The Haynes Connection

School improvement council 4th meeting: March 18th 2008 at 3:30 pm

School improvement council members attending:

• Kim Swain, Principal
• Debbie Larsen, Teacher
• Michelle Marino, Teacher
• Laurence Baize, Parent
• Charles Alix, Parent
• Suzie Kornblum, Parent

1) School Improvement Council Items

1. Overview of the full day Kindergarten program

The full day kindergarten program was adopted on March 11th. The program description can be found on the district website. http://www.sudbury.k12.ma.us/data/Budget/Full%20Day%20Kindergarten,%202009-03-11.pdf
This program has been a school committee action item for many years but was postponed due to space issue. The current enrollment projections numbers make that initiative sustainable in the future.
The questions raised were the following:

Will half day kindergarten follow the same curriculum?

The children will follow the same curriculum as the children enrolled in the half day program but the pace will be slower . The full day children will have more free play. They will have special activities every day, have lunch and a mandated rest period.

Will Full Day Kindergarten be better prepared for first grade?

No. The curriculum is the same and the program does not have any impact on the actual half day program

What is the impact of the full day kindergarten on the budget?

The full day kindergarten is cost neutral. The tuition paid by the full day Kindergarten will cover the cost of that program and only the cost of that program. Sudbury does dot qualify for state funded Full Day kindergarten. The tuition will cover:
• Teachers and instructional assistants
• Professional development
• Equipment and materials

Is Sudbury the only town having a full day kindergarten program?

Sudbury is in the minority of town who did not have a full day kindergarten program.

What is the sliding scale tuition, and how is it calculated?

According to state law the district is calculating a fee based on income and family size in order to allow every family to choose. This scaled tuition will make up for the inequity in matter for enrichment for the children of low income family. The sliding scale tuition is based on a state guideline.

How were you able to calculate a tuition ($3750- $4000) if you do not know how many low income family will register to the program?

The tuition was estimated by using an estimated repartition of the population

How many kindergarten class will we have next year?

With our current enrollment projection and the result of the survey, we will have one class of full day kindergarten and 2 sections of half day kindergarten. There will not be any kindergarten turnaround next year.

How will you decide who will be in the morning program or the afternoon?

The repartition will be based on bus routes

2. Budget Update

The budgeting process is still in process.

• The school committee is negotiating the teacher contract. Negotiation progresses are confidential.
• We do not have any information yet about the level of state aid
• We do not know if and how much stimulus money SPS might receive.

Haynes site base budget is still frozen. The school is just buying the necessities.

 

3. Writing Celebration.

The writing celebration is one of the 2008- 2009 school improvement plan item. It is scheduled on Thursday April 30. The objectives are to show to parents the result of our writing program and for the children to share their work and to see that what they learn in school (writing) also happens in real life. The evening will combine family visits to classroom with an author guest speaker.
The speaker will be the author Steve Krasner. His participation is funded by HOP and organized by the cultural art enrichment committee.
His books will be circulated prior to April 30. There will be a possibility of buying books and having them autographed during the evening. Profit from the sale will benefit the school library.
The organization will be similar to back to school night. There will be 2 presentations by Steve Krasner:
One geared towards K -2
One geared towards 3-5

While one group assists to the presentation, parents and children of the other group are invited to visit their classroom during that time. In the classroom each student will have selected a few piece of writing to share with their parents.

During our last meeting, the school improvement council proposed to also have a presentation of our writing teaching techniques used at Haynes during that evening. The team in charge of write out of the park rejected the idea for practical reasons.
If we were having such a presentation geared towards the parent what will the children do during that time?

To follow on that idea, Kim Swain proposed the idea to the senior management team at the district level. Consequently, it has been decided to organize next year one or two Curriculum events (curriculum nights or coffee). The curriculum specialists at the district level would be responsible to organize those events.

Kim Swain will update the school improvement council on that subject.

2) Member Items

a. Input from the community.
The SIC letter written by Suzie Kornblum send to the parents via the Haynes Connections asking for suggestions or issues did not bring any results.

b. Parking

Kim Swain brought to the SIC attention the problems linked to the parking at dismissal especially during the winter months.
Kim invited the members to observe the parking situation at Haynes and to think of improvement ideas. Kim invited the school improvement council to visit the other school to check their dismissal processes.

