Some of the items on this week’s school board agenda:
We’ll discuss and possibly approve the district’s legislative priorities for the next legislative session. Proposal here.
We’ll hear a report about the district’s efforts to teach students about safe and responsible use of social media. Information here.
We’ll hear a report about reading assessment results. The district has been implementing a weighted resource allocation model to shift resources (including classroom teachers) toward schools with larger numbers of students from low-income households, students receiving special education services, and students who are English-language learners. This report will focus in particular on reading assessment results at those schools. Information here.
We’ll hear a report about school climate disparities when it comes to student gender identity and sexual orientation. Information here.
We’ll hear a transportation update, including an update on activities buses at the secondary level and a comparison of busing costs in the 2015-16, 2016-17, and 2017-18 school years. Information here.
We’ll hear an update on the progress at Hoover East and on its use by Longfellow students this coming year (while Longfellow is being renovated). Information here.
All that and more! The full agenda is here. Feel free to chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
UPDATE: The administration came to us at the July 25 meeting asking to hire a contractor to create more rooms out of common space at Penn Elementary to make up for the loss of temporaries (which were relocated elsewhere). We were told that this change would permanently raise Penn’s capacity rating of the building to 683. This was the only option we were presented. It represented a change to the building’s capacity rating under the Facilities Master Plan that would have a lasting effect on how many students the district will expect that building to hold, and it came to us in the form of a consent calendar item just four weeks before school was to start.
Earlier this year, the administration had already revised the Penn building capacity up from 587 to 633, based not an any additional space but just on a reassessment of the building. But the building is still using the same cafeteria it was using when the building capacity was 387. Eight classrooms (200 seats) have been added since, and this project would have added 50 more. I don’t have confidence that that building can comfortably hold 683 students, even with more classrooms added. Moreover, I don’t believe the board should approve a permanent change to a building’s capacity under the Facilities Master Plan without receiving any input from the families at the affected school. I felt that the proposal at the very least should have been brought to the board much sooner, so the affected families could have a chance to comment on it.
I fully understand that the elementary schools in the North Corridor need more capacity—one of the reasons I’m against the bond is because it limits the district’s ability to respond to the expected growth in that area. But new capacity shouldn’t be achieved simply by carving more classrooms out of a building that is already too large for its common spaces. I saw the project as creating a long-term problem to address a short-term problem, so I voted against the contract proposal. The proposal failed by a vote of 3-3.
Three weeks later, the administration brought back the same contract proposal. I moved to adopt the proposal on the condition that the district would not change Penn’s listed capacity number without further board approval. The motion passed 5-1.
Showing posts with label weighted resource allocation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weighted resource allocation. Show all posts
Monday, July 24, 2017
Sunday, January 8, 2017
School board agenda for Tuesday, January 10
This week, among other things, the board will hear an update on the district’s progress on the issue of seclusion enclosures (previous posts here and here), we’ll hear an update about state legislative issues that affect the schools, and we’ll consider whether to adopt the latest version of the draft policy articulating the district’s weighted resource allocation model—that is, its effort to funnel more resources toward higher-need schools.
At the work session, we’ll discuss how to go forward with the plans to ask the voters for bonding authority to fund projects in the district’s facilities master plan. (Info here.) The board chair, Chris Lynch, has proposed that we initially ask for authority only for projects in the first two or three years of the plan, which would mean asking the voters to authorize about $75-95 million in bonds. The remaining projects could be funded either by subsequent bond votes or via the SAVE tax if the legislature eventually extends that tax.
The board will also discuss whether there should be changes in the facilities plan as we consider what an initial bond proposal would include. A (presumably non-exhaustive) list of potential topics appears here.
The full meeting agendas are here and here; please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
At the work session, we’ll discuss how to go forward with the plans to ask the voters for bonding authority to fund projects in the district’s facilities master plan. (Info here.) The board chair, Chris Lynch, has proposed that we initially ask for authority only for projects in the first two or three years of the plan, which would mean asking the voters to authorize about $75-95 million in bonds. The remaining projects could be funded either by subsequent bond votes or via the SAVE tax if the legislature eventually extends that tax.
The board will also discuss whether there should be changes in the facilities plan as we consider what an initial bond proposal would include. A (presumably non-exhaustive) list of potential topics appears here.
