Monday, February 27, 2012

Happy Monday!


I hope you all had a great weekend.  I am a little late in getting my blog out to you so I’ll send you a little now and a little more later in the week. 

I am at PCC all day today at Academic Olympics with about 25 high school students.  Thanks for your great work in getting them ready for this competition!

First of all the not-so-great news – I just found out that Cristy Harts is going to be starting a new part time job next week and this is going to cause a change in her schedule at Skyline.  I appreciate so much what Cristy does for us at Skyline, in addition to being a very skilled educator, she has a big heart for kids and makes a huge difference for lots of them. She will continue to be at school in the afternoons on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and all day on Tuesday and Friday.  Later this week we will need to revise her entire schedule so that we are utilizing her in the places where the needs are greatest.  The good news is that Cristy is still going to be able to spend time with our students, just not as much time. 

The 3rd graders will be kicking off state assessments on Tuesday.

Wednesday afternoon the interview team for the Title I position will be meeting with three candidates.  If you are on that team you can be expecting to get the interview questions early on Tuesday morning.

Friday the 2nd graders will be off to Dr. Seuss day at the public library. 

Next week at our faculty meeting we will be working on coming up with goals and strategies for our school improvement plan.  I’ll be sending another blog post that explains that process and get some input from you.

Have a great week!

Becca

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. 
The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
Dr. Seuss

Monday, February 20, 2012

K Round-Up was Great!


Kindergarten Round-Up was a great day!  We had a full day of visiting with future T-Birds.  I’m not sure what our final count was, but I think it was right around 34.  A huge “thanks” to Jeanette, Karen, Tonie and Joyce for taking care of the planning and all of the people who helped out in that adventure!  I don’t think I have sent out a blog since Karen Wilcox came on board as our new nurse – welcome Karen, we are glad to have you at Skyline! 

I’m looking forward to the Jump Rope for Heart Kick-Off Assembly on Wednesday afternoon.  I always enjoy seeing how enthused our students get about Jump Rope for Heart.  I know they learn a lot about fitness and have fun, but I also know they appreciate the opportunity to help with such a worthwhile cause.  I’m looking forward to dining with K-2 students on Thursday and 3-4 grade students on Friday for principal’s club. 

I completed several evaluations last week.  Over the last few weeks, most of my classroom visits were connected to the formal evaluation process.  I do hope to get back in the routine this week of getting around to your classrooms.  I have been so impressed by what goes on in our classrooms!  I have bragged a lot about the great things I’ve seen.  I really wish you had more time to visit each others classrooms, I think would be a valuable, uplifting experience for everyone.
Making progress in the selection process for the Title I Math and Reading specialist is a high priority for me this week.  If you volunteered to be involved in interviews, I’ll be in touch with you on Monday about finding a day to meet after school. 

As we look to next year, MTSS is on my mind in a big way……. OK, in an overwhelming sort of way!  The more I hear, the more convinced I am that we need to be seriously considering making the leap.  I used to see “MTSS” as a bad word, now I see it as a hopeful strategy.  Lori Meyers, our school Psych, gave us the name of a consultant who might be able to help us gather info about MTSS and what it would look like at Skyline.  I may see if we could have her come to our March faculty meeting; I would appreciate your feedback about what you think of having her come to visit with us and answer questions.  This link will take you to a brochure about MTSS: www.kansasmtss.org/all/MTSS%20Brochure.pdf

Well it’s time to start the week, I do hope you have a great week!

Becca

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Looking Ahead.....


First of all – THANKS to all of you for your positive attitude and hard work on Monday at our inservice.  I feel like we are ready to come up with some goals.  We can spend time at a faculty meeting working on that. The first five items below were discussed at Admin Council this week; the last couple are just things that I thought you would want to be aware of. If you have concerns and questions about any of these topics I would encourage you to talk to me and your colleagues who are directly involved.  Whatever does become reality, I hope that it will be a 'big picture plan' that all of us can embrace and support. 

5th and 6th GRADE PROJECT BASED LEARNING
Due to the number of students who will be in the 5th and 6th grade next year (70), a new teacher will be added to the PBL staff.  Michael Nelson will be leaving his technology coordinator position and taking the PBL teaching position.  He will still take care of the some of the ‘tech stuff’, but his primary job will be teaching math to 5th and 6th graders. 

3rd and 4th GRADES
Michelle, Carrie and Bjorn are doing some research and forming their opinions on the idea of Michelle and Kristi looping to 4th grade with these students and Carrie and Bjorn teaching 3rd grade next year, and looping on to 4th grade with those students the following year.  At that point we would look at data to determine what kind of impact looping had on student learning.  If it’s a positive impact on how much our students are learning, we may consider doing it again. 

Daily Start/End Times
There is concern about the earliness / lateness of some of the bus routes.  There are discussions about starting school 15 minutes later.  If that were to happen there are lots of unknowns; would we go 15 minutes later in the day, would we add days to the school year, etc….

Rumors
Just be aware, there are lots of rumors circulating among our patrons.  I think the best thing we can do is to just be positive and supportive of our school district and explain that lots of decisions will be made over the next couple of months.

$$$$$$
The amount of money in our Capital Outlay fund (in real-life, I would call this a savings account) has decreased dramatically over the last few years in order for us to keep up with budget cuts.  This means that there will be less of this ‘savings’ to cover building repairs and maintenance.  So the money to take care of our building may have to start coming from the general budget (instruction) if we can’t figure out a way to build those funds back up.  These are, no doubt, tough times in education.  BUT you know the great thing about being old is that I know that we can make it through tough times, we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again!  It will take sacrifices, but it will happen.  There is no reason to think that those sacrifices will diminish the quality of instruction at Skyline. 

