REPORTS TO THE BOARD

WHS Monthly Report

Memo

To: Michael Green
From: John Shoup
CC: School Board members
Date: 10/7/2008
Re: September Review

Here is an overview of the key activities we worked on in relation to teaching and learning this month.

School Improvement Planning: We spent our Learning Improvement day in August working on technology integration for teachers as well reviewing our school improvement plan. We found that we still have work to do to reach our goals. We already met our writing goal, but are not there yet on the other four goals.

Monday's: Our Monday's were used to work on department collaboration, peer coaching, classroom based assessments, technology and school improvement planning. As you can see there was no clear theme for the month other than trying to help our classroom teachers become better at their craft. We also spent a little time at a faculty meeting with staff educating them on how the new student email system works. We are finding that more and more of our staff are using technology as a learning tool for students. We also are making progress on getting more teachers to have web pages up and running.

Other information: I am pleased to note that our school assessment team is meeting again this year after taking the year off last year. We are reading the book written by Rick Dufour "Whatever It Takes." We have 5 members of this team going to a 3 day conference in Seattle in November to hear him and his team present on professional learning teams. Our group is progressing well and I am pleased we are meeting again. It should also be noted that this month was a little rough with quite a few fights and students getting suspended for tobacco or drug issues. This is not the tone that we want to continue so Dan and I have become a little more aggressive with our suspensions to let students know that this type of behavior is not acceptable in the school setting. We now have 80 parents who have agreed to have their monthly parent newsletter delivered to them electronically which will help cut down on some postage costs. Our parent email distribution list is about 330 parents strong right now and will continue to grow. This distribution list is used to send bi monthly reminders and comments to parents regarding school issues. These emails to parents have also been helpful in stimulating conversations and problem solving and I am pleased with the positive feedback we receive.