| 1. | 2/5/2008 2:35:00 PM | Consider additional staffing in gifted education.
Continue work to keep class sizes low. |
| 2. | 4/7/2008 10:07:00 PM | ELL needs to be addressed. The needs have been established and there is simply insufficient resources to support this population. They should receive no less assistance than GATE, EEN or other special populations. This is true of At-Risk students as well. Financial Literacy needs to be addressed K-12.
The pace needs to be addressed in this district to build sustainability and quality. A few things at a time.
It seems that one person or voice can easily make the decision in our district. Just because a board member thinks something is important doesn't mean that it should be pursued...(core knowledge, certain classes, etc)The elected officials should work as a board to represent the entire district not their personal agendas...this is not always the case in our district.
Class size is not just an elementary issue. |
| 3. | 4/7/2008 9:46:00 PM | Class sizes seem to be growing along with the number of classes being taught, yet more teachers are not being hired. I know it costs a lot of money to hire more teachers, but it also costs a lot of money to reach many of the other goals. |
| 4. | 4/7/2008 9:41:00 PM | Keeping a highly successful district focused on the basic tenets that have made us successful... mainly the three questions and all that has transformed out of these three guiding principles. |
| 5. | 4/7/2008 9:49:00 PM | Giving time to departments (6-12) to be able to work on their goals and the goals of the school district needs to happen. This would mean that those staff members split between the high school and the middle school would still be able to be part of the department worktimes at both schools since they would be combined. However, the issue still exists with those teachers that are split both between the middle school and high school as well as between departments. (Multi-certified teachers teaching in both schools) |
| 6. | 4/7/2008 9:24:00 PM | Must be able to maintain current high standards and levels being obtained and not dilute with to many others that dilute our current standards and goals. |
| 7. | 4/8/2008 12:31:00 AM | Please be careful not to commit to doing too many goals. There are lots of big things to tackle on this list in only 5 years. |
| 8. | 4/8/2008 1:25:00 PM | Financial and psychological support of all staff -- fulltime, adjunct, support, and substitute teachers is essential to maintaining the unity and professionalism needed to do an outstanding job. |
| 9. | 4/9/2008 4:16:00 PM | I do not agree with the idea that the Financial Literacy goals should be spread out in various classes but feel that to best educate and serve the students and community, we must offer a course or courses that focus solely on financial literacy.
I also feel there should be more in-depth work on keeping the curriculum current. I do not know how often a review is completed but was surprised at the outdated materials and information being covered in a variety of courses. |
| 10. | 4/8/2008 1:36:00 PM | Maintain a reasonalbe teacher to student ratio so that each student feels important and not lost in the crowd. |
| 11. | 4/8/2008 12:08:00 PM | More focus on the children who are at risk but don't qualify for a 504 or spec ed services. More opportunities for all students who don't fit the traditional mold BEFORE they fail.
Give serious consideration to an at risk coordinator / transition coordinator.
Class sizes and student needs are increasing. Although overall population is decreasing special education population is increasing - this will take additional resources for effective and successful instruction. |
| 12. | 4/8/2008 12:12:00 PM | Maintain emphasis on K-12 writing instruction and the technology needed to support it. |
| 13. | 4/8/2008 12:26:00 PM | There was nothing about the physical and mental health of students and staff. We have more and more people who are in need of psychological help. They have a hard time focusing on learning when other areas of their life are suffering. Also, with all the talk about obesity I think it is important to emphasize physical health. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind. |
| 14. | 4/8/2008 2:27:00 PM | 1. Please don't assume that your staff will pick up on technology without time and, in some cases, inservice help. 2 Sometimes it feels as if the "acdemic agenda" is really a fact-gathering agenda, or a communications agenda, from which the student is the impetus, but otherwise pretty well removed. We have students who struggle in the here and now, daily or hourly, not as pre-life learners. We have students with huge and diverse needs and issues. Given a potentially grim economic outlook and how that impacts their lives,I think we should have those individual / student/ personal issues on the list, too, or in place of what sounds more like an administrative top forty. 3. I may have indicated a high priority on one or two of the above not because I can't wait to dive into them, but because they 'send up red flags'. 4. This last comment came as a result of our staff meeting. The goals are fine-- but what a long and daunting list! How will these be prioritized? |
| 15. | 4/8/2008 4:22:00 PM | hybridization
we need to get more technology into the schools because it is now the life blood of our society and and we cannot ignore that.