Some ideas are:

- Having a line pick up (such as Noyes). The members of the council rejected that idea. Pick up time is time where the Haynes community gets together; it gives the parent an occasion to meet with the staff. It is part of Haynes conviviality.
- Increasing the number of parking spaces
- Changing the way traffic and parking is organized
- Parking on Julian's way
- Communicating the parking rules

Actions item:
- Charles Alix will look at the site plan to see if we could improve parking space and traffic flow
- Kim Swain will visit other school to check their dismissal process

c. Front door

Michelle Marino asked if the fact that the front door was not locked during school hours was an issue.
Parents agreed that it is not an issue as the front door is manned at all time.

d. Parents Communication

Laurence Baize pointed out that the schools notices distributed through the HOP weekly Newsletter has a poor readership leading to poor information of some parents. For example the school improvement council letter was read by only 47 parents out of 300 families.

She will propose a list of ideas for the next sic to encourage parents to read that newsletter by providing information that parents will consider newsworthy: school assemblies, field trips, standardized testing.

e. New Parents Welcome

Suzie Kornblum asked if we could improve the way we welcome New parents when they arrive in the middle of the school year and suggested the creation of a welcome and introduction kit for new parents. HOP has a new parents committee that contacts each new family individually.

Suzie Kornblum will contact this committee and the Haynes secretary to check what is done today and how we could improve it.

f. Update of emergency information during the school year.

Laurence Baize pointed out that there is no process to include information for the new parents in the emergency phone chain and that there are no update of these emergency phone chain list (the one given to the room parents) during the school year.
Improving this process could be an objective of the school improvement plan.

School improvement council members attending:

• Kim Swain, Principal
• Debbie Larsen, Teacher
• Michelle Marino, Teacher
• Laurence Baize, Parent
• Charles Alix, Parent
• Suzie Kornblum, Parent

1) School Improvement Council Items

1. Overview of Writing Workshop, 6 traits Writing, Writing Celebration.

Debbie Larsen and Kim Swain presented an overview of Haynes writing Program. Haynes writing program is part of a district wide initiative aligned with the state standards. The goal of this program is to enable students to express their thinking fluently and coherently in writing, using appropriate conventions and organizational structures.

The teachers teach strategies that focus not on the end product, but on the writing development and getting ideas on paper.

This program is articulated around 2 complementary techniques:

- The writers workshop
- The six traits writing program

Writers workshop

The writer's workshop is a teaching technique that invites students to write on a daily basis. Students are exposed to the organization and thought required to create a story or write about a favorite topic. Throughout the grades the children will be invited to write on a variety of subject progressing from informal writing in the earlier grades(you choose your own subject) to formal writing ( the subject is given by the teacher).

The main components of the Writer's Workshop include a Mini-lesson, Status of the class, Writing & Conferencing, and Sharing & Author's Chair. The structure and content of this component is adapted to each grade level. This program starts in kindergarten.

Mini-Lesson
A Mini- Lesson is usually a 5-10 minutes whole class activity that gives skill and strategies for writing well.

Status of the Class
The Status of the Class takes about 2-3 minutes and provides the student and teacher with information about how the student's work is progressing. It can be done with a quick handing out of the folders and a quick response from the students such as Illustrating, Work in progress, Publishing.

Write and Confer
Writing & Conferring is ideally a 20 - 40 minute session.
The children will write independently. The length of writing will gradually increase throughout the grades and as students develop strategies for behaving as writers.
Teachers confer with small groups and individuals. Children can also conference with their peers and can check each others. Conferencing can help children deciding on what to write, to guide students to develop the plot and focus of the story, inspire students to include additional details in their writing. Only in the final draft emphasis will be put on editing (correct use of basic grammar, spelling and punctuation).

Mid Workshop Interruption:
Teachers reinforce teaching point and redirect the class. The teachers highlight the evidence of use of teaching point with student's examples. The children work serve as a new mentor text.

Sharing:

Sharing usually takes 10 minutes and can be done either by having the students read to the class a "published book" or by children sharing their work in pairs. Teacher use this time to use student example to reinforce teaching point.

6 Traits writing

Six Traits Writing is a systematic approach for looking at writing one part at a time. Since writing is such a complicated activity, a writer/reader can break down a complex activity like writing and make it more manageable by focusing on only one trait at a time. The six traits writing also give teachers and students a common vocabulary for talking and thinking about writing
Writing is divided into 6 traits .: Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word choice, Sentence fluency and Conventions.
Books illustrate each one of those traits and are used by the teacher as a mentor text.

