Decision Recommendations
assignment
This round of work built upon the previous activity but now each group was asked to develop a poster making specific recommendations for decisions related to their project focus.
Click here to open a Word document with the assignments for all the teams. Each one had a different perspective.
Report Out
Team 1: The Newcastle Learning Center Addition
The plans for the Newcastle Learning Center are already in motion and our recommendations are for continuing this this spring. We see this as an investment in the community not just for the school. It’s a much needed space with a library and a shop. There will be two business education classes available, space for the librarian, principle and staff. This should be open to the community and they should look at what staffing needs are essential. Maybe we can have a key system? We need to address security. We’ll have a concessions area during games. We feel that this new facility needs new technology. We want to make sure the best is coming in. Will computers be available for the community after hours? We need the space though and recommend continuing with this.
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Team 2: The Middle School Concept
We were looking at the middle schools. We recommended moving to the middle school concept for 5th through 8th grade. The logically common sites favored Coleridge. There was some apprehension from the group about having 100 students go the 10 miles from Laurel. We decided that we have to weigh if there is a benefit for our students and is the 10 minute bus ride offset by a better education. This is key to convincing our communities. So we ended up with no clear recommendation for a location.
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Team 3: Level III Severe and Profound/Autism Programs
We looked at Level 3 Severe and Profound / Autism Programs. We need to increase awareness of these programs with brochures, articles, and on the website. We need to have an open house.
It’s a good thing to have in Coleridge to have the high school kids interact with the elementary kids. We need to expand and explore new technology to add to the program. We need to continue with staff development. We want to expand our services to include live-in services.
The community has to be involved who possibly have interest in our severe and profound kids and we can provide jobs for them. We have a one to one parent ratio. We have kids on feeding tubes and it really helps when we have that support. We need to continue with regular ed involvement.
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Team 4: Early Childhood Program at Wynot
We worked on the early childhood program in Wynot. We want to increase our numbers and get the kids early so they’ll continue their schooling throughout the year. Our school schedule is normally Monday through Thursday. We’re not sure what the cost would be. Laurel says theirs is $6/day. For a free or reduced lunch it’s $4/day. We would have to include milk and a snack. We need to send a letter to the parents of our 3- and 4-year olds.
We think we have a room available. We would have to rearrange some things. We’re worried about supplies but we can get them through donations, rummage sales, businesses in the area. Maybe we can get some volunteers and a certified teacher? We need to choose a curriculum. We’d like to have a fun name. We’d be looking for grants, maybe from small businesses. Sometimes even parents are willing to help out.
Transportation is a big discussion for us. For 17 years I left home at 6:30am and wasn’t home until 6:30pm at night. I wouldn’t be able to take my kid for pre-school. That will probably be on the backburner unless we can get some transportation from the childcare providers. We also have to think about car seats. Also we have to look at our schedule because we have first through forth and split our rooms. We would also like to have some PE, library and music experience.
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Team 5: Expanded Pre-school through 3rd Grade at Laurel
We looked at expanding the pre-school to 3rd grade program with bringing the kids down from Laurel and there is a lot of apprehension from the Coleridge community about doing this.
When we started the program we took some polls and the only negative comment were about bussing. This second year the comments are very positive and everything is going smoothly. Our recommendation is to expand this program and hope that the parents will be as happy as they have been.
We’d like to see some funding for the low income families to send their elementary kids. We have three students who are in a great need to use sign language. Our teachers don’t feel as competent and we’re sure that the other students would like to be able to communicate with them. We need to go into these decisions open mindedly and we need the parents involved.
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Team 6: Olweus Bullying Prevention Program
We looked at the Olweus program. We want to have commitment, camaraderie and consistency. We need to have buy-in. The consequences are unclear yet. We need to look at them from all the grade levels. There are kindergarten packets we want to get out to the parents. It’s the most difficult to get the parents part of this program going. We would like to have an open house to educate people about what we’re doing. We’re looking for safe schools and we want to have a symbol that the students recognize even with the distance learning kids. We want the kids to know that they’re being taken care of.
