Briefly noted:

Ardsley seeks input for tenure process

Each year a number of faculty members complete their probationary period of employment with the district and become eligible to acquire tenure. According to the law tenure can only be bestowed upon a teacher with the superintendent's affirmative recommendation to grant tenure and the school boards acceptance of that recommendation.

Follow the link to see the excellent memo from Superintendent Charles V. Khoury, Ed.D. (Ouch, hopefully the grammar and puctuation errors were not present in the original.)

Have parents ever been consulted about the tenure process in the Newburgh School District? Has any attempt been made to explain the tenure process to the public in Newburgh?

Chappaqua school leaders looking at drastic budget cuts

CHAPPAQUA -- The Chappaqua School District would have to lay off almost 50 people, including perhaps 23 teachers, to bring in a budget with no spending increase for next year.

The school board in November asked the administration to develop a budget holding spending level with this year's $107 million budget in response to the difficult economic times that are hitting even well off communities like Chappaqua. Because of cost increases, that amounts to a more than $6 million cut. But parents at a meeting last night at Horace Greeley High School, when the plan was first introduced, are already urging the board to reverse the cuts and it's not clear how the final budget will take shape.

Sounds like a worst-case-scenario budget was developed, and it has spurred a reaction from the public. Not a bad tactic.

Ossining school leaders accept pay freeze

OSSINING, N.Y.) - Superintendent of the Ossining School District, Dr. Phyllis Glassman, Board of Education President, Alice Joselow, and the entire Ossining Board of Education commend the Ossining Association of Administrators and Supervisors for their leadership and unselfish act of volunteering to accept a salary freeze for the 2009-2010 school year. The Administrative Association under the leadership of President and High School Principal Joshua Mandel recognized the severity of the fiscal crisis confronting our nation, state, and community. According to the Board of Education, "The administrators came forward and placed the needs of the Ossining children and community ahead of their own."

Anticipating that the economy would not improve substantively within the year and anticipating the difficult budget discussions to be held in the next few months, the Administrative Association chose to support the interests of the Ossining School District and the needs of the educational community through a generous act of willingly accepting a salary freeze for the upcoming school year.

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Phyllis Glassman commented, "The Ossining Administrative Team always demonstrates excellent leadership on behalf of students, staff, and families in all areas such as instruction, curriculum, staff development, and overall child development. The administrators' most recent leadership act reflects their unselfish devotion to their mission." Board of Education President Alice Joselow stated, "On a regular basis, I admire the dedication of our administrators and their tireless efforts on behalf of our children. For our administrators to have made such a generous offer in volunteering for a pay freeze stands out as an act of great kindness and respect."

Well how about that!

New York State Education Law requires the filing of a disclosure of administrator salaries above a certain threshhold. The 2008 deadlines say that the report should be "made available" with the budget, "submitted to SED" between May 5 and May 12, "Commisioner Posts" May 13, and "post late submissions prior to statewide voting day, May 20, 2008".

The Administrator Salary Disclosure report for many school districts is available at the NYS Education Department site. As of May 22, 2008, If you take a look at the Excel spreadsheet for 2008-09, AdminCompensation_5_13_08_supp.xls, and search for the Newburgh School District you wil find the words "not filed".

Here is the data from last year: the 2007-2008 Administrator Salary Disclosure for the Newburgh City Enlarted School District.

On May 20 New York State Schools hold budget votes and elections for open Board of Education positions.

Unlike the Newburgh Enlarged Central School District several nearby districts have involved the public in budget planning and have presented information to the public well in advance of submitting a budget to be voted upon.

The Cornwall Central School District established a School Budget Advsory Committee "to solicit community feedback regarding the budget process". They have held public meetings with well detailed minutes.

The Enlarged City School District of Middletown has put the slides from three budget presentations from February and March online.

The Washingtonville Central School District has their proposed 2008-09 budget online in both summary and line item formats as well as two budget presentations from February and one from March.

This may be a tough year to get voter approval of budgets. Getting the public involved, allowing and answering questions, and providing information freely probably improve the likelihood of approval.

An article from the New York Times describes an outstanding Arabic language program being offered at an elementary school in Iowa.

