Mon Mar 12 2012, 6:00pm
District Meeting Room
Regular Meeting

REPORTS TO THE BOARD

WPS Report

February 2012

TO:                 Michael Green, Superintendent
FROM:          
Mark Houk     

RE:                 WPS MONTHLY UPDATE

A FURIOUS February visited WPS this year.................below, I have briefly highlighted some of the "stuff" that we all worked on:

Most Monday mornings, our teams focused on continual analysis of our common math assessments which we completed for the second time this year.  We are not satisfied with our data, and in our general overall manner in which we are attacking Math.  We are all doing our best that we know (and certainly not failing)..........but have begun giving strong consideration to how and in what areas we really need to develop teacher expertise - not a lot unlike the elementary Science movement of 15 or so years ago.  Bottom line, our teaching teams are not settling for "status quo" and are on the trail of better math teaching and results!  This process is indicative of the kind of "culture" I believe is continuing to evolve and take root in our district.

Staff Learning Walks played a role in our month - this time around we visited colleague's classrooms at WPS.  Early in March we are swapping visits where our staff will visit HS/MS and their staff will visit WPS.

2-3 days were spent in additional GLAD Staff Development and Lab Days in Melissa Sanders and Staci Aschoff's classrooms.  Evidence of these strategies has really blossomed all around our building - the district should be investing in large roles of poster paper as we have become a chief consumer of this school supply!

An AED has been placed in our main entry hallway - at the far end, near the girl's bathroom and Kathy Netland of WCC and myself have been trained in its us.

We are so thankful to Tegan Steen, Deb Kernen, and Stacy Brown for working magic to make this happen!

We have enrolled many new families to our school during the school year.  In order to better extend our welcome as well as develop some feel for a student's readiness and a families' potential needs, we have initiated "10-minute conversations."  These "10-minute conversations" are helping on several levels and enabling us to get a better start in our work with new students and families.

We ended the month by advertising KG Registration Week.  As a lead-up I visited every established daycare, and pre-school in the area to answer questions, and share literature with potential KG families for next year.  We also hosted three question/answer tours of our school for these students/parents of these organizations.  As it stands now - we have pre-enrolled 72 students - as compared to 61 last year, and 85 in 2010.

Finally, the Tears of Joy Drama production Company visited us with a multi-lingual play on February 17th.  The Yale School joined us along with Pre-School C0-0P.

Next.....

Please note the additional attachment and summary regarding ½ day Kindergarten......

Kindergarten Schedule Summary:
Our KG Staff and Malinda Huddleston have done a fantastic job of exploring and "gaming out" what a ½ day every day schedule would look like.  With some adjustments, they are of the opinion that if we cannot serve our KG all-day/every-day, we can make more progress at least seeing them every day.  I support their analysis and position.

Bottom financial and staff line is we would need to move some support staff, extend some hours, and make minor bus adjustments.  Anticipated ball-park cost would be in the area of $15,000- $20,000 yearly mostly associated with extension of staff hours.

Attached Files:
half day k schedule (3).docx application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document 16B