Welcome to April!!

What You Are Doing Matters! I recently attended a symposium on working together to break the cycle of poverty. Some staggering state-wide statistics were shared that further validated my belief that work you are doing in our Title I schools MATTERS – thank you!

• For the 12-14 SY, more than half of Oregon students qualified for F/R lunch
• In Oregon, nearly 1 out of 4 children live in poverty
• Nearly 8% of Oregon’s students, under the age of 18, are homeless
• 33% of entering Oregon Kindergarteners could name five, or fewer, letters and 14% couldn’t name a single letter
• Students reading proficiently by 3rd grade are four times more likely to graduate high school
• 85-90% of poor readers receiving intervention before 3rd grade can increase reading skills to average levels; 75% of those receiving intervention post nine years old will continue to have difficulties throughout their life
• As of 2012, there were 58,580 ELLs in Oregon. 19% of currently enrolled Kindergarteners have limited language proficiency

KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!!

Out of the Office: As a reminder, I will be out of the office the week of March 31-April 4. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but I have complete faith that our outstanding Title Team (Linda, Bee and Penny) will be able to address any questions/concerns you may have during my absence.

Parent Survey: Each year, Title I is required to issue a parent survey.  The survey will soon be open and will remain open for a few weeks, closing on May 5. Specific survey dates, and the survey monkey link, are coming soon; we are currently working on translations! We modified the survey to reflect the feedback you provided during February’s Coordinator/Principal meeting. We have also incorporated some questions related to Indistar and the CAP, under Family and Community Involvement. This way, schools can utilize this feedback during the school’s self-assessment and CAP planning processes! Please encourage families to complete the survey – the more feedback you receive, the better for your/our continuous growth and planning.

Should you provide some paper copies, here is a condensed (2 page) survey for your convenience:
Title I Parent Involve Survey 13-14 (2pg)
Title I Parent Survey SPAN 13-14 (2pg)

Sample letter to give to parents – feel free to customize:
Parent Invol Survey Ltr ENGL_SPAN

Survey Monkey Links:
Spanish: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/76Z6RLJ
English: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/76P5HCN

Summer School: The program will be held from June 30-July 24 at Chavez! Below, please find information regarding the Summer School referral process. I have provided a general timeline and some deadlines to put on your calendar, as we get the student selection and registration processes underway.

April:
Schools will receive their summer school allotments
Forms will be distributed to Coordinators (incoming data, registration and parent letters)
Schools identify students who will benefit from summer school and contact families
Schools will receive a list of students whose winter easyCBM scores fall w/in referral guidelines
May:
Registration forms are due and confirmation letters sent to families

Summer School Specific DEADLINES:
4/18: Send information letters and registration forms to families by April 18
5/16: Summer school registration forms to Linda by May 16
5/23: Confirmation letters sent to families by May 23
TBD: Summer school incoming data forms, for each attending student, to Linda

Summer School DOCUMENTS for Elementary:
Please note that both the location and administrator for middle school Summer School is yet to be determined (the location was Madison and a possible change of location is currently under review). Once a decision has been made, Linda will email you the below documents for middle school (your 5th graders).

• General Referral Process and School Allotments: Referral_Process_Allotments 2014
• More detailed referral process: 4j Elementary Summer School 2014 Referral Guidelines
• Registration forms (English/Spanish): Elem English SS Registration 2014 and Elem Spanish SS Registration 2014
• Middle School registration forms (English/Spanish): MS English SS Registration 2014 and MS Spanish SS Registration 2014
• Parent Letter (English/Spanish): 4J_Elem_SS_Parent Letter 2014 and 4J_Elem_SS_Parent Letter_SPAN 2014
• Middle School Parent Letter (English/Spanish): MS_Parent Letter_2014 and MS_SS_Parent Letter_SPAN_13-14
• Incoming Data Form: Incoming Data Form 2014

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please make sure teachers follow the referral guidelines for student selection as this has a significant impact on the success of the overall program. This may require some individual conversations with teachers, on the part of you and/or the principal. In addition, you will be receiving winter benchmarking data that aligns with Summer School referral guidelines as a start place for considering student invitations. Please look for this email in the days ahead.

Summer School Administrator: I am pleased to announce that we have hired Karen Ramirez-Gutierrez as our 2014 Summer School Administrator! She currently teaches at River Road/El Camino del Rio Elementary and brings with her practical leadership experiences, along with unparalleled enthusiasm; I know you will find her both organized and supportive as plans for Summer School get underway!

Summer School Classified/Certified Positions: We will begin the process of filling both classified and certified staffing positions soon after spring break. In recent years, the teaching positions have been especially difficult to fill. If you, or someone you know, is interested in teaching summer school please make them aware of this upcoming opportunity; they will need to apply through NeoGov once a posting is on line. In addition, please ask them to email Karen (ramirezgutierrez_k@4j.lane.edu) so that she has a sense of who (and how many) is interested! Finally, because we focus on reading support, the teacher must hold a reading endorsement. In the event we are unable to locate enough interested teachers, who hold an endorsement, we may need to shift the primary focus of summer school to mathematics  interventions. We really need your help in seeking teachers for summer school! Anything you can do will be greatly appreciated!

SMART Goals: How are your goals coming along? Please let me know how I can be of support as you work on both your student achievement and professional practice goals.

2014-2015 Title I Budget: Budget allocations will be provided on Friday, April 4 and will be included in HR packets for each, individual school. Included in the packet will be your (1) regular Title allocation (2) parent involvement allocation (3) guidelines for developing your Title budget and (4) a copy of the excel spreadsheet you will use to develop your budget. In addition, some schools will receive allocations for extended learning that coincides with the BEST program and/or Priority/Focus funds. As a reminder, Title I budgets must be reviewed and approved prior to the submission of staffing plans to HR. I have set aside the following dates/times to meet with principals (coordinators are welcome, if you like). In addition, I have reserved 1:30-2:30 (just prior to the elementary principals meeting), in the Mozart room, to answer any individual questions you may have regarding your budget. There will be a sign up sheet for budget meetings available at this time. PRINCIPALS, PLEASE NOTE: an electronic version of the budget template will be emailed to each of you by the close of the business day, if not sooner, on 4/4.

Available times for Title I Budget Meetings with Suzy (sign up sheet will be available at 4/7’s Q & A or call Bee):
4/9: 7:30-2:00
4/11: 7:30-5:00
4/14: 7:30-11:00

RESOURCES

Parent Resources (Books/Websites): I put together the attached list of resources for you to use as a reference as we partner with  parents in the education of our students. Please know that I do not necessarily endorse the resources on this list as “the answer”, but rather my goal was to simply generate a set of resources schools could use as a starting point ~ one resource may meet the needs of a particular parent, while this same resource may not work for another family. I would love to add to this list, so please share with me resources you have stumbled across and I will continue to build our set of resources! Resources for Parents

Attacking Summer Slide in Math: “In this School Library Journal article, New York youth services coordinator Lisa Kropp cites a Duke University study showing that students’ summer learning losses are greater for math than for reading – all students, wealthy and poor, lose about 2.6 months in their grade-level equivalency in computational ability over the summer months.

One way of countering this is Bedtime Math www.bedtimemath.org, a program that e-mails parents a daily math problem with three levels of questions: wee ones, little ones, and big ones. The questions all refer to the same story and get progressively more challenging. Last summer, Bedtime Math teamed up with the Collaborative Summer Library Program to offer a math tie-in called “Summer of Numbers” http://www.cslpreads.org. Families can use math reading logs to track when children answer a math riddle, and these can be turned in for an incentive prize at participating libraries.”