Zahra Al-Attar drove down the two-lane highway from Iowa City to her morning classes here. As she entered Kalona, population 2,200 and change, she rolled past the harness shop and the veterinary clinic, those reminders of her dislocation. She noticed, too, a horse-drawn buggy on the shoulder, an unexpected cue for memory.

When she was growing up in Baghdad nearly 40 years ago, she had ridden a similar cart to school. On occasion, the driver would let her hold the reins. Here and now, the buggies belong to the Amish. And into their part of Iowa, she had come to teach Arabic.

While the Amish do not send their children to the public schools, considering them too worldly, Ms. Al-Attar’s students at Kalona Elementary are the sons and daughters of Mennonite families who have been here for generations, or of Germans and Czechs who arrived in Iowa a century before the new teacher.

Yet when Ms. Al-Attar bounded into a kindergarten early last month, one Muslim in a roomful of Caitlins and Haileys, the walls decorated with paper candy canes for Christmas, she was greeted with the chirping chorus of an Arabic song. Over the next 30 minutes, until the first period ended, Ms. Al-Attar led the class through the Arabic numbers 13 through 19 and the Arabic words for "hand" and "pencil." Together, they sang an alphabet song, with the letters pegged to familiar objects like a duck, a lemon, the sun.

Two hours later, when Ms. Al-Attar took her first break, she said with a touch of rapture, "Every day, I’m like, whoa, how did this happen?"
...
So last fall, in the second year of the federal grant, Ms. Al-Attar’s peripatetic path delivered her to Kalona Elementary School. Each week, all 230 pupils from kindergarten through fifth grade receive two 30-minute lessons from Ms. Al-Attar...

The Newburgh School District has teachers with native speaker expertise in interesting foreign languages. Why are they not encouraged by the administration to offer innovative programs?

The New York Times points to an increase in foreign language classes in elementary schools in "Building a Nation of Polyglots, Starting With the Very Young" Could things like this happen in the Newburgh Enlarged City School District? Should they?

But with an economy that recognizes few geographical borders, and with people from all over the planet becoming our next-door neighbors, more Americans are demanding language instruction earlier in school.

Martha Abbott, director of education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, said that while there is no reliable data on the trend, her organization keeps learning of more school systems that think paying for elementary school language teachers is money well invested.

Since September 2006, all students in grades one through five in Loudon County, Va., have been given 30 to 60 minutes of Spanish instruction each week. Last year, officials in Fairfax County, Va. -- which, with 165,439 students, is the nation’s 13th-largest school system -- decided to expand the study of foreign languages to all 137 elementary schools over a seven-year period. Twenty-five Fairfax schools provide 30-minute lessons twice a week in Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Chinese or French starting in the first grade. Ten schools have ambitious "immersion" programs where math, science and health are taught in a foreign language.

Paula Patrick, the Fairfax system’s foreign language coordinator, said Americans have for too long had a "mind-set that everyone else in the world could learn English." Her district is receiving appeals from businesses that need global-ready travelers and from a health care industry that needs translators.

The Kingston City School District has a well-designed web site, and has several ambitious plans...

On their website they provide full contact information including multiple phone numbers and email addresses of each Kingston City School Board Member.

Here's an innovative grant-funded program:

The Hudson River Maritime Museum and Kingston City School District have received a $6,600 Teaching the Hudson Valley grant to develop a program that enriches the third grade social studies curriculum while creating a sense of place and a connection to the early history of the Hudson River Valley.

The Daily Freeman reports that Kingston is planning a Montessori approach for grades 1-3 at an elementary school.

Good work Kingston!

The homepage of the Enlarged City School District of Middletown does the following:

The homepage of the Newburgh Enlarged Central School District does not one of these things. Not one.

Congratulations to the intrepid students and wise administrators of Chester, Goshen, Greenwood Lake, Highland Falls, Minisink, Monroe-Woodbury, Tuxedo and Warwick schools. Mandarin is an excellent subject to study.

One thing's for sure: The kids seem excited to start school, even at this information session about a week ahead of time.

About 120 sixth-graders in eight local school districts will take Mandarin Chinese this year, thanks to a three-year $1 million grant from the federal Department of Education. Elementary school students in some of those districts, too, will begin a cultural exchange, communicating with students at boarding schools in China via an interactive Web site and through video conferencing.

Local students take new Chinese class, By Simon Shifrin, Times Herald-Record September 04, 2007