grade = Michele Ziemer coming from Centennial teaching 1st grade.
5th Grade = Priscilla Shepherd coming from Pioneer Valley teaching 5th grade. If you didn't know this, Priscilla is Sarah Krakow's sister. :-)
Associate Administrator = Tawnia Vanderwood coming from Graham Elementary teaching in the LAP program.
Learning Intentions - I have been reading through the learning intentions that staff shared. It's taking longer than I anticipated but I will be sharing information soon on how the staff as whole did and feedback individually. Thank you for your focus. So far I have been impressed by your work.
Evaluations - Please update your student growth goal information and share it with me through Google Docs if you have not done so already. I'm working on getting evaluations written and ready for you to sign off on. Please take care of the growth goal updates ASAP so I can refer to them. Also, using the first formal observation, do the following:
For Comprehensive Staff
Open the observation by clicking the middle bubble on the Observation Sessions home screen.
Scroll down and click on the Student Growth tab. The rubrics for 3,6,8 are available to mark.
For Focused Staff
Open the observation by clicking the middle bubble on the Observation Sessions home screen.
Scroll down and click on the Focus tab. The rubrics for 3,6, or 8 are available to mark.
Student Placement - Urgent -Please Read!!!
This is a reminder that we will be working on student placement for next year at our Late Arrival on Wednesday. I am finalizing the worksheets you will be using to do your work. Thanks for entering your information into Skyward and for being patient with me as you try something new.
Please note that this year your teams will be attempting something else that is new with student placement. If you have not heard, Highly Capable education is now considered a basic education right for students that are identified as such. This has resulted in testing more students than we have in the past. But even if a student doesn't qualify via the technical requirements of the formal district identification process, that doesn't mean we are not obligated to attend to the needs of above grade level students who don't attend the Challenge program.
Given that we won't be sending all of our high students to Challenge and the fact that those students who do qualify only attend one day out five, we will need to address this internally. "I get what you are saying but how can we do that? One method for dealing with meeting the needs of high students is through student placement practices that group students of similar abilities into one class. I will explain more on Wednesday (and earlier if I can get the number of student types per class figured out before then). Think of it this way. Past practice is to evenly distribute students so that there are Level 1 thru 4 in each class. Using the method mentioned above, the goal is to get classrooms configured to have three levels of students vs four levels of students. I am working with Brian Loffer in the Highly Capable Office to set the parameters for your work in placing students. (5/4)
Counselor Substitute
I know, those of you who bet she would have the baby before now are wishing this entry was to say you won. Sorry, no baby yet. It is official, Allison Meeks is on maternity leave for the remainder of the school year. Please welcome Bill Yost, Allison's substitute, who will be with us until the end of the year. Bill has worked in the district many years and was most recently a counselor at Bethel Middle School before retiring. He has substituted at Centennial Elementary and Bethel Middle School. (5/4)
Staff Meeting and PLC meeting Switched
I will be in Seattle with my Sarah on May 13 so please make the following adjustment to your calendar: May 13 = PLC, May 20 = Staff Meeting (5/4)
