From the Blog of the Superintendent

From the blog of Superintendent Brian Salzer:

Our Professional Development Day on Tuesday began with a presentation on the design of quality PLC’s and then offered a wide variety of working sessions for practical application of PLC work.  Sessions were held for general education teachers, ESP’s, nurses, and special education teachers.  Topics included curriculum design, IEP implementation, assessment data and design, restraint training, and technology software introduction.

Our Administrative Leadership Team is continuing to implement specific strategies to support student learning at Bridge Street School.  Principal Beth Choquette and the teachers are working collaboratively and using DSAC support funds for additional staff support and PD offerings.  We feel we have a strong team working together that will produce measurable results throughout the year.

This week we held the public forum on Wednesday to continue our discussion of the later start time for the high school and then intended to take a vote during our School Committee meeting on Thursday.  With appropriate warning from a concerned citizen about the wording of the vote on our agenda, the School Committee omitted the item from last night’s agenda to comply with the open meeting law.  We will hold a special meeting with this as the single agenda item.  We are attempting to schedule the meeting for the first week in December and when I have a date we will publicly post the meeting.

Angelo Rota, Mike Diemand, Dave Pomerantz and I made our proposal to the Capital Planning Committee last Wednesday evening.  We spoke of our needs in technology, pool upkeep, and buildings and grounds maintenance.  The Committee was very receptive to our ideas and we will hear the results within the next few weeks.

Our ALT is continuing to practice Instructional Rounds.  This week we had teams observing student learning at NHS and JFK.  Again, the method is to observe what students are doing and being asked to do.  We look for the level of engagement and academic challenge of the tasks as well as ask the students directly (when appropriate to do so) to articulate the meaning of the tasks and the level of challenge.  We are learning a lot about teaching and learning through this method and plan to implement instructional rounds with teachers beginning next semester and into next school year.

Karen Jarvis-Vance and our nursing staff vaccinated approximately 130 students at JFK and NHS against the flu.  Vaccine will be available for staff flu shots beginning next week and staff members will sign up with school nurses.

Sincerely,

Brian L. Salzer, Ed.S.

 

Photo courtesy blogrodent via Flickr. Used under creative commons license.