Most of you are aware of this website that we were getting excited about on Monday afternoon.  If we purchase this web-based software it will provide us with a system that will allow us to keep track of each student's progress towards the common core standards.  The system will get its information from assessments that are provided within the software, or teachers can import their own assessments.  If we go with this you won’t need to develop a checklist; this will provide the checklists, plus a lot more!  I’m sorry if you have already spent time working on your checklist, I didn’t realize this type of product was available yet.

TITLE I, MATH & READING SPECIALIST
We will be hiring a full-time Title I coordinator.  We have received applications from several candidates.  The following people have volunteered to be on the selection committee:  Ruth Ann, Beth, Sue, Carrie, Denise, Joyce and Judy.  We will meet next week to set a date for interviews.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Thanks for being a TERRIFIC staff!!


Friday was quite the day!  This is long blog post – but just that day alone was packed to the brim!!  At about 12:45 a.m. I was finally on my way home and as I had a chance to think and reflect on the day I realized that in spite of how busy, chaotic and at times, stressful, the day I been, I was HAPPY!  And I don’t mean happy because the week was over, I mean I just felt really content and even kind of excited.  At that point I realized that I was either very insane or that I genuinely had a lot to be thankful for.  Well, some people would argue for insanity, but that happiness really came from a thankful heart.  I’ll share with you just a small sample of what I had to be thankful for…..

The graduates who came back for the career fair; that is so awesome and inspiring to hear their stories and see their willingness to give of themselves by coming back and sharing those stories with this generation of students.

The teachers just sort of jumped in and managed students, helped presenters get what they needed, helped clean up, etc.  If there was a base I forgot to cover, they just covered it and went on.  So many people just pitched in and made it work.  Michelle’s creativity and hostess skills turned ordinary into extravagant when it came time for meals and gifts for the presenters.  Michael remained calm and committed as he got us all hooked up with technology.  Rooms were rearranged; tables and chairs set up; the sound was hooked up - lots of efforts by lots of people!     

I felt like the students were great participants at the career fair.  You must have instilled some great manners and respect in them when they were in elementary school!  You could have heard a pin drop as the high school kids listened to Willie give the keynote in the morning, the rest of the day continued like that.  Then came the homecoming dance.  I don’t always put fun and high school dance in the same sentence; but the high school students made this dance fun.  I wish you could have seen them; they had black lights, all sorts of glow jewelry and clothing and even glow balloons.  Everyone appeared to be included and involved, it was probably the most fun dance I’ve sponsored. 

And then there’s the BIGGIE of the day.  This thankfulness resulted from a huge blunder I made when I went into Dillons early Friday morning.  I did not take my phone into the store with me.  You just have to realize; I sort of have a love-hate relationship with my cell phone.  Since I took over as principal I have really tried to make a conscious effort to try to be attached to it 24/7, as opposed to losing it several times a day.  I really have been having it right beside me at night so that if you call and need a sub, it’s there.  I wake up at 6:00 a.m. so that if you call, I’ll be coherent enough to answer and communicate.  So anyway, back to the story….

Because I set my phone down and failed to check my messages, I didn’t know that Joyce had a sick little guy at home and she wouldn’t be able to come to school on Friday.  I was mingling with the career fair presenters in the library, breaking the news that we didn’t have Internet and some rooms didn’t have electricity, when someone came in and said – do you realize that there isn’t an adult in one of the kindergarten rooms.  YIKES (the actual expression that sounded off in my head was not really “yikes”, but lets just go with “yikes”.)  So at this point no Internet and no electricity became rather insignificant!  Stress just mounted as we found out that Joyce had in fact called in for a sub, I had ignored the phone call and every sub in the county was already busy that day!  Not only was it a bad situation, but also it was obvious that it was my fault, I couldn’t even soothe the wound by blaming anyone else!  But you know within minutes, at least four of you had stepped up and said “hey I’m available, I can help out” and eventually Susan and Hannah left their ‘normal’ jobs and subbed in kindergarten that day.  I was so thankful for all of you who were willing help out! 

So I’ve been practicing the death grip on my cell phone this weekend!  In fact when I went to Dillons on Saturday, I had forgot my purse so I had no way to pay for my groceries, but I was just happy that I had my phone!  All I could do was laugh and go home and start over again!   

Oh yea, and I told you last week that I thought I would have a few exciting things to tell you by the time I blogged again.  One was that Vernon and I would only own one house by the next blog post, and YES, we closed on our ‘city’ house on Friday during the homecoming assembly!  Another item of good news that I was expecting to share was that Marcia would be feeling better by now.  She had her surgery on Monday and from what I hear she is encouraged by the results, I’ll try to know more about how she is doing on Monday to share with you.  I also told you that I thought the Skyline family would be one bigger by this week, I was off a week – give me another week on that one! 
I know this post does not include an ounce of information you need for your role as an educator this week!  I’m looking forward to working with you on Monday, I think we are doing some important work and preparing the way for some exciting times.  We’ll be in the library.  We will start the day with a meeting just to get us all on the same page, ready for the day and ready for this final stretch of the school year!

My biggest point of this post is…..
THANKS
so much to all of you, you are very special people!!