State Senator Miller kicked off the evening with a discussion of the state budget issues and its impact on school funding. Among concerns that school boards have with the new budget are provisions eliminating the QEO in 2010 and the mandatory arbitration provisions this July. I asked Senator Miller about my concern that the QEO is an integral part of WI education funding formula, and eliminating one part of this system without comprehensive reform of the entire system could create significant difficulties. Senator Miller agreed with the need to examine the entire system, but that comprehensive reform usually has to wait for favorable fiscal times.
The Board received the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Grade configuration committee but didn't discuss it much. I'll put up a separate post with my view of the recommendations when I have time.
The Board also discussed our transportation policy as it relates to day care providers. Recently there has been a stir over a decision not to continue to provide transportation from Cottage Grove Elementary to Kids Safari day care in Cottage Grove. Our current policy allows students to be dropped at a day care facility instead of their homes if location is on a route and there is room on the bus, essentially the policy is designed to provide this service to the public if it can be done at no additional cost to the district. Because of the large number of KS students an additional bus run is needed to provide this service. Currently we do this run using our reserve bus, but this practice is not sustainable because the reserve bus is needed if there is a breakdown anywhere in the fleet.
Some are concerned about equity issues because we do service other providers, such as Learning Ladder - but we can do that because there is room on a bus that goes right past the Learning Ladder location anyway.
The board forwarded the policy for review by the policy committee. My two cents is that the policy should be amended to allow the district to provide this service to the day care providers, but to charge our actual costs. This allows us to leverage our capabilities and cost structure to the benefit of the district's residents, but continues with a principle of no net cost to the district. It also provides us with a way to fairly accommodate any other requests. I would certainly support efforts to try and minimize or eliminate these costs through re-arrangement of our service when possible.
In other significant news we were pleasantly surprised by the preliminary new budget estimates from PMA. They showed that the additional reductions in state aids (~215,000) will be offset by new, more accurate (and more positive) open enrollment projects. We are now conservatively estimating about 65 new OE students in.
More important than any of the above was the presentation about the New Teacher Mentor Program in the district. This is a key program that help build the skills of teachers new to the district as a way to strengthen student learning (which is, after all, our core mission.) Studies show that this kind of classrom mentoring is one of the most effective ways of improving student achievement!
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7 comments:
It was my impression that the ad hoc committee's recommendations would be discussed and actually "moved on" during this meeting. Is there going to be further discussion on it at a later meeting? If so, what meeting? Thank you for any information you can provide.
Peter-
I, too am thrilled with the teacher mentoring program, but wonder why it cannot be expanded to long time teachers too. In my experience, the teachers who have the most difficulty are the ones who have been around a while-- especially in the middle school. My kid's most effective teachers have been fairly new- not brand new and I agree that those teachers need mentoring-- but we really must address the issue of more established teachers who simply don't put in the effort any more. Is there a way to identify those teachers and have them be part of a mentoring program? I realize that that may be hard for them emotionally-- but that is the crux of the issue for the district-- long time teachers who do not keep up with new things...
I am in agreement with the concerns of the parents to not cut off one daycare center and leave all other daycare centers with transportation. Either you need to cut everyone or provide for everyone.
I love the idea that possibly all teachers could use mentoring to some degree. I used to teach and some (definitely not all)of the older teachers were in auto pilot and didn't want to change because it was frankly too much work. We had to change curriculum because some of these teachers refused to stop teaching "x" at their level because that is what they always had. (not in this district by the way)
1) I believe we will discuss the recommendations at the July meeting.
2) I don't think we provide transportation to all day care providers, for example La Petite Acadamie does their own transport from Maywood.
3) The Odden et al. report ranks "Professional Development with Classroom Instructional Coaches" as the most effective way to improve student performance, the only other alternative they considered that even comes close in effectiveness is one-on-one tutoring. "Mentoring" is ranked as substantially more effective than reducing class size!
http://cpre.wceruw.org/finance/WI%20March%201%202007%20Adequacy%20Report1.pdf (pg. 93)
Kids Safari made a business decision to locate less expensive (and therefore lower taxed) land way out on the north edge of the town far from their customers and schools. Learning ladder made a business decision to locate on more expensive land that was more convienent to their customers and schools. Should the school district taxpayer be forced to pay for transportation because of this business decision? I don't think so.
"Kids Safari made a business decision to locate less expensive (and therefore lower taxed) land way out on the north edge of the town far from their customers and schools. Learning ladder made a business decision to locate on more expensive land that was more convienent to their customers and schools. Should the school district taxpayer be forced to pay for transportation because of this business decision? I don't think so."
agree
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