Hello everyone,
I wrote to you last week about the concept of Remix, in an effort to begin to explain to you my sincere belief that we, as a community, already possess much, if not most, of what we need to increase student achievement and thereby improve our current school letter grade.
However, in order to do so, it's simultaneously my sincere belief that we need to be ready and willing to transform, recombine, and realign some of our assets in new ways in order to ensure that we are working at our most optimal level to achieve better outcomes from our students and staff members alike.
As I said last week, "We've already begun to do so by implementing a specials schedule which enables our special area teachers to become embedded collaborators in your academic curriculum at the classroom level for hours at a time each week. We're still in the learning process with this new approach, but it's working. I'm excited about the effect it will have on our students' achievement. And I believe our opportunities to capitalize on the resources we already possess, by looking at our many other unique assets in similarly new and innovative ways abound."
I believe our one-of-a-kind school-wide arts and science magnet programs, coupled with the unique opportunities made available to us via our Title 1 budget, provide us with another compelling opportunity to remix and transform some of our current assets to better ensure increased student achievement and learning outcomes.
As you know, Marshall occupies a unique position in Flagstaff as a traditional-public-magnet school. As a neighborhood school serving a diverse student population, which runs the gamut of socioeconomic demographics, we have been identified as a federal Title 1 school because more than 40 percent of our students qualify for the federal free-and-reduced-price lunch program. Title 1 funding is intended to assist our school in bridging the achievement gap for specifically for low-income students.
Marshall has also chosen to identify itself as an arts and sciences magnet school for more than a decade. Within this designation, our school has been able to implement a series of unique extracurricular experiences in the arts and sciences for all of our students, at every grade level, free of charge. These programs are budgeted at over $100,000 per year. All funding for these programs is raised independently of the school district’s budget for our school, chiefly through tax credit contributions, annual grant applications, as well as independent donations and ongoing, targeted fundraising.
Greatly to our advantage, our Title 1 budget makes it possible for us to be able to have a full-time RTI Specialist, a full-time Technology Specialist, and a part-time Positive Behavior Support Specialist on staff. Likewise, our Title 1 budget provides funding for part-time kindergarten aides in each of our kindergarten classrooms, as well as a part-time Parent Center Coordinator to assist our students and staff in a variety of useful ways. In addition to these employee roles, our budget has allowed for us to contract on a limited basis with an outside independent vendor to provide for other key services such as grant writing and scheduling coordination for our magnet programs.
As extracurricular programs, for many years our magnet activities have existed outside the realm of our academic instructional time but within the school day. They are taught by expert, adjunct staff with whom we independently contract on an annual basis. These instructors have been encouraged to teach a curriculum above and beyond the established district curriculum, core state standards, and approved curriculum maps. As a result of this approach, as a school we are unable to demonstrate what our magnet programs have done in a valid, quantifiable sense to enhance our students’ academic achievement. They are undeniably an attractive add-on to Marshall’s commercial appeal. And we may feel, anecdotally, that these programs have merit, and rightfully so. But to-date we find ourselves unable to justify this impression with data, with research, or even by pointing to any deliberate approach our school has taken which has been aimed toward better integrating our magnet programs into supporting our academic curriculum and greater student achievement.
Due to an increase in our lower socioeconomic demographic at Marshall, our Title 1 budget has been increased this year. This increase, while not enough in-and-of itself to make it possible for us to add an additional staff member, would nevertheless enable us to create a new role at Marshall if we eliminate the contract with our current Magnet Programs Coordinator. By eliminating the contracted position, and adding those monies back into the budget, we then have enough money in our budget to remix our assets to create a full-time Magnet Programs Integration Specialist position. This new position would take on all of the responsibilities of the previous independent contractor's job, but would also add-on additional new responsibilities. These new responsibilities will enhance our ability serve our students more effectively, as well as increase their academic achievement, by aligning our existing magnet programs to our core academic curriculum in order to better ensure greater success for all of our students.
For the aforementioned reasons, the new Magnet Programs Integration Specialist position should be implemented at Marshall Magnet School to assist our magnet program instructors, students, and classroom teachers in making legitimate curricular connections between our existing standards-based instruction and our magnet programs. The Magnet Programs Integration Specialist’s job description would continue to incorporate all aspects of the current independent contractor’s position, such as writing grants, coordinating the program schedule, budgeting, and fundraising, while adding the provision of crucial curricular support to magnet program instructors and essential direct instructional support to students and teachers in a variety of academic settings.
Within the scope of his/her position, the Magnet Programs Integration Specialist would:
- Write and make application to a variety of granting institutions in order to ensure continued funding for magnet programs;
- maintain budgets and cooperate with the FUSD business office to maintain accurate financial records related to magnet programs;
- implement a program to increase tax credit contributions earmarked for school-wide magnet programs; create schedules to coordinate magnet program schedule on a yearlong basis;
- contract with instructors to provide magnet program instruction;
- assist magnet program instructors in aligning program curriculum and activities to academic standards and grade-level appropriate curriculum, school-wide academic goals, and established district expectations;
- assist teachers in creating alignments between magnet program activities to academic standards and grade-level appropriate curriculum, school-wide academic goals, and established district expectations; assist students with academic and behavioral support within magnet program settings;
- collect, assemble and disseminate student achievement data related to magnet program integration
- coordinate magnet lab visioning project, coordinate future magnet lab schedules and supplies;
- assist students and teachers with academic and behavior support within future magnet lab setting;
- participate as an extension and intervention group instructor within the established school-wide RTI framework;
- fulfill other duties and responsibilities as assigned.
If you have questions about the Magnet Programs Integration Specialist position, I, along with members of the School Improvement Committee, will be available to meet with you at an optional Faculty Meeting next Tuesday morning, 11 September, in the Library beginning at 8:00 AM.
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