Tacoma School Board Meeting Live Blog

Recapped from my Twitter feed because I am too tired to construct paragraphs: Catching the tail end of the school board study session. According to my teenage babysitter the admin wants to... ...Make math/literature classes 90 minutes and add more days to school year/ more time to school day ..My sitter is not a fan of this idea but can't say it upsets me ..These changes would be for middle school Delong would be the only elementary where all kids won't go to same middle school If populations grow as projected schools would overfull w/in about 5 years unless Hunt reopens Jarvis: recommending we reopen optional enrollment for 5th graders so they can make informed choices Jarvis: we'd have 6 schools on the list instead of 4 if gault/mcilvaigh hadn't been consolidated into the new First Creek Middle School Jarvis: will spend 5 days preparing grant applications and ask for special board meeting next week to vote on it, money flowing by april. Study session ending, board meeting to start in 5 minutes w/ public comment. School board is recognizing a girl's robotics team from mason that finished 2nd in a statewide competition The girls designed and programmed a robot and solved an issue w/ the district's website @tacomachickadee ...not sure, they may just mean for schools where boundaries are changing. (Re: Delong) Now recognizing teacher andy coonz for his appointment to board of directors of natl board for professional teaching standards now taking board questions on school improvement, will also be meeting monday at lincoln hs Director golding: will there be oppty for hunt students to get familiar w/ new school before next fall? Admin: working on that, yes. ..But no firm date yet for new school assignments. Will try to finalize w/in 2 to 3 weeks Golding: will IB Trained people frome hunt move to Giaudrone? Answer: will interview teachers but hunt teachers may have advantage Ushka Hall: will district just move teachers to other schools? Answer: will try to retain employment of teachers, no big layoffs Admin: would be looking first at qualifications for program, then experience. Meet baseline then 3 most experienced and 1 other recommended A team will interview principals for each school. Not yet determined if principals will remain thru this school year Ushka hall: can we continue to honor optional enrollments for siblings? Yes, but this may further limit optional enrollments for future All schools K -12 will have data system eventually but will be starting with the 3 effected middle schools, data sstm shld be same as state (That all came out of questions from Ushka-Hall) Dugan: who is project management lead? Assistant superintendent. Will be doing reorg. And will assign to a team w/ project manager Dugan: low end of grant money will barely pay for project manager, high end would pay for longer classes and other wishlist items. Jarvis: will have a better idea after grant money allocated, dugan: will we know before initiating disruptive change? Deputy super: will be "chunking" the budget so that they know exactly which parts we can afford Dugan: no reason to do this unless it increases test scores. Jarvis: what is the purpose of middle school? Not just about tests. Miller: to jarvis- when did you know and what did you know? Jarvis - in january districts that were likely to be effected were invited to webinar where options were explained 3 -4 weeks later thought they had no or only one effected school. Found out on 8th of feb that these schools wld most likely be on list Note: election was February 9th ...But even as of tonight list has not been finalized Schol board apparently didn't know any more than the public. Dugan: if list still hasn't been announced why take action now? Jarvis: we know enough to know what will happen, have to be ready to take action or can't get money by deadline Miller: performance pay? When introduced? Admin: deputy super has exp with perf pay, have reached agreement w/ TEA... ..That perf pay would be based on school wide numbers (ok we aleady spend less on underperforming schools, so I don't see how that helps) Miller: would like to see triggers to make sure there's demographic need for hunt before money spent (proj reopening date 2015) Dugan: development schedule for hunt remains the same post school improvement? Jarvis: yes. Dugan: so promises made are kept Miller: incredible oppty here, shame on us if we waste it. I wld be diasappointed to see the money just used for staff Winskell: rearranging deckchairs. Middle schools getting blamed for problems that develop a lot earlier. Director winskell is taking admin to task for discovery math methods, leaving elementary kid to teach themselves. (Go debbie go!) Winskell: rather than pedogogy and how to teach, concentrate on what to teach. Duggan: I'd hug (winskell) but there's personal space issues Jarvis: I don't think there's any doubt whatsoever that the albatross of math scores has put them in this position - has to change and fast ------- That's about the gist of it. Quite a meeting. If we're doling out hugs to Director Winskell I'd like to get in line. Her comments on the math curriculum are definitely worth watching when the meeting is televised next week. If you'd like to see a little more commentary as well as some of the public comment, read it fresh from my Twitter stream.