The full meeting agendas are here and here; please chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
How should we determine the target enrollment for an elementary school?
I’ve been posting about how small schools tend to generate outlier class sizes. These posts naturally raise the question: What can we do to minimize the likelihood of outlier class sizes in small schools? But they also raise another question: How should we determine how many kids it makes sense to enroll in any particular elementary school building? In this post, I want to consider the latter question.
When the district draws attendance zones—or even if it abandons geographic attendance zones and tries something like a magnet school—it can’t avoid setting target enrollment numbers for the buildings. There is a wishful-thinking aspect to that task, since it’s hard to predict how many kids will show up from year to year. But it’s an unavoidable task. It affects not just how we draw attendance zones but also how we assess whether to build new elementary capacity.
In determining the target enrollment for a particular building, we need to assume that there will be a roughly equal number of kids in each grade level. We all know this assumption is false, and that there will sometimes be a lot of variation in the enrollment in different grades. But that variation is arbitrary and unpredictable, so you can’t plan around it. So I don’t see any alternative to assuming equal enrollment in each grade level (while recognizing that unpredictable departures from that assumption will be the norm).
Our district has assigned “capacity” numbers to its buildings. In the past, it did so by simply multiplying the number of classrooms by a typical class size (in those days, 23). More recently, it used consultants to assign capacity numbers based on square footage and other factors. But neither one of those methods gives us a good sense of what the target enrollment should be. It doesn’t always make sense to use every available room as a general education classroom, and any enrollment target has to be realistic about what class sizes the district can afford to staff.
An example: In my previous post, I argued that in a school with fourteen available classrooms, the highest number of students you could enroll, without exceeding the class size goals, is 364. But what if there are sixteen available classrooms? Shouldn’t that mean that you could enroll more kids? But it doesn’t, because there’s no way to spread seven grades over sixteen rooms without creating very problematic class sizes. In that situation, I believe the fourteen-classroom model is still your best option (subject to alternatives I’ll soon discuss). So the presence of those extra two classrooms doesn’t necessarily increase the number of gen-ed kids you can reasonably aspire to enroll. It may well make sense to put those two extra rooms to some other use, such as preschool classrooms or dedicated special ed rooms.
In other words, there’s a difference between how many kids will “fit” in a building and what the target enrollment should be. I don’t have a strong opinion about what the optimal numbers are; if you think there’s a better number to shoot for in a building with fourteen (or sixteen) available classrooms, I hope you’ll chime in with a comment. But many of our current “capacity” numbers are very unhelpful. Mann’s listed capacity is 242—but what is the model for dividing 242 up into classes in seven grade levels? Alexander’s listed capacity is 500—but we put temporaries there as soon as the enrollment approached 400, in part because it qualifies for smaller class sizes as a high-need school. “Old” Hoover’s capacity is listed as 304—but since it can easily use fourteen rooms as gen-ed classrooms, it would make sense to put at least 350 kids there. (Before the closure vote, it did enroll that many.) We have special-use classrooms at many schools, but we don’t adjust those schools’ capacity numbers to take into account the unavailability of those rooms. The list goes on.
Our entire facilities plan, involving multi-million dollar projects, is driven by the district’s capacity numbers, but many of them do not accurately reflect how we can and will use our buildings. The district needs to develop a target enrollment number for each building that depends not just on the size of the building or the number of classrooms, but on a plan for how the rooms will actually be used and how the grades will (ideally) be distributed among them—a plan that tries to minimize the chance of outlier class sizes.
When the district draws attendance zones—or even if it abandons geographic attendance zones and tries something like a magnet school—it can’t avoid setting target enrollment numbers for the buildings. There is a wishful-thinking aspect to that task, since it’s hard to predict how many kids will show up from year to year. But it’s an unavoidable task. It affects not just how we draw attendance zones but also how we assess whether to build new elementary capacity.
In determining the target enrollment for a particular building, we need to assume that there will be a roughly equal number of kids in each grade level. We all know this assumption is false, and that there will sometimes be a lot of variation in the enrollment in different grades. But that variation is arbitrary and unpredictable, so you can’t plan around it. So I don’t see any alternative to assuming equal enrollment in each grade level (while recognizing that unpredictable departures from that assumption will be the norm).
