Thank you for your leadership of our middle level students!
Here are a few things I wanted to highlight this week. Some are from days past and some involve a glance ahead.
Past:
- I walked away from our first Horizontal on Monday and felt like it was too rushed. Tried to fit too much information into a small amount of time. I apologize and I’ll work to get better at this.
- With that said, if you have any questions either now or in the days/months ahead regarding your School Design Plan (planning or processing of it, philosophy behind it from the district or building level, what works/doesn’t for goals, upstream indicators or strategies, etc.) please feel free to ask anytime.
- I hope the Word version of the blank SDP template worked for all of you. (I emailed this to you on Tuesday of this week.)
Future:
- As most of you are aware, Bear Creek has had a Dual Immersion program for a number of years now. The first cohort of students are now 5th graders. The families of the students involved in this opportunity were promised that there would be a middle school component for their kids, once they reached that level. If you did some quick math right there you realized that next fall something needs to be in place at one of your buildings. I wanted to update you on where we currently are with this. Lora has been asked to pull together a committee whose charge is to make a recommendation to Shay regarding the best MS site to hold this program. At this point, the only two middle schools being considered for this opportunity are PBMS and HDMS. There have been some small group discussions in the past few weeks, but a recommended site has not been identified. There are many factors for these two schools being considered, with proximity to the homes where these kids are living being a major one. If you’d like to know further details please let me know and I’d be happy to have that conversation with you. The timeline for making a recommendation is short as there are a number of steps that need to happen prior to next fall – with the hiring of staff being one of the first priorities.
- I have invited all MS counselors to a meeting this next Tuesday at 2:30 here at the Ed Center. Part of my role this year is the opportunity to meet with our school counselors. Let me know if there are any district topics that you think would be good to touch on this year with this group.
- Oct. 5 is due date for turning in your Improvement Funds spreadsheet (that was discussed at Horizontal). Again, please send your completed copy to Wendy Reeves and myself.
- If you haven’t already, don’t forget to sign up on the MS Google Calendar for a time in October for me to come do a site visit.
As always, feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions!
Enjoy the coming days…
Jim