Children’s Books That Turbocharge the Math Curriculum
“Integrating children’s literature into math makes learning more engaging and less intimidating,” says South Carolina educator Candice Brucke in this helpful article in AMLE Magazine. She believes her use of well-chosen books was a major reason for very high achievement in her classes. Here are some of her suggestions, including one she wrote herself:

• The Grapes of Math (Tang, 2004) and The Important Book (Brown, 1999) to teach number properties;
• A Giraffe to France (Hillard, 2000) for measurement and writing and solving equations;
• The Missing Piece (Silverstein, 2006) for missing-angle measures and sectors of a circle;
• How I Became a Pirate (Long, 2003) to assess students’ prior knowledge on the coordinate plane;
• Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi (Neuschwander, 1999) for circumference and π.
• Skippyjon Jones Lost in Spice (Schachner, 2005) for combinations and permutations
• Wrappers Wanted: A Mathematical Adventure in Surface Area (Brucke, 2009) for surface area;
• Chasing Vermeer (Balliett, 2005) to introduce manipulatives such as pentominoes
• My Full Moon Is Square (Pinczes, 2002) for the concept of square numbers;
• The Lion King (Disney, 1994) for the concept of slope – students can graph the good/ill fate points for a particular character;
• What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras? (Ellis, 2004) for the Pythagorean Theorem applied to everyday situations;
• One Grain of Rice (Demi, 1997) for exponential growth;
• Cinder Edna (Jackson, 1998) for box/scatter plots;
• Multiplying Menace: The Revenge of Rumplestiltskin (Calvert, 2006) to review fractions.

FLOCABULARY: Perhaps you have heard of FLOCABULARY. This tool uses short rap-type music videos to teach vocabulary, while introducing and reinforcing a variety of skills. Both students and teachers have given positive reviews and should support your efforts to increase student engagement. Currently there is a 90 day FREE TRIAL for individual and/or school site licenses.

Calendar Items

April
Week of March 31: Suzy out of the office
4/17: Staffing plans due to HR; Title budgets must be approved prior to submission to HR
4/18: Summer school letters and registration forms sent to families, by this date
4/25: Parent survey CLOSES
4/28: Coordinator PD; 11:00-11:30 lunch/11:30-2:20 PD (Mozart)/2:30-3:45 Principal & Coord mtg (auditorium)
4/28: Beyond the Bake Sale reading due
May
5/16: Summer School registrations to Linda, by this date
5/23: Confirmation letters to families, by this date
5/19: CIP annual meeting (parents to attend)

Compliance Deadlines:

Program Review: Here is a suggested timeline for completing sections of the Program Review:
Sections 1-5 should be done
Sections 6-7 by the end of March
Sections 8-10 by the end of April
Sections 11-16 by the end of May

April: Compliance documents DUE at the 4/28 PD for submission to Penny:
1) Budget allocation for the 2013-2014 school year (you should have a copy of your current year’s budget in your notebook. Bee will make a copy for our book, at the Ed Center)

2) Budget allocation for the 2014-2015 school year (this should be completed and approved prior to 4/28)

May: Compliance documents DUE at the 5/19 CIP meeting for submission to Penny:
1) Professional Development Questions for the 2013-2014 school year
PD Questions SWP 2013-2014
PD Questions TAS 2013-2014PD

2) Professional Development School and Title I Plan for the 2013-2014 school year
In Title IA schools, professional development activities should align with the building’s School Improvement Plan. As such, what activities were planned for the staff during the 2013-2014 SY? These activities would have taken place during scheduled professional development days and/or other meetings that occur throughout the school year. This is not a list of individual teacher PD, but PD that was provided to a larger group of staff members, or the staff at large. There are two examples provided in the chart below; examples can be deleted and replaced with your school’s PD activities.

PD Activities for the School (TAS_SWP) 2013-2014

 3) Parent Involvement Questions and copies of 4j’s district Parent Involvement Policy
Title I Parent Involvement Q’s 13-14
PI _Board Policy (Spanish)
PI_Board Policy (no invite)
PI_Board Policy (Parent Invite)

June:
Program Review Document: Completion of this document has been broken down into two parts in an attempt to make the work a bit more manageable. Be sure and include your Site Council (parents) in this process; you will want to speak to your administrator about getting on the SC agenda in the months ahead. Due to the enormity of the document, you may want to consider dividing the work over two SC meetings. Please find the documents below:

Annual Title I SWP Program Review 2014
Annual Title I TAS Program Review 2014

As a reminder, here is a SAMPLE Program Review with notes and sample paragraphs you can reference as you work to complete your own review. Title IA Program Review SAMPLE

Beyond the Bake Sale Book Study Chapter 5: Here is the assignment, due by our April 28 Coordinator/Principal Meeting. Coordinators, please share the book with your principals!
1) Read pages 81-84
2) In addition to reading pages 81-84, please read and come prepared to share a summary of your section:

Pages 84-91, starting with Helping Families to Understand What’s Happening in the Classroom:
Willa-g, Awbrey Park, Kelly, Chavez and McCornack
Pages 92-101, starting with Putting Student Work Front and Center:
River Road, Twin Oaks, Holt, Family and O’Hara
Pages 102-107, starting with Using Student Achievement Data to Design Programs for Families:
Spring Creek, Eugene Waldorf, Howard, Village and ATA

New and Updates!

Hello Coordinators and Principals ~ I hope this month’s blog finds you well!

March Title I Visitations ~ I look forward to visiting each of your schools the first two weeks of March. As a reminder, please find my visitation dates below. In addition, here is a general outline of discussion items. As always, please come with any questions you may have as this is a great time to get some answers! Please invite your principals to join! Title I School Visits Discussion Q’s (March 2014).

2/28: Laura
3/3: Aline and Cassidy
3/6: Terri, Jenny, Dayna and Robin
3/7: Carissa, Stephanie, Tana, Luann and Gloria
3/11: Corianne and Rhonda

Summer School: It’s time to begin thinking about Summer School. The program will be held from June 30-July 24! Detailed information will be coming soon. In the meantime, here is a general timeline and some deadlines to put on your calendar, as we get the student selection and registration processes underway:

March:
Schools will receive their summer school allotments
Forms will be distributed to Coordinators (incoming data, registration and parent letters)
March/April:
Schools identify students who will benefit from summer school and contact families
May:
Registration forms are due and confirmation letters sent to families

Summer School Specific Deadlines:
4/18: Send information letters and registration forms to families by April 18
5/16: Summer school registration forms to Linda by May 16
5/23: Confirmation letters sent to families by May 23
TBD: Summer school data forms to Linda

For the past two years, Wes Flinn has served as the Summer School administrator; thanks, Wes! With his new role as principal of Kelly Middle School, he is unable to commit to the program this year. The search for a new administrator is currently underway! Likewise, we will begin seeking to fill other staffing positions soon after spring break. In recent years, the teaching positions have been especially difficult to fill. If you, or someone you know, is interested in teaching summer school please make them aware of this upcoming opportunity; they will need to apply through NeoGov once a posting is on line. In addition, please ask them to email me so that I have a sense of who (and how many) is interested! Finally, because we focus on reading support, the teacher must hold a reading endorsement. In the event we are unable to locate enough interested teachers, who hold an endorsement, we may need to shift the primary focus of summer school to mathematics support. We really need your help in seeking teachers for summer school! Anything you can do will be greatly appreciated!

Mentor/Mentees: don’t forget, you’ve got extended contract time, along with two half days of sub release time, to work together! You can send extended contracts in, any time. If you’d like some extended time for more in depth discussions/work, please select “Title One” in Aesop to request a sub.

2014-2015 Title I Budget: During my January visits to each of your schools, I shared a brief update on next year’s budget. This update included an anticipated 10% reduction in Title funding to school districts. In addition, there will continue to be some required “set aside” funds to support our Title schools in improvement (Priority/Focus). As a result, individual schools should expect reduced funding as well. Please know that final allocations will likely fluctuate from this 10% figure based on changes in your enrollment and F/R percentages (December 1 figures are used to determine Title I eligibility/allocations) and the State’s actual allocation to the school district.

Title I allocations will be distributed in conjunction with HR staffing allocations, in April. The delayed distribution of allocations will result in a fairly swift turn around for determining Title budgets and staffing plans. To support you in this process, I will be setting up budget meetings with principals to review, and ultimately, approve school budgets. Principals, as has been done in the past, your Title budget must be reviewed and approved prior to submitting your staffing plan to HR. Bee has set aside some on my calendar for these meetings to occur. She will be in contact, soon, to begin scheduling a time for us to meet.

EA Extravaganza has been rescheduled for Friday, March 21 (8:00-11:35) at the Education Center in the auditorium.  This is a great opportunity for EA’s to receive quality professional development. There is no sign up for the Extravaganza, they just need to show up!  As a reminder, there is no additional pay for this day, so if an EA chooses to attend a training beyond their regular work day hours, it is strictly voluntary. You might consider shifting an EAs hours to fit around the extravaganza, as an option. Finally, because May 21 is a professional development/planning day in buildings, it is understood that many EA’s may already have plans/obligations to attend professional development at your site.  As such, EAs should check with both you (coordinator) and the principal before attending. Please see attached for PD offerings/times: EA Extravaganza 2014

Parent/Family Involvement Survey: On March 31, an electronic Parent Involvement survey will be opened to your families. In TAS, surveys should be given to those families whose child is receiving Title services. In SWP, all families should be surveyed. The survey window closes May 2. Please do your very best to ensure as many families as possible take the survey; we truly value their input as we continually strive to improve. Once the final survey is complete, Tami or I will send you an electronic copy for your preview. While our strong preference is that families complete the survey on line, we recognize the challenges that this may present for parents without Internet access. In these instances, some schools have elected to provide some families with a paper copy. Alicia then, graciously, entered all paper responses into survey monkey. With Alicia on maternity leave, we will not have the capacity to enter data for schools, this year. Therefore, if a school elects to distribute paper copies, we will need to collaborate on the best way to get this information tabulated and entered into the system.

IMPORTANT: Parent/Family Involvement Input from Site Council: With spring just around the corner, it’s time to begin gathering input from parents regarding Title services at your school. Attached, please find a set of questions for Site Council and the Eugene 4j Parent Involvement Policy. Coordinators and/or principals, please share the district policy AND bring these questions to an upcoming Site Council meeting and record feedback on the form. 
District Title I Parent Involvement Policy (English)
District Title I Parent Involvement Policy (Spanish)
Title I Site Council Parent Involvement Q’s 13-14

iPods and iPad Update: Now that Monica has distributed the first wave of equipment that was gathered from the dropped Title I sites, she is preparing to update iPods and iPads, if you have any. Remember, we need to be careful about updating apps in your iTunes for student iPods. Many of the updates are being made for iOS 7 and will not work on our iPods running iOS 6. If you download an app or update an app that only works on iOS 7, and need to restore an iPod, you will not be able to put that app back on the iPod.

Monica has been testing the apps you have in your different iTunes (from online) for iOS 6. She has a growing list of apps that will no longer work on our iPods. When she comes to your school, with her “mothership” to do your updates, she will give you a list of apps you do/don’t want to update. From this list, you can update your iTunes.

There has been an update to iOS 6 released since Monica distributed a number of the iPods back to you. She will conduct these updates when she visits your schools, as well. She can run updates much faster with the “mothership” than you can with your laptops.

To assist Monica in a smoothly run visit, you can help by gathering the Title iPods, from your participating classroom teachers, prior to your assigned day. She doesn’t need any cables, just the iPods. Monica will let you know if there is a change to the visitation schedule below:

3/4: Twin Oaks and Chavez
3/6: Awbrey Park and Kelly
3/13: Howard and Spring Creek
3/18: Family School and ATA
3/20: Holt, Willa-g and River Road