Ideas
• What is my message?
• Is my message clear?
• Did I try hard to make it interesting?
• Do I have enough information?
Organization
• How does my paper begin? Do I have a strong lead?
• Did I tell thing in order?
• Does everything link to my message
• How does my paper end
Voice
• Do I really like that paper?
• Does this writing sound like me?
• How do I want my reads to feel?
• What is my favorite part?
Word choice
• Have I used some words that I really love?
• Can my teacher tell what my words mean?
• Have I used any new word?
• Did I try not to repeat words too many times?
Sentence fluency
• Did I use sentences?
• Do my sentences begin in different ways
• Did I use some long and some short sentences
• Does my paper sound smooth as I listen
Conventions
• Did I leave spaces between words
• Did I used a title
• Did I used periods or question marks
• Did I used capital letters in the right places
• Is it easy to read my spelling
• Could another person read my paper?

Writing Celebration

To celebrate and showcase the works of the students in writing, the school is organizing a writing celebration. On Thursday evening, April 30, Haynes will host an open house to provide the opportunity for our students to share their writing with parents. A guest author will attend. This writing celebration could be an opportunity to share with parents the methodology used to teach writing at Haynes.
The teachers could use that evening to make a presentation of the 2 writing teaching methods and Charles Alix will assist Debbie Larsen in putting that presentation together.

2. FY 08-09 Budget.

The budget corresponds to the Haynes site base budget. It is calculated every year in July. The district calculates a budget per school based on the number of students attending the school.

This budget does not includes salaries, benefit, utilities, cafeteria and transportation cost. This budget covers:

• Supplies (offices, copy, art, music........)
• Books
• Computers and technology expenses
• Professional development
• Equipment ( classroom, musical and physical )
• Building preventive maintenance.

The total budget for the year 2008-2009 is 64000$. So far 47335$ have been spent. The budget is now frozen in regards with possible state cuts in local and school Aid.

 

3. ILAP update

Beginning in the school year 2007 - 2008, the Sudbury Public Schools implemented an Improved Learning for All (ILAP) plan. This is a professional growth model that uses early release days twice per month to enable teachers to attend carefully planned work sessions and collaborative group activities within and across schools, grade levels, and disciplines to help accomplish personal, school, district-wide goals (curriculum, and the State Curriculum Frameworks).

This fall, Haynes teachers have used ILAP sessions to:

• Analyze data from MCAS and from district assessments. Taking the time to purposely analyze student data allows teachers to better plan instruction for students and to identify potential gaps in curriculum.
• Teachers in the first and second grades received training in inquiry based science and the FOSS kits that support several of their units of student.

• Writing Workshop:
Working with district grade level colleagues, Haynes teachers have used several ILAP sessions to design a unit of study that is aligned with state standards and incorporates the instructional strategies and routines of the writing workshop. The district's literacy team and teacher leaders have facilitated these sessions.

• TERC
Teachers in grades 2, 4, and 5 are in the first year of the revised TERC Investigations curriculum. ILAP sessions have allowed grade level teams to preview units and learn instructional routines that are unique to the program. They have also provided an opportunity to share strategies for differentiation. Having used the revised curriculum last year, teachers in grades 1 and 3 have used ILAP sessions to refine unit assessments and develop enrichment activities.

Future ILAP sessions will build on the work we have done this fall in writing and math at the district level and disseminate at the building level the work the Haynes curriculum leadership teams are doing.

 

2. Members Items

The only items brought up by the three parents members of the council was the definition of their role:

This role has been defined as:

- Gathering concern and ideas from the parents to improve the school
- Informing parents of the improvement made by the school and the budget situation
- Acting as a sounding board of the parents concerns
- Improving communication by sharing information with parents about curriculum programs, methodologies to build a common vocabulary.
- This group is independent from Haynes Organization of Parents (HOP)

 

In consequences the following actions Items were taken:

- Suzie Kornblum will draft a letter to the parents prior to the next meeting to gather Parents ideas or concern on the school building, the children safety and their vision of the school.
- Charles Alix will work on a description of the writers workshop and 6 traits writing to share with parents. This information will be published on the Haynes connection.

