4K and Reading-- the MMSD, as of December 9th

Happy Snow Day!!!

You guys better thank me! I handed Superintendent a check under the table at Monday night's board meeting. Am now accepting donations to reimburse.

Just kidding. Wow-- I can't remember a day before this when school was actually canceled the night in advance. It was sure nice, though, to go to bed knowing for sure there was no chance we'd have to go to school.

Since I have the day off, and since my Calc 2 homework or research on Millard Fillmore (the world's boring-est president) don't look like such a good idea, I've decided to instead write a little bit on Monday's meeting.

It was surprisingly intense! We discussed 4 year old kindergarten, and heard several day care providers from the community urging the MMSD to reconsider how much they will be reimbursed. Basically, when 4k starts next year, some of the 4 year olds will be within a MMSD school building, and others will go to a community day care center. But now the education will be free, and the district and these community providers are joining forces to make it happen.

4k is really exciting, since it provides a great opportunity for four year olds to get a head start with learning before they get to kindergarten. It's also a promising step towards eliminating the achievment gap. Right now, we're smooting out some rough edges-- deciding whether to start with all of the buildings and teachers, or whether to "phase in," starting with 1/3 or 2/3 the amount of resources, and then increase it in the next few years.

However, though there's still some negotiating to go, the 4k plan seems to be on its way. Another issue that involved a lot of intense discussion was the district's Reading Recovery Program.

Reading Recovery is a program for first grade students who are really struggling with reading. Targeted at the lowest 20% reading level students, Reading Recovery provides very intense one-on-one training every day which, when continued throughout the year, has very good national results of getting kids back on track.

However, in the last few years, RR in the MMSD has had less success than the national average (42% students finish the program versus around 60% nationally). This lead the district to worry and evaluate the program. At our meeting, we discussed schools that had experienced success with reading recoverey, and other ones that had not. The team that evaluated the program has recommended "full implementation" of reading recovery at schools with the most needy children, which would hopefully increase the success rate at those schools. However, due to limited resources, Reading Recovery can not be implemented at every school.

School Board members have expressed a desire to evaluate not only the RR program, but to take a comprehensive look at ALL of the reading programs in our district, to see which are working and which are not. Reading, as most will agree, is the single most important step to ensure students a continued successful education.

More to come! Let it snow!

Student Senate

We had an amazing Student Senate meeting last Tuesday. For those of you unfamiliar with the group, Student Senate is open to any and all MMSD high schoolers. We meet every other Tuesday to discuss student-related issues in the school district, and ways that we, as students, can get more of a say.

This year is an extremely important one for the future of students. Last year, under the leadership of the new superintendent Dan Nerad, the school board and community embarked on a process called The Strategic Plan. Though it sounds kind of technical and formal, the strategic plan is essentially the "paper copy" of all of the goals for our school district--- what we want to acheive, and how we're going to do it.

A big theme in the process last year was the achievement gap. Why it occurs, and how we can work to close it. As you can see from the mission statement (top of this webpage), closing the achievement gap and providing OUTSTANDING EDUCATION TO ALL STUDENTS is the purpose of our schools.

Sounds impossible, right? Well, the strategic plan is broken into many sections, each of which have specific goals and ways to implement them. Three of the "action" plans are: Staff to Student Relationships, Staff Retention (how we hire/keep our teachers!) and Curriculum.

At Student Senate last week, we broke into groups and read these plans, learning how the district plans to improve relationships within schools, hire qualified and diverse teachers, and provide a stimulating and contemporary curriculum. Wow, that's basically everything that determines whether or not students have a good experience at school (Yeah, okay, all that AND the caliber of the cafeteria food).

We had some really great discussions in our groups, and while we found a lot we liked in the district's plan, we also found a lot we thought could be improved. Sometimes, the language was vague and we felt the plan's goals were misaligned. The group I was in that dealt with Relationships thought that communication was the key to this goal. We feel that our schools really need to teach both students and staff how to communicate so they can better express what they need to help their instruction and learning.

We'll continue our discussion next meeting, December 8th, at 6 in the Doyle Building on Dayton Street. Anyone is welcome!