Using Children’s Books to Enhance Mathematics
In this article in The Reading Teacher, Allison Hintz and Anthony Smith (University of Washington/Bothell) suggest ways to use children’s literature to explain mathematics and make it vivid for students. The key steps, they say, are (a) choosing a good text, (b) exploring the text in a read-aloud and discussion with students, and (c) extending the text by getting students to explore ideas after the read-aloud is finished. Here are some books they suggest, along with the math links and suggested age-ranges:
Text-dependent:
Double Those Wheels by Nancy Raines Day – Doubling, counting by groups – Grades K-2
Equal Shmequal by Virginia Kroll – Equal and fair – Grades 3-5
Mummy Math: An Adventure in Geometry by Cindy Neuschwander – Geometry – Grades 2-4
Pete the Can and His Four Groovy Buttons by James Dean and Eric Litwin – Number recognition, counting back – Grades K-1
Tiger Math: Learning to Graph from a Baby Tiger by Ann Whitehead Nagda and Cindy Bickel – Data and statistics – Grades 3-5
Idea-enhancing:
Actual Size by Steve Jenkins – Estimation, measurement – Grades 1-3
The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins – Adding on, counting up – Grades 2-4
Move Over Rover by Karen Beaumont – Adding on, counting back – Grades K-2
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster – Number sense, geometry – Grades 4-6
Ten Flashing Fireflies by Philemon Sturges – Fact fluency, combinations of ten – Grades K-2
Illustration-exploring:
Ancient Greece by Anne Pearson – Geometry, estimation, counting – Grades 3-5
Anno’s Counting Book by Mitsumasa Anno – Counting on by ones, groups – Grades K-2
I Spy a Dinosaur’s Eye by Jean Marzollo – Counting and cardinality – Grade K-2
Lonely Planet Not for Parents Extreme Planet by Lonely Planet – Representing and interpreting data – Grades 4-6
Shintauro’s Umbrellas by Marjorie Jackson – K-1
There Is a Bird on Your Head by Mo Willems – Addition and grouping – Grades K-2

Friendly Reminders

Don’t forget, all the Title forms and information can be found on the 4j website at:
http://www.curriculum.4j.lane.edu/title/

In addition, information regarding Indistar and the CAP (Comprehensive Achievement Plan) process can also be found on the 4j website at:
http://www.4j.lane.edu/instruction/title/indistar-and-school-improvement-planning/

Beyond the Bake Sale Book Study Chapter 5: Here is the assignment, due by our April 28 Coordinator/Principal Meeting. Coordinators, please share the book with your principals!
1) Read pages 81-84
2) In addition to reading pages 81-84, please read and come prepared to share a summary of your section:

Calendar Items

March
Week of March 3 and 10: Title school visits
Week of March 31: Suzy out of the office
April
4/18: Summer school letters and registration forms sent to families, by this date
4/28: Coordinator PD; 11:00-11:30 lunch/11:30-2:20 PD (Mozart)/2:30-3:45 Principal & Coord mtg (auditorium)
4/28: Beyond the Bake Sale reading due
May
5/16: Summer School registrations to Linda, by this date
5/23: Confirmation letters to families, by this date
5/19: CIP annual meeting (parents to attend)

Compliance Deadlines:

March: There are no compliance items due in March. However, I would recommend pacing yourself on the completion of your Program Review. Here is a suggested timeline for completing sections of the Program Review:
Sections 1-5 should be done
Sections 6-7 by the end of March
Sections 8-10 by the end of April
Sections 11-16 by the end of May

April: Compliance documents DUE at the 4/28 PD for submission to Penny:
1) Budget allocation for the 2013-2014 school year (you should have a copy of your current year’s budget in your notebook. Bee will make a copy for our book, at the Ed Center)

2) Budget allocation for the 2014-2015 school year (this should be completed and approved prior to 4/28)

May: Compliance documents DUE at the 5/19 CIP meeting for submission to Penny:
1) Professional Development Questions for the 2013-2014 school year
PD Questions SWP 2013-2014
PD Questions TAS 2013-2014PD

2) Professional Development School and Title I Plan for the 2013-2014 school year
PD Activities for the School (TAS_SWP) 2013-2014

3) Parent Involvement Questions
Title I Parent Involvement Q’s 13-14

June:
Program Review Document: Completion of this document has been broken down into two parts in an attempt to make the work a bit more manageable. Be sure and include your Site Council (parents) in this process; you will want to speak to your administrator about getting on the SC agenda in the months ahead. Due to the enormity of the document, you may want to consider dividing the work over two SC meetings. Please find the documents below:

Annual Title I SWP Program Review 2014
Annual Title I TAS Program Review 2014

As a reminder, here is a SAMPLE Program Review with notes and sample paragraphs you can reference as you work to complete your own review. Title IA Program Review SAMPLE