Welcome to Friday-payday. I love Friday-payday! Don't you?
Student Achievement
Please remember to make every effort to be on time for your RTI groups. We're on a tight schedule but it's working when everyone runs on time.
In your CTs this week most of your teams spent much of your time looking in even more depth at your initial student achievement benchmarks for the year. And, as you now know even better, there's much to be optimistic about! Like you, I am hopeful that we will continue to see gains and improvement in these scores as we continue to move forward during the remainder of the school year.
I really appreciate all your hard work, both in your classrooms and during CT-time. I've been impressed and pleased to see so many high-functioning teams looking critically at student achievement and making careful, deliberate plans to work toward the meaningful goals your set for yourselves and your students. Likewise, it's been refreshing to hear you discuss new approaches, or ways to modify, adapt, and expand (remix!) your current approaches to meet your students' needs. As I walk around the building each day, it's just-so-great to peek into your rooms, albeit briefly, and nevertheless encounter you and your students deeply and actively engaged in real, relevant content. Well done!
Keep up the good work. You're doing great!
Faculty Meeting
We'll meet together as a faculty in the Library on Thursday, 20 Sept. Big Brothers/Big Sisters and Grand Canyon University will be present briefly. Thereafter, McFall will talk about how to make a report card using your online gradebook.
Fire Drill
We will have Fire Drill #1 on Thursday, 20 Sept. at 10:00. This will be a better time than the date I originally planned for, Friday, 21 Sept., because it will not impact special area classes, RTI times, or lunch periods. Please make note of the change and prepare for the drill by reviewing the contents of your red folder.
TPEC
I've been told that the TrueNorth Logic online teacher evaluation interface will go-live this afternoon (Friday, 14 Sept.) and that we (principals) can begin scheduling you (teachers) for preconferences, formal observations, and such. This is good news! And hopefully accurate news, too. We'll see.
I've asked to be able to visit with each of your teams during CTs next week to see if we can schedule individual times for you to come in and meet with me to preconference (plan) your evaluation process for the coming year.
Please understand: I am just as new to this new process as you are. And, despite having been "tour'd and demo'd" through it a couple of times, I've never actually had my hands on it in any strict sense, so really I have very little idea about how all of this is going to go down in real-life. I ask for your patience as I muddle through. Remember: this year is a trial-year, so we've got a little wiggle room. To those of you who elect to go first and experiment with this new process along with me: thanks!
Tax Credit
Here's a thing: we raise a lot of tax credit money to fund our extracurricular magnet programs. You know this. But, what you don't probably know (because it would seem nobody knew until recently) is that we can't actually spend tax credit money on extracurricular stuff unless a fee is charged. Don't believe me? It's true. You can look it up. Arizona Revised Statute 43-1089.01 "Extracurricular activities means school sponsored activities that require enrolled students to pay a fee in order to participate."
FUSD has addressed this concern at the administrative level and arrived at a simple solution. