The meeting started at 7pm at the Board conference room. The room was crowded during the West Street School presentation. There were plenty of free seats after that. Board Member Fucheck lead the meeting.
There was a presentation by Principal Torres of the West Street School. She spoke about the bilingual program being offered to kindergartners at the school. There is a video about the program here. Students from the program presented poetry and songs in English and Spanish. This is a successful and well run program. The class sizes are small.
There was the usual update on building projects underway for the summer.
A board member asked if it would still be necessary to charge organizations useing school facilities or if that policy changes since the budget for next year passed (the policy was introduced this year because the district was operating on a contingency budget). Various administrators answered that as of July 1 the no-charge policy is resumed, but there would still be a charge if extra personnel need to be scheduled to cover an event (custodial, sound, security).
Mr. Collett, the District's extremely competent Directory of Transportation, spoke to the Board about bussing matters. He is promoting the adoption of language in the District's transportation contracts that gives the School District greater control over bus routing. By scheduling routes more efficiently, he expects significant cost savings. He also said it could be feasible to keep West Street School on an early schedule, without incurring a large expense. The budget for 2009-2010 school year anticipated West Street changing to a late schedule in order to save on transportation costs.
In the HR update it was mentioned that 500 people applied to 200 Extended School Year Program positions. There may be some postings for regular school year specialty area positions after June 15. HR has notified all employees that are to be laid off via certified mail, and is conducting meetings with the displaced workers over the coming weeks. Someone from NY State is expected to be available to meet to talk about unemployment issues. There was discussion about whether there should be a formal performance assessments for work done under "Schedule J Stipends". There was also a request from the Board to receive written material as backup for an administrative tenure recommendation.
Corrections are welcome via email at newburghedinfo@gmail.com, or post a comment.
Dual Language
Wow! How much is this program costing? The same lesson 2 days in row! All students would flourish if they could have 2 days of instuction on the same material. Most students are lucky to get 15 minutes of solid instuction in each subject! It seems dual language is the lastest in a long line of trial programs this district accepts huge amounts of money for and reaps continual benefits from. What happens when the money runs out? It will join all the rest of the innovative approaches that came before in the graveyard of Newburghs unending quest for huge grant money that provides short term positives and long term dissappointment.
Dual Language
My impression so far is that the success of the dual language program at West Street is something the Board of Ed and District Administration will encourage and support. They appear to have hired some very competent and dedicated staff. I'm not aware of any specific grant funding of the program.