Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Schools Out (almost)!!

Oh my gosh – another year has flown by!!

For me, this has been one humdinger of a year! This has been a much bigger job change than I was anticipating, but that’s great, I was ready for ‘different’ and there’s no doubt that I got ‘different’!  (Lesson:  Be careful what you ask for!)  I am so appreciative of the K-6 staff, what a wonderful group of people to start on this adventure into administration – I really mean that, you are awesome!   I have appreciated your patience as I 'learn the ropes' and settle into this new role.  Although we have huge challenges ahead of us, I’m excited because I am confident that pushing through those challenges is going to bring us closer together as a team and we’ll grow and improve as a school.

I’m looking forward to the retirement reception tomorrow evening. I have especially enjoyed spending time visiting with Jane and Marcia about their careers and listening to their stories. It’s also been fun to talk to their colleagues and past administrators to gain more perspective on their careers. These ladies have had great careers that have made wonderful impressions on the lives of lots of children. They will certainly be missed by both staff and students!

I hope you have a great summer ahead of you. I hope you’ll keep in touch over the summer; email me or give me a call or stop by my house if you’re ever out for a drive in the country. I love company! This sprint to the end of year has me very excited to just spend some time relaxing with friends and family. We managed to get Adam graduated and celebrated last weekend. Morgan will have regional track on Friday and Jared (my 22 yr old K-Stater) will be off to Dayton, Ohio on Sunday to spend the summer doing an internship.

I’ll probably post a few blogs over the summer. If you want to be notified when they are posted you need to become a follower of the blog and you’ll get notification when I post something.

MTSS Team -- Just a reminder that we are meeting from 1:00 - 3:00 on Wednesday afternoon.

Becca

Monday, May 7, 2012

Welcome to the last full week of the school year…….


Good morning, I hope your weekend was refreshing.  This has the potential to be a long blog, take some breaks, hang in there with me…….

First of all – this is what the week holds for us:
TUES, May 8
The K-6 Awards Assembly is at 2:30.  I will put a copy of the agenda in your box.
Teacher of the Year Reception at 4:00 to honor Judy Hampel.
WED, May 9
Administrative Council at 4:00.  As far as I know, we will be meeting.  Be sure and get agenda items to your grade level reps.  
THUR, May 10
Kindergarten Graduation/Music Program at 2:45.  (Just FYI, as soon as I am done shaking tiny hands I will be heading to the track meet at Fairfield.)
FRI, May 11
Play Day at 12:30.  If weather.com has any integrity at all it’s going to be a beautiful, partly cloudy, 80-degree day with a 10 mph breeze!
Skyline Carnival at 3:45.  What a fun way to bring closure to a fun day and a great school year! 
SUN, May 13
High School Graduation at 4:00.  This isn’t necessarily a K-6 event, but I want to mention it because it has a lot to do with the great work of K-12 teachers!  I want to slip on my “mom” hat for just a few sentences and tell you how serious I am about that statement.  Adam will graduate on Sunday and of course I am very proud of him, but I am also so impressed and appreciative of all the Skyline teachers and staff who have invested in him.  He is a lucky young man to have had the opportunity to grow up, from birth to high school graduate, as a member of the Skyline family.  It truly takes a village to raise a child; you’ve been an awesome village for him!  So whether you taught him in your classroom, went to at a football game, laughed at his jokes or smiled at him in the hallway – thanks!

Teacher Re-Assignment / Changes
Harmony will be moving from her middle school math/social studies position to join the 5th/6th grade PBL team.  We will be interviewing and hiring someone in the near future for the opening this created in the middle school. 

Dani will be leaving Skyline to take a position at Liberty Middle School.  We have appreciated all that Dani has done for our students and wish her the best in her new position.  We are also in the process of interviewing candidates for this position.

RELOCATIONS HAPPENING OVER THE summer…..
We have a lot of people who are moving classrooms over the summer, this is the plan:

The 5th and 6th Grade teachers will be moving into Denise’s, Carrie’s, Bjorn’s and Karen’s classrooms.  Denise will continue to work out of that classroom, but will be sharing it with Michael.  Carrie will be moving to where Kris is currently, Bjorn to where Shari is and Karen to where Hannah is.  The reason for this move is to keep the four PBL classrooms in close proximity to each other.  We were highly advised to keep these classrooms together and have seen the benefits to students when they are together. 

ESL is moving downstairs to the small room next to Marla’s classroom.

The virtual school will be located in what is now the ESL classroom upstairs.  Next year we will have a full-time director for the virtual school.  The purpose of this is to expand the virtual school.  Expanding the virtual school has the potential to meet the needs of more students and to bring revenue to the district. 

Patsy will be setting up shop in my old office.  This will give the K-8 resource room much needed additional space and will provide a more isolated place for speech / language services. 

Next Year’s Calendar
I had originally intended to talk about the K-Graduation plan in this week’s blog, I guess I’ll go ahead even though it’s old news by now.  Conversations about ending students’ Kindergarten experience with graduation began (actually resurfaced) in the 2010-11 school year, those conversations included administration, teachers and parents.  I am convinced that dismissing Kindergarten two and one-half days before the 1st through 11th graders will NOT have a negative impact on student learning and will align the schedule with what graduation symbolizes.  The number of days for our kindergarteners will still exceeds the number required by KSDE by a very large margin.  This change will give K teachers an opportunity to bring in potential Kindergarteners for the next year for further evaluation and if time permits it could possibly provide them with time to sort and organize student data to prepare for the next year.  Kindergarteners will be coming to school on the day following their graduation to participate in Play Day.  The only possible “con” I see is that child care for families for those two days might be an issue, if we find that’s a problem, we’ll consider that as we plan the 2013/14 school year.     

CHECK OUT
I have dug deep into the “old files” and the most recent check out sheet I can find is one from 1999!  I’ll work on coming up with that, but in the mean time I do know that before you leave for the summer I will need:
    A list of summer school students.
    Your supply order.
    Class splits.
I know there are also some formalities that we need to take care of like classroom inventories, key check in/out, equipment check-in with Sue and computer check in/out.  I’ll ask for some help from Herb and get more checkout information to you later in the week.

MTSS Team
The MTSS Team will be meeting/training on Wednesday, May 16 in the afternoon.  The implementation process will involve learning more and coming up with a plan that will work in our setting with our staff and our students.  Amy Wagoner and Marci Sheardon from ESSDACK will be guiding us through this process.  Amy is a KSDE trained MTSS facilitator.  They will be facilitating the meeting on the 16th to start the process.  If you have not signed up to be on the team, but would like to, you still can, just let me know.

ASSESSMENT SCORES
I have complete packets of the 3-8 Math and Reading Assessment Results.  These can be checked out from me if you would like to review that data beyond your grade level. 

I warned you from the get-go that this was going to be long and it is, thanks for sticking with it!  I know that last week was not been an easy one.  You are working extra hard, students are acting like they are certainly ready to start summer and you’re trying hard to finish up the school year, you’re preparing for special events and organizing field trips.  Even though it’s a tough time of year and things can get tense, keep in mind that you are a terrific staff, a great team and that Skyline is a pretty special place.

Have a great week!

Becca