Lawn Ave SIT notes

February 10, 2005

 (back to Lawn Sit)

Meeting was called to order at 4:00

Notes  were corrected and accepted.

 

Question was asked to identify the kind of services we could purchase from NK.  Mrs. Sipala discussed this.

Technology services purchased from NK

  1. Professional Development
  2. Technology Education
  3. Become an arm of their system which would alleviate our Technology people
  4. More assistance with attendance module.

 

SubCommittee work on Salt meeting needs to be as soon as possible.

March 7 and 21 are not staff meeting along with May 4 and June 2 and 17

 

It was determined that March 7 should be the meeting date since that was the first available Monday without staff meeting.  At 2:30

 

Student Portfolio Night

Great success for the students presenting their work. 

Parents appreciated the night. However Need parent conference as well. 

 

State Testing

Canceled student testing in March.  It is now moved to October.

 

NNAP Testing was given to 8th grade for Math and science.  It was reported that the Jamestown students were far more attentive to the task of taking the test seriously working to task. 

 

Salt Results 2004/05

Parent Surveys returned in Jamestown was the highest number as in the past years..  97 surveys were  returned out of 200 Salt Surveys sent out to parents in community with children at J.School.

 

Teacher Survey Returned

     Three categories were selected to discuss

Team or Grade Level Practices

Classroom Practices

Attitudes Toward Educational Practices

 

What is SALT and why is SALT? 

 

SALT Meets the Federal requirements. Once the survey has been organized into a document of results, these results are then given to their individual school departments as data.  It is then hoped that each town will use the data when dealing  with the building and/or support Progressive school plans..  This SALT shows trends and to take it with a grain of salt. 

 

Art Department—

Ms. Sudham Diapenbrock along with other artists are sharing their time with the organizing and planning of ways to assist the Lawn Ave. art program

What do parents need to do?

What does the school need to do?

What can art education expect from the budget?

All of this is done in a positive way with the team effort of all.

Art Show being worked on to get the kids excited.  (Need tables and shelving.)

Maybe begin a booster group of parents for the arts.  Already their is a booster club for the band and sports.

April 8th  Art Gallery for Melrose and Lawn  schools.

Randall Gallery will be assisting in connecting community and school together.

More art time may be given to students in the future.

Physically, the Robotics and Visual arts instruction needs to be separated so that the rooms are conducive to the kind of art being investigated.  2 places of instruction.

Show casing the childrenŐs work.

 

Old Business: 

Letter attached penned by Paul McDermott to school committee concerning the 4 classrooms.

Goals remain the same  within a budget

Even though 6th grade will continue to exist, whose to say that it may not be as good as it is now.  It will be different.  The letter was asking school committee to look really hard at this situation or reducing 4 sections to 3.  It does change the teaching of subject matter.

Given all possibilities, using the 3 teachers, all teachers will teach social studies using novels that have already set it  up.

Schedule:  Breaking curriculum into three sections.

 

Deb Barone:      S. America  

Beth Weibust:  Africa

Chris Kent :      Middle East

Skills of Reading are valued and can be taught in social studies.

The schedule supports reading and social studies.

 

 

Bruce E. and Kathy S.  are trying to keep departmental teaching in focus for 7th and 8th grade.  Asking for more options to support departmental strength. 

 

Ms. Bernardo is guaranteed a position.   

 

Meeting ends at 5:45.  Next meeting is March 10th