It is pretty incredible for me to consider the fact that we are two weeks into December already.  The trimester has ended for some and the semester will for others in another five school weeks.  We are nearing the mid-way point of another academic year.  Pretty crazy!  Thank you for your care for and expectations of your students and staff each day.  As you know, for many these coming weeks/months can be a stressful time and I encourage you to keep this in mind as you work along side folks in your building.  They will be looking for and modeling their behavior after what they see in you.  I’m glad you are leading!

This and That:

Please send me the names of your math teachers AND the grade level they predominately teach this year.  I will be using this to create groups as these folks move through various stations at their district SIW on January 20th.  More to come regarding this SIW agenda.

If you have any questions regarding the 2016 Culture of Safety document (expected safety guidelines for all schools) that Julianne went through at our Leadership meeting this past Monday please let me know.  Again, the goal is that by January 4 these things are in place and occurring.

You can find an updated district enrollment (as of 12/2/15) here – and can compare that to your beginning of the year enrollment (as of 9/21/15) here.  Many of you may keep track of your enrollment numbers throughout the year, but I wanted to pass this along (and they live in the documents folder now as well) so you can see whether your enrollment has increased, decreased or remained the same over the past few months.

The SBAC news of the week, which you are likely already aware of, is the removal of the “classroom activity” requirement in ELA and math.  In case you missed it, here is a portion of the communication:

             New for 2015-16, the Smarter Balanced Consortium has voted to remove the classroom activity as a required precursor of the Smarter Balanced performance tasks for Mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA). This change in administration was made following the recommendation  of the Smarter Balanced Technical Advisory Committee and a vote taken by the Smarter Balanced governing states. The decision to remove the classroom activity requirement is part of the Smarter Balanced Consortium’s commitment to continuous improvement and represents a way to streamline the test administration process without negatively impacting access for students.

Reminders:

We will not be meeting this Monday.  We will have a Leadership meeting on January 4 – our first day back from break – and our next Horizontal will be January 25.  (If you have any agenda items you’d like to discuss at our Horizontal please let me know.)

The plan is to turn in your building’s School Design Plan to me in January, unless you needing a bit more time to process with your stakeholders.  If this is the case please let me know.  I am really looking forward to going over these plans with you and learning more about your overall school story, as well as the process, strategies, and goals that your team has come up with.

Per Alandra’s email Thursday afternoon, have someone from your building sign up in PD Place to attend one of the new website trainings.  Refer to her email or PD Place for the dates/times.