https://blogs.4j.lane.edu/chinn/?p=3054
Hi All,
Fourteen items of note this week:
• Design Team Update – Quiet few folks stayed around the Focus Groups at last week’s Design Team meeting, but to update everyone, here are the highlights:
• The architects and 4J Facilities staff have been working since our last meeting to bring the new school design back into budget (it was $6 million over) and presented their changes and some potential options for certain areas.
• The architects and 4J Facilities staff also developed a list of “Project Alternates,” which are a list of design elements that when contractors bid on the project, have the option of saying in their bid if they will include these or not. Most of the alternates were fairly innocuous, but the most significant one is two classrooms (first and second floor) located on the corner of the southwest wing. If those two rooms are not built, it would widen the courtyard space leading out to the playground. Without these rooms, the new building would have 28 room instead of 30. In the short term, this is still more than our current 24 classrooms (including the two in the portable).
• In classrooms spaces, the sliding whiteboard doors to cover the cubbies were eliminated due to cost. It was also clarified that there would be no windows in-between classrooms and only windows into the commons area.
• The music room and stage were revisited as a major area for cost savings. Options considered were to eliminate the stage and keep the music room, eliminate the music room and hold music classes on the stage like at Holt & Chavez, to reshape the stage into more of a square classroom shape, or to build the stage and make the music classroom an “alternate” on the project. The preference from David, and from other music teachers he’s surveyed, was to have a Music Room and not teach on the stage. Rachel’s preference would be to have a Music Room because it would give the gym an additional solid wall for PE classes (since you can’t bounce balls against a stage curtain). So in the end, the Design Team decided that the day-to-day use by Music and PE classes outweighed the less frequent convenience of having a formal stage. We included in this decision that we would have a portable stage (one much higher than our current one, somewhere above table height) that will have built in storage somewhere in the gym/music room area.
A lot of the big picture design aspects of the school are getting pretty set in stone, but there is still quite a bit of room for discussion on detail elements, as well as furniture and technology, so remember that you can pin your ideas to the Howard Pinterest page to share anything cool you come across.
• Staffing Survey Reminder – If you haven’t done so already, please complete the staffing survey, which can be found on SurveyMonkey or in a Word document that you can email to me. I’d particularly like people’s feedback around the master schedule questions regarding Title push-in/pull-out, changes to math booster and whether classroom teachers want a block of time outside of core where no students are pulled. I’d also like to know people’s plans for next year and in the long term. Please complete the survey by the end of the week.
• Howard T-Shirt School Pride Project – Student order forms are due this Friday. If forms are not returned, please guesstimate those student’s shirt sizes and turn the completed record sheet to the office. Also, please bring any money that you receive for the t-shirt orders to Lori on a daily basis, which will help with bookkeeping and for Lori having to create a receipt for each child.
Lastly, we have a couple options for shades of blue for the shirt, so if you’d like to weigh in, let me know if you think we should go with Ultra Marine or Royal Blue.
• New School Design Open House – This Tuesday from 5:00-7:30 will be the Howard New School Design Open House. The agenda for the evening will be:
• 5:30 p.m. Open house begins
• 6:00 p.m. Presentation
• 6:30 p.m. Public input
• 7:00 p.m. Ending timeClassified staff, please let m know if any of you are willing and able to supervise open gym/child care during the School Design Open House. The Facilities Department will pay staff to supervise during this event. Supervision would be 5:15-7:15 in the gym.
• Fire Drill, Monday at 1:30 – It’s supposed to be warm and sunny weather on Monday, we’ll plan to hold our April Fire Drill on Monday, April 7th at 1:30.
• Copier Reminder – I hate being the copy count minder, but at the current rate we’re on track to go over our copy count pretty fast. Since Feb. 10th, when we got the new printers, 100,500 copies have been made (about a third of what we typically do in a year) and we’ve also already gone through 15,000 staples in a month, which is more than usually go through in an entire school year. I don’t want teachers rationing copies for activities with students you really need, but I am asking people to think twice about running copies for things that may or may get used or are non-essentials.
• Teacher Formal Observations – I’ll be scheduling formal observation with a number of teachers coming up because the district is providing admin subs to cover the building while principals conduct observations and do the write ups. Retired 4J principal Carolyn Hopkins will be filling in for me on April 15th and 16th, so I’ll be setting up observation dates this week and next week.
• Test Security Reminder: Untrained Volunteers – A reminder to all staff. OAKS testing will happen the weeks of April 14th and April 28th. Teachers will have a testing sign on their door during all testing sessions. If you have not been trained, and signed a test security assurance form, do not enter the room. This is considered a violation and needs to be reported to ODE. We would like to avoid this at all costs.
• Title 1 End of Year Dates – The last day of Title groups will be Wednesday June 11th. Title 1 will also hold a Family Engineering Night on Thursday May 29th from 5:00-6:00. This event will be held in the Cafeteria and we will only be doing a snack. Staff are welcome, though not required to attend this event, but it will have some fun STEM related activities for families to take part in.
• Gym In Use on Mondays 10:30-11:00 – For the last 10 weeks of the school year, Leslie Jaeger, the district Adaptive PE specialist, will be using the gym with some of our CLC students on Mondays from 10:30-11:00. Let me know if this doesn’t work for anyone.
• Smarter Balanced Practice Test Website – If you’d like to see for yourself or show your students what next year’s Smarter Balance assessments will look like, you can visit this website. Enter the site on the student interface – the green square at the bottom of the page. The fields are filled in with guest so all you need to do is click sign in. If you want to share this with students, you could project it on the SMART board and completing the test together, which might be a nice way to experience the test without feeling like they have to take a test.
• How project-based learning teaches 21st-century skills – Some educators at a school district in North Carolina are adopting project-based learning in their classrooms. In this commentary, teacher Meredith Licht shines a light on PBL in some of the district’s schools. “PBL is an essential tool educators can use to teach the four C’s of 21st century skills — critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity,” she writes.• Lane County Science Fair at the Fair – Lane ESD, Lane County Fair and the UO are partnering to highlight student Project Based Learning at the 2014 Lane County Fair. Prizes, Recognition and Fair tickets available! Attached is a flyer with details.
• Schedule of Events for the Week – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for this week:
April 7 (M)
EasyCBM Reading Progress Monitoring Week 11
12:00-1:00, Allan to IEP Meeting
1:30, Fire Drill
2:00-2:30, Allan to Title 1 Staffing Meeting
2:30-5:00, Allan to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)April 8 (T)
PBIS Focus: Encouragement
8:30-4:00, Allan to Jon Saphier Training (Ed Center)
11:30-12:30, Allan to KITS Meeting (Ed Center)
2:30-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Room 4)
5:30-7:00, New School Design Open House (Cafeteria)April 9 (W)
2:30-3:00, Optional Staff Meeting to review staffing scenariosApril 10 (H)
8:00-11:00, Allan on School Visits with Saphier and Directors (Awbrey Park)April 11 (F)
Regular Day
Enjoy this week’s spring-like weather!
Allan