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Team 7: Cooping JH/HS Activities
We want to coordinate sports activities between Newcastle, Laurel and Coleridge. We want to keep the coaches and teachers so that we don’t eliminate anyone. We would have one head coach but keep the others too. We would combine all high school activities in two years.
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Team 8: Alignment of Curriculum and Text Book Cycles
We talked about the alignment of the curriculum. We want to continue sharing textbooks across the districts and make sure that we’re making others aware of this program. We started looking at other options to save money, such as open source or digital textbooks which has the advantage of always being updated, but it is a little more work to get. The open source makes the education more interactive and has a wider variety of information. We’d save money in the long run because a lot of stuff out there is free. We’d adjust teaching schedules as new things come up. We can also have less prep because we’ll share teachers as resources too. It will lighten the load for some people and we’ll have more opportunities to get together.
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Team 9: Expanded Technology / Staff Development
Our recommendation is to integrate technology. We watched the video that said “engage me” and we want to show you that. We don’t want to offend anyone by the word engage because we are engaged. We know that technology is crucial but we also have to focus on the things we’ve already gotten done. Our task was to show you what was on the board so we used technology to show you what was on our board. (flips open the chart to show a print out of their board). We have a list here of what we came up with.
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Team 10: Floating Study Hall Program
We had the floating study hall program. We looked at the pros and cons and they were about the same. The biggest concern for us is the loss of 3-weeks of in-house instruction. That adds up a lot. But it is better than what we had before. We decided we do want to keep it. The biggest concern is having all the teachers input. We didn’t come up with any generic rules for the students to follow but we want the teachers to communicate their expectations with all the students. We want the students to use chat technology so we know that they’re not running around the halls. Just like last week we want the teachers have the freedom not to have study hall but they need to give them ample warning. We want to reestablish 8th period of 30 minutes of instruction and 30 minutes of study hall. This allows students to take a class that they may not have been able to choose otherwise.
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Team 11: Incentive Programs for Teachers
We talked about the incentive program for teachers. I don’t know if all the teachers understand the process. This needs to be above and beyond tax dollars. It is a yearly review by the staff and we do here in that during the first couple of months at Laurel. We talk to the principals and then they take it to the board. We need to have teachers add and adapt programs. Each school might have different needs for incentives and you need to take that to your principal early. We didn’t answer the question about how to fund it if we don’t have enough grant money for it.
The math part of it is that we were thinking that if Mr. Owen could provide half instead of a fourth it would be better. Next week because of the late starts, Monday is going to be 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 8th study hall. This way you can have first and second period classes.
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Team 12: School Communication
We looked at school communication within the system. We thought we should have more monitoring to see if the teachers are keeping up with the standards. We thought it would be great for each teacher to have an AIM account so that we could have a buddy list set up and keep in touch. Instead of having 4 or 5 grade books, we could have one for distance learning. We want to have more real opportunities to communicate and coordinate their classes, in terms of books and lessons.
We want to make our website more user-friendly. We want to offer workshops for the websites. We want to have school conferences for distance learning teachers. Many people don’t like using the TV to talk to a teacher? We need to get more attendance from the parents. Of the 70 students I have, I only got 12 parents to show up to a conference. We need to improve that.
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Michael Kaufman
How many of you saw the Norfolk daily news? They’re considering moving grades around. Have a look. Now we’ll go to lunch. See you back in half an hour.
Up for discussion: Norfolk considers moving grades around
By ANDREA LARSON
News Staff Writer
Students attending the Norfolk Public Schools will soon likely be buzzing about the latest development in the district's push toward providing a 21st century education.
Superintendent Dr. Marlene Uhing said administrators and school board members have been discussing the potential reconfiguring of which grades are at which schools.
What exactly does that mean?
It would mean moving the ninth grade out of the junior high into Norfolk High School. Possible accompanying moves would put fifth-graders with sixth-graders at the middle school and place seventh-graders and eighth-graders together at the junior high. Elementary schools would accommodate kindergarten through fourth grades and Norfolk High would be for freshmen through seniors. |
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