Our district has assigned “capacity” numbers to its buildings. In the past, it did so by simply multiplying the number of classrooms by a typical class size (in those days, 23). More recently, it used consultants to assign capacity numbers based on square footage and other factors. But neither one of those methods gives us a good sense of what the target enrollment should be. It doesn’t always make sense to use every available room as a general education classroom, and any enrollment target has to be realistic about what class sizes the district can afford to staff.
An example: In my previous post, I argued that in a school with fourteen available classrooms, the highest number of students you could enroll, without exceeding the class size goals, is 364. But what if there are sixteen available classrooms? Shouldn’t that mean that you could enroll more kids? But it doesn’t, because there’s no way to spread seven grades over sixteen rooms without creating very problematic class sizes. In that situation, I believe the fourteen-classroom model is still your best option (subject to alternatives I’ll soon discuss). So the presence of those extra two classrooms doesn’t necessarily increase the number of gen-ed kids you can reasonably aspire to enroll. It may well make sense to put those two extra rooms to some other use, such as preschool classrooms or dedicated special ed rooms.
In other words, there’s a difference between how many kids will “fit” in a building and what the target enrollment should be. I don’t have a strong opinion about what the optimal numbers are; if you think there’s a better number to shoot for in a building with fourteen (or sixteen) available classrooms, I hope you’ll chime in with a comment. But many of our current “capacity” numbers are very unhelpful. Mann’s listed capacity is 242—but what is the model for dividing 242 up into classes in seven grade levels? Alexander’s listed capacity is 500—but we put temporaries there as soon as the enrollment approached 400, in part because it qualifies for smaller class sizes as a high-need school. “Old” Hoover’s capacity is listed as 304—but since it can easily use fourteen rooms as gen-ed classrooms, it would make sense to put at least 350 kids there. (Before the closure vote, it did enroll that many.) We have special-use classrooms at many schools, but we don’t adjust those schools’ capacity numbers to take into account the unavailability of those rooms. The list goes on.
Our entire facilities plan, involving multi-million dollar projects, is driven by the district’s capacity numbers, but many of them do not accurately reflect how we can and will use our buildings. The district needs to develop a target enrollment number for each building that depends not just on the size of the building or the number of classrooms, but on a plan for how the rooms will actually be used and how the grades will (ideally) be distributed among them—a plan that tries to minimize the chance of outlier class sizes.
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
A class size math problem, part 2
A few weeks ago, I posted a “class size math problem” to illustrate how small elementary schools tend to generate outlier class sizes. The post received a lot of good comments—but nobody did the math problem! Specifically, the question was how many students you’d want to assign to a school that had ten (or, alternatively, fourteen) general education classrooms, and what the class sizes would be in each grade. The one constraint was that you had to assume that there would be a roughly equal number of kids in each grade level.
One purpose of the experiment was to show that it’s hard, in small schools, to have class sizes that stay in the neighborhood of the district’s class size goals. The goals, for most schools, are not to exceed 26 kids in grades K-2 and 30 kids in grades 3-6. We don’t want class sizes to exceed those goals, but if class sizes are too far below them, they undermine the district’s attempt to reallocate resources to higher-need schools. (More complete explanation here.)
Without mixing grade levels, this was the closest I could come to the class size goals, without exceeding them, in the ten-classroom school:
As you can see, many of the classes are very small—way below the district goal for grades K-2. That puts upward pressure on class sizes elsewhere and makes it harder to redirect resources to higher-need schools.
In the fourteen-classroom school, this was the closest I could come to the goals without exceeding them:
This school is significantly fairer to the district’s other schools, since its average class size is closer to the district-wide medians. It does less to undermine the district’s efforts to reallocate resources to higher-need schools. It accommodates a lot more kids. You could make those early-grade class sizes smaller—I’m sure many people would balk at the idea of a 26-kid kindergarten class—but only if you’re willing to live with smaller class sizes in the higher grades, too. As the upper-grade class sizes fall farther below the goals, class sizes elsewhere in the district would have to rise.
These scenarios assume an equal number of kids in each grade level. In reality, there is often a lot of variation in enrollment in the different grades. That’s a big part of what makes class sizes hard to manage in small schools. It’s actually hard to get much closer to the district goals than the “ideal” fourteen-classroom school, but the great advantage of larger schools is in their ability to handle that anomalous year-to-year variation, since they can spread the effects out over a greater number of classrooms.
In my next few posts, I’ll consider alternatives (such as mixed grades, paired schools, and the use of half-time teachers) that can help alleviate the class size issue in small schools.
One purpose of the experiment was to show that it’s hard, in small schools, to have class sizes that stay in the neighborhood of the district’s class size goals. The goals, for most schools, are not to exceed 26 kids in grades K-2 and 30 kids in grades 3-6. We don’t want class sizes to exceed those goals, but if class sizes are too far below them, they undermine the district’s attempt to reallocate resources to higher-need schools. (More complete explanation here.)
Without mixing grade levels, this was the closest I could come to the class size goals, without exceeding them, in the ten-classroom school:
As you can see, many of the classes are very small—way below the district goal for grades K-2. That puts upward pressure on class sizes elsewhere and makes it harder to redirect resources to higher-need schools.
In the fourteen-classroom school, this was the closest I could come to the goals without exceeding them:
This school is significantly fairer to the district’s other schools, since its average class size is closer to the district-wide medians. It does less to undermine the district’s efforts to reallocate resources to higher-need schools. It accommodates a lot more kids. You could make those early-grade class sizes smaller—I’m sure many people would balk at the idea of a 26-kid kindergarten class—but only if you’re willing to live with smaller class sizes in the higher grades, too. As the upper-grade class sizes fall farther below the goals, class sizes elsewhere in the district would have to rise.
These scenarios assume an equal number of kids in each grade level. In reality, there is often a lot of variation in enrollment in the different grades. That’s a big part of what makes class sizes hard to manage in small schools. It’s actually hard to get much closer to the district goals than the “ideal” fourteen-classroom school, but the great advantage of larger schools is in their ability to handle that anomalous year-to-year variation, since they can spread the effects out over a greater number of classrooms.
In my next few posts, I’ll consider alternatives (such as mixed grades, paired schools, and the use of half-time teachers) that can help alleviate the class size issue in small schools.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
A class size math problem
In my last post, I discussed how smaller elementary schools tend to generate more outlier class sizes. Before I explore possible ways to mitigate that problem, here are a couple of hypothetical questions that help illustrate the issue:
1. Suppose you have a school that has fourteen rooms available as general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
2. Suppose you have a school that has ten rooms available for general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
I chose fourteen classrooms and ten classrooms because those numbers work especially well for class size. In a fourteen-room school, you can have two classrooms for each grade level from K through 6. In a ten-room school, you can have two classrooms in each grade from K through 2 (where we usually try to have smaller class sizes), and then one classroom in each grade from 3-6 (where we usually tolerate larger class sizes).
The only constraint: You have to assume there will be an equal number of students at each grade level. So if there are 30 total sixth graders, there are also 30 total kindergartners, though you’re free to split some grade levels into multiple classrooms while not splitting others. (The reason for this constraint is that there is no good way to draw attendance zones that would result in consistently different enrollment totals in the lower grades than in the higher grades.)
Assume that the school is not a high-need school that would qualify for lower-than-average class sizes under the district’s weighted resource allocation model. So the district’s goal would be to keep the class sizes below 26 in grades K-2 and below 30 in grades 3-6. You can exceed those caps if you think that’s the best solution. But you should recognize that anything falling significantly below those goals will put your school below the district averages and make it harder to allocate teachers to high-need schools.
What are the best answers?
Follow-up here.
1. Suppose you have a school that has fourteen rooms available as general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
2. Suppose you have a school that has ten rooms available for general education classrooms. What would be ideal total enrollment at that school? What would the individual class sizes be?
I chose fourteen classrooms and ten classrooms because those numbers work especially well for class size. In a fourteen-room school, you can have two classrooms for each grade level from K through 6. In a ten-room school, you can have two classrooms in each grade from K through 2 (where we usually try to have smaller class sizes), and then one classroom in each grade from 3-6 (where we usually tolerate larger class sizes).
The only constraint: You have to assume there will be an equal number of students at each grade level. So if there are 30 total sixth graders, there are also 30 total kindergartners, though you’re free to split some grade levels into multiple classrooms while not splitting others. (The reason for this constraint is that there is no good way to draw attendance zones that would result in consistently different enrollment totals in the lower grades than in the higher grades.)
Assume that the school is not a high-need school that would qualify for lower-than-average class sizes under the district’s weighted resource allocation model. So the district’s goal would be to keep the class sizes below 26 in grades K-2 and below 30 in grades 3-6. You can exceed those caps if you think that’s the best solution. But you should recognize that anything falling significantly below those goals will put your school below the district averages and make it harder to allocate teachers to high-need schools.
What are the best answers?
Follow-up here.
Small schools and class size
As will come as news to no one, I put a high priority on keeping our existing schools open; among other things, I think it’s a key ingredient in maintaining community support for district initiatives and it plays an important role in maintaining livable, family-friendly neighborhoods in the central core of Iowa City. But I don’t deny that there are costs involved in keeping our smaller schools open, and I think it’s important to think about what those costs are and whether there are ways to mitigate them.
In this post, I want to consider the effect of small schools on class size. When the district sets class size goals, it can give the impression that class sizes can be fine-tuned. For example, the most recent draft of those goals suggests that most elementary schools should have class sizes of no more than 26 from kindergarten through second grade, and no more than 30 in grades three through six. (The class size goals are lower than that in schools with higher levels of academic need, but most schools will not fall into that category.)
But conforming to those goals is easier said than done, especially in our smaller schools. A school with an enrollment of 240 is likely to have about 34 kids per grade. What do you do with that number? A 34-kid kindergarten classroom is much larger than ideal, so the district would almost certainly choose to break it into two 17-kid classes—a lot nicer, but way below what we could afford to staff district-wide. What if 40 sixth-graders show up? Again, 20 is a wonderful class size, but it’s way below the district median for sixth-graders.
In other words, smaller schools tend to produce more outlier class sizes, forcing the district to choose between class sizes that are significantly above the goals or significantly below them. This effect lessens somewhat as you get into enrollments of over three hundred. A 300-kid school will tend to produce class sizes in the twenties, which is at least better than having to choose between 17 or 34. But it would still be subject to year-to-year fluctuations that could generate uncomfortable choices, and class sizes in the low twenties are still below the district median.
By contrast, large schools give the district enough flexibility that they seldom result in outlier class sizes. In a 600-kid school (assuming the kids are spread out evenly over the seven grades), you can have class sizes of about 21 in the lower grades and 29 in the higher grades. Even if a bigger-than-usual group shows up in one grade, it gets spread out over three or four classrooms, so it’s not liable to generate class sizes as high as 34. As a result, the large school may be less likely to get an additional teacher than the small school with the 34-kid cohort.
In particular, smaller schools pose a challenge for the district’s weighted resource allocation model—that is, the effort to allocate smaller class sizes to school with higher academic need. To create smaller class sizes in high-need schools, we need to tolerate larger class sizes in the remaining schools. If that effect is spread out over many schools, the effect on any one school will be smaller and thus the model will be more politically sustainable. But it’s not so easy for smaller schools to take a “fair share” of that effect—again, because the choice will often be between a class size that greatly exceeds the goals and one that is much smaller than average. If the smaller schools get lower-than-average class sizes, even when they are not high-need schools, the burden of the resource reallocation will fall disproportionately on larger schools. If the smaller schools are expected to tolerate class sizes far above the goals, the burden will fall disproportionately on them. Either way, it becomes harder to sustain the reallocation effort.
Again, I’m certainly not trying to make the case for closing smaller schools. But if we’re going to resist the ongoing pressure to consider closing some of them (and not just Hoover), it makes sense to do some problem-solving around the issue of outlier class sizes. I’ll explore some possibilities in an upcoming post.
In this post, I want to consider the effect of small schools on class size. When the district sets class size goals, it can give the impression that class sizes can be fine-tuned. For example, the most recent draft of those goals suggests that most elementary schools should have class sizes of no more than 26 from kindergarten through second grade, and no more than 30 in grades three through six. (The class size goals are lower than that in schools with higher levels of academic need, but most schools will not fall into that category.)
But conforming to those goals is easier said than done, especially in our smaller schools. A school with an enrollment of 240 is likely to have about 34 kids per grade. What do you do with that number? A 34-kid kindergarten classroom is much larger than ideal, so the district would almost certainly choose to break it into two 17-kid classes—a lot nicer, but way below what we could afford to staff district-wide. What if 40 sixth-graders show up? Again, 20 is a wonderful class size, but it’s way below the district median for sixth-graders.
In other words, smaller schools tend to produce more outlier class sizes, forcing the district to choose between class sizes that are significantly above the goals or significantly below them. This effect lessens somewhat as you get into enrollments of over three hundred. A 300-kid school will tend to produce class sizes in the twenties, which is at least better than having to choose between 17 or 34. But it would still be subject to year-to-year fluctuations that could generate uncomfortable choices, and class sizes in the low twenties are still below the district median.
By contrast, large schools give the district enough flexibility that they seldom result in outlier class sizes. In a 600-kid school (assuming the kids are spread out evenly over the seven grades), you can have class sizes of about 21 in the lower grades and 29 in the higher grades. Even if a bigger-than-usual group shows up in one grade, it gets spread out over three or four classrooms, so it’s not liable to generate class sizes as high as 34. As a result, the large school may be less likely to get an additional teacher than the small school with the 34-kid cohort.
In particular, smaller schools pose a challenge for the district’s weighted resource allocation model—that is, the effort to allocate smaller class sizes to school with higher academic need. To create smaller class sizes in high-need schools, we need to tolerate larger class sizes in the remaining schools. If that effect is spread out over many schools, the effect on any one school will be smaller and thus the model will be more politically sustainable. But it’s not so easy for smaller schools to take a “fair share” of that effect—again, because the choice will often be between a class size that greatly exceeds the goals and one that is much smaller than average. If the smaller schools get lower-than-average class sizes, even when they are not high-need schools, the burden of the resource reallocation will fall disproportionately on larger schools. If the smaller schools are expected to tolerate class sizes far above the goals, the burden will fall disproportionately on them. Either way, it becomes harder to sustain the reallocation effort.
Again, I’m certainly not trying to make the case for closing smaller schools. But if we’re going to resist the ongoing pressure to consider closing some of them (and not just Hoover), it makes sense to do some problem-solving around the issue of outlier class sizes. I’ll explore some possibilities in an upcoming post.
Monday, October 10, 2016
School board agenda for Tuesday, October 11
Some of the items on this week’s agenda:
We’ll vote on approval of the weighted resource allocation model, which is designed to provide smaller class sizes in schools that have higher rates of students from low-income households, English-language learners, and students receiving special education services. The district has already been phasing in the model; this vote will incorporate it into the superintendent directions. More info here; testimonials here.
We’ll discuss the district’s Certified Annual Financial Report and its Annual Financial Health Report.
At our work session, we’ll discuss a report on the general obligation bond funding that will be necessary to finance the projects in the district’s facilities plan. We’ll also begin to talk about the possibility of suggesting revisions to the facilities plan.
We’ll review the district’s updated elementary and secondary boundary maps.
We’ll discuss updating the district’s letter to municipalities and to the county supporting diverse neighborhoods and affordable housing.
All that and more! The full agendas are here and here. Feel free to chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
We’ll vote on approval of the weighted resource allocation model, which is designed to provide smaller class sizes in schools that have higher rates of students from low-income households, English-language learners, and students receiving special education services. The district has already been phasing in the model; this vote will incorporate it into the superintendent directions. More info here; testimonials here.
We’ll discuss the district’s Certified Annual Financial Report and its Annual Financial Health Report.
At our work session, we’ll discuss a report on the general obligation bond funding that will be necessary to finance the projects in the district’s facilities plan. We’ll also begin to talk about the possibility of suggesting revisions to the facilities plan.
We’ll review the district’s updated elementary and secondary boundary maps.
We’ll discuss updating the district’s letter to municipalities and to the county supporting diverse neighborhoods and affordable housing.
All that and more! The full agendas are here and here. Feel free to chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
Monday, September 12, 2016
School board agenda for Tuesday, September 13
Some of the items on this week’s board agenda:
1. The board will discuss (and probably resolve) the issue of secondary boundaries, which has been pending since the process was interrupted by the resignation of board member Tom Yates in May. I’m guessing that there will now be a majority for reinstating the previous board’s secondary boundary plan that would send Kirkwood-area students to Liberty and Alexander-area students to Northwest Junior High and West High. (I don’t support that plan, for reasons I wrote about here, here, here, and here.)
2. We’ll consider two busing appeals from parents who argue that their kids should receive a bus to West High because they live just beyond the three-mile mark.
3. We’ll hear an update on the district’s response to the State Department of Education’s audit of our special education practices. Info here.
4. At the work session after the meeting, we’ll discuss our request to our demographer to get updated enrollment projections. Info here.
5. We’ll discuss a proposed process to get community input on possible changes to the district’s facilities master plan. Editorial comment: I have a lot of doubts about the ability of our ThoughtExchange platform to provide a representative sample of community sentiment, and I wish it did not advertise itself in that way. (See this post.) But what I’m most interested in is hearing all the arguments and counterarguments on any proposed changes, and ThoughtExchange is one way of gathering those, as are emails, community comment at board meetings, etc.
6. We’ll discuss our voluntary transfer process and whether we should change it or make any exceptions to it as we transition to new boundaries and the opening of a new high school. Long, boring post on this topic here.
7. We’ll review a proposed timeline for preparing for a bond proposal to appear on the September 2017 school board election ballot, to fund projects in the district’s facilities master plan.
8. We’ll discuss the district’s weighted resource allocation model, under which schools that have higher rates of free-and-reduced-price lunch (FRL) (which is the district’s proxy for low-income status) receive additional resources. The district has already begun phasing in this model—by, for example, trying to tilt teacher allocation toward high-FRL elementary schools. I asked for some further discussion of just how this model would function at the secondary school level.
9. We’ll get a quarterly report on the board’s strategic goal to “annually improve the educational experiences for all children through culturally inclusive and responsive school environments and classroom instruction, as measured by various student assessments including the Biennial Youth Survey, with a focus on equitable outcomes for students in protected classes.”
All that and more. The full agendas are here and here; chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
1. The board will discuss (and probably resolve) the issue of secondary boundaries, which has been pending since the process was interrupted by the resignation of board member Tom Yates in May. I’m guessing that there will now be a majority for reinstating the previous board’s secondary boundary plan that would send Kirkwood-area students to Liberty and Alexander-area students to Northwest Junior High and West High. (I don’t support that plan, for reasons I wrote about here, here, here, and here.)
2. We’ll consider two busing appeals from parents who argue that their kids should receive a bus to West High because they live just beyond the three-mile mark.
3. We’ll hear an update on the district’s response to the State Department of Education’s audit of our special education practices. Info here.
4. At the work session after the meeting, we’ll discuss our request to our demographer to get updated enrollment projections. Info here.
5. We’ll discuss a proposed process to get community input on possible changes to the district’s facilities master plan. Editorial comment: I have a lot of doubts about the ability of our ThoughtExchange platform to provide a representative sample of community sentiment, and I wish it did not advertise itself in that way. (See this post.) But what I’m most interested in is hearing all the arguments and counterarguments on any proposed changes, and ThoughtExchange is one way of gathering those, as are emails, community comment at board meetings, etc.
6. We’ll discuss our voluntary transfer process and whether we should change it or make any exceptions to it as we transition to new boundaries and the opening of a new high school. Long, boring post on this topic here.
7. We’ll review a proposed timeline for preparing for a bond proposal to appear on the September 2017 school board election ballot, to fund projects in the district’s facilities master plan.
8. We’ll discuss the district’s weighted resource allocation model, under which schools that have higher rates of free-and-reduced-price lunch (FRL) (which is the district’s proxy for low-income status) receive additional resources. The district has already begun phasing in this model—by, for example, trying to tilt teacher allocation toward high-FRL elementary schools. I asked for some further discussion of just how this model would function at the secondary school level.
9. We’ll get a quarterly report on the board’s strategic goal to “annually improve the educational experiences for all children through culturally inclusive and responsive school environments and classroom instruction, as measured by various student assessments including the Biennial Youth Survey, with a focus on equitable outcomes for students in protected classes.”
All that and more. The full agendas are here and here; chime in with a comment about anything that catches your attention.
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