It cannot be treated as icing on the cake it's the emat and potatoes at this point. |
| 16. | 4/8/2008 3:46:00 PM | Students coming in at the high school have a difficult time comprehending directives. |
| 17. | 4/8/2008 5:26:00 PM | Strengthen ELL programing so that all children are getting equitable services until they reach full English proficiency. (Increasing number of ELL teachers/aids, increasing planning time for ELL teachers and regular classroom teachers to plan together, professional development for district staff on how to accommodate/modify/teach for ELLs in their classroom.) |
| 18. | 4/8/2008 5:02:00 PM | Class size
Programming at HS that is reflective of available resources. We can't keep offering a full "menu" if we don't have the staff. We should set out a course offering that is limited by our staff resources instead of seeing how many students sign up for things and then have to shuffle around staff to meet the demand. |
| 19. | 4/8/2008 8:04:00 PM | I really think that we need to use our professional teachers and pupil services staff for the intended tasks for which they have chosen as their occupation. If you analyzed the number of non-professional tasks that they do and look at the cost associated with those tasks you would conclude that you are wasting a valuable portion of your fiscal resources. It may appear "impossible" to assign these non-professional tasks to another employee such as a support person, or aide but it is the method to maximizing your professional staff. This is going to require a shift in thinking. |
| 20. | 4/8/2008 10:04:00 PM | Must continue to evaluate all offerings at the high school in light of the reduced level of funding. We can no longer afford to deliver all the courses that are in the program of studies and maintain our core curriculum. We can not continue to put a disproportionate amount of human and technology resources into low-enrollment elective classes. |
| 21. | 4/9/2008 1:36:00 PM | -Class size (teacher/student ratios) and FTE
issues at the high school
-Alternative curriculums and scheduling options
for students at the high school |
| 22. | 4/9/2008 5:22:00 PM | -Maintaining and/or reducing class sizes across the grade levels.
-Rethink where district resources are spent in regards to required courses vs electives, per pupil costs, long term benefit of classes for the most kids. For instance, how much do we spend on 15 kids to learn to make a cabinet, vs how much we spend per kid for classes that all students are required to take and that are used to measure our success or failure on tests and evaluations such as English 10, US History, Biology, or Algebra I. |
| 23. | 4/10/2008 1:28:00 PM | Perhaps this is out of place, but we've got to reconsider how much we are placing on the plates of professionals in this district. In the few years I've been here, I've come across initiatives like: 1) Differentiation, 2)Diversity, 3)Curricular Alignment, 4)21st Century Skills Development, 5)Standards/Styles of Assessment (defining grades and how to we calculate grades), 6)Common Assessment, 7)Standards-Based Assessment, 8)Six Traits of Writing, plus whatever we have wanted to do within our own department for goals, and our own professional goals. Atop that we are expected (and should be) to maintain the highest level of education we can achieve. This may just sound like whining, but let me put it this way. I used to have a teacher who, in our school of 365 kids, was responsible for 3 sports, about 8 different groups, the play and the musical, and he served, I'm sure, on a host of academic committees that, as students, we never saw. He was well respected and everybody new and loved him in our town. He did everything and we all appreciated that. However, he was also a Spanish teacher. I took four years of spanish. I still cannot speak a lick of spanish to this day. Why? Well, perhaps I'm just not the sharpest tool in the shed, but more likely, he couldn't spend enough time in his life focusing on his instruction, the most important part of his job. I learned then that a person with too many irons in the fire makes a person look great to the rest of the world, but look like a fool to those who really know him/her. All of the things listed above are important, but perhaps we need to tackle a few of them at a time, develop a real sense of proficiency and pride in them, and then build upon them. As professionals in the building become expert in these movements, they can practice it, and through that they can become successful at it, and they can then embrace and embody it. Perhaps I'm off, but that is what my parents taught me long ago about working to be the best. I think it has some applications here as well. |
| 24. | 4/10/2008 4:38:00 PM | Adequate class sizes. We simply cannot deliver excellent instruction if we cannot interact with the student. Large class sizes especially in sciences do not allow investigative learning/running labs. |
| 25. | 4/10/2008 5:16:00 PM | Having reasonable class sizes to maintain an acceptable & beneficial learning environment. Hiring new staff as needed & not overloading teachers. |
| 26. | 4/10/2008 6:23:00 PM | (1) Taking a look at average class sizes should be a priority. There cannot be a doubt that smaller class sizes increase the ability to make and maintain good relationships with students, which makes classroom management easier. This allows students increased learning opportunities. (2) Increasing assistance for our growing population of special-needs students, as well as ELL students should be included. (3) Social promotion is a concern - we have 9th graders who enter with VERY limited skills, and they are placed in the same class as students who may have chosen honors classes but couldn't fit them into their schedule. Without sufficient training in differentiation techniques for *subject-area* ideas, it makes for a VERY difficult situation in class. |
| 27. | 4/10/2008 7:09:00 PM | Meeting the needs of students who have the ability to pass but do not. |