 
The next meetings are scheduled on:
- March 18, 2009
- April 15, 2009
- May 20, 2009

The parent representatives of the School Improvement Council at Haynes are Suzie Kornblum, Charles Alix, and Laurence Baize. The School Improvement Council's purpose is to increase parents' and community members' level of involvement and commitment to improving school. It is a separate organization from the Haynes Organization of Parents (HOP) and as such, should be considered a separate avenue to voice concerns, raise questions or give suggestions or ideas.

School improvement council 2nd meeting: December 17th 2008 at 3:30 pm

 School improvement council members attending:

•  Kim Swain, Principal
• Debbie Larsen, Teacher
• Michelle Marino, Teacher
• Laurence Baize, Parent
• Charles Alix, Parent
• Susan Kornblum, Parent

1) School Improvement Council Items

 

Role and responsibilities of the School Improvement Council

 Kim Swain explained the role of the school improvement council.

 The law outlines four major areas of responsibilities of the school improvement councils created by the 1993 reform acts.  The school improvement council is to advise the principal on:

 

• - "Adopting educational goals for the school that re consistent with local educational policies and statewide student performance standards"
• - Identifying the educational needs of students attending the school
• - Reviewing the annual school building budget" ( In Haynes case the site base budget around $55000 which covers supplies, maintaining technology, professional development and building improvement)
• - "Formulating a school improvement plan"

 

Source : http://www.doe.mass.edu/lawsregs/advisory/schoolcouncils/part2d.html 

 

The purpose of the school improvement council is to increase parents and community members level of involvement and commitment to improving school. It is mandatory in Massachusetts. It is comprised of an equal numbers of school staff and parents who serves for one year term. It must meet at least once a year, the Principal is responsible for calling the first meeting.

The school improvement council is not a decision making body, it will not decides how the school, supplies and material budget will be spent. The school council cannot discuss or decide personnel issues relative to collective bargaining, evaluation, supervision, teacher workload, etc.

 

Before each meeting an agenda is conjointly decided by the school improvement council co-chairs: Kim Swain and Charlie Alix. After each meeting minutes are written by the School improvement secretary Laurence Baize, approved by the members then published to the Haynes community.

 

The next meetings are scheduled on:

January 21, 2009

March 18, 2009

April 15, 2009

May 20, 2009

 

School Improvement Plan

 

The School Improvement Plan is a 2 year plan. Attached is the 2007-2009 School Improvement Plan  was reviewed during this meeting. This plan is created by the following process:

 

Starting in February or March the principal creates a draft:

 

Using input from the school district (some improvement objectives are common to all the Sudbury public schools) improvement objectives are created in each of the following category: 

 

Promote continuous improvement of student learning

Meet the communication needs among school staff and community

Ensure the safety and security of adults within the building

 

 

This draft is then reviewed sequentially by the staff advisory council, the school improvement council and then reviewed by the entire staff and objectives, time lines and facilitators are assigned. 

 

During the review of the 2007-2008 school improvement plan, It was noticed that some terms should be explained and maybe communicated to the parents so parents and teacher could share the same language: terms identified were in particular

•  6 Traits Writing
•  Writers Workshop
•  TERC

 

The Haynes School Improvement Council is an advisory board to the principal, assisting in the identification of educational needs and goals of the school, review of the annual budget, and formulation of an annual school improvement plan. Membership is comprised of the principal, two staff members elected by the staff of Haynes, three parents elected by the parent community, and one or two non-parent community persons (if possible). The principal and one other parent member serve as co-chairs of the Council. Each member of the Council (with the exception of the principal) serves a two-year term. The Council meets at Haynes approximately once a month, but no less than quarterly. The first meeting of the Council takes place no later than forty days after the opening of each school year. Subsequent meetings are scheduled by the Council. Council meetings are open to the public. Elections for the parent representatives usually take place at Back to School Night. Nomination forms are available prior to that date, and each candidate is asked to write a brief statement about their interest in serving on the Council. These statements are then published for the parent community to use in electing Council members. Community members are, for the most part, recruited by Council members or HOP representatives. Any person who has an interest in the Sudbury schools (and Haynes in particular) but who is not currently a parent may serve as a community member. Business members and senior citizens have been excellent sources for community Council members. The superintendent, any member of the staff or parent community, or Council member may request the inclusion of an agenda item by notifying the principal no later than one week prior to the meeting. A copy of the agenda for each meeting will be posted in the Haynes School lobby four days prior to the meeting date. All meetings will be conducted in accordance with the prepared agenda; however, additional items may be added at the discretion of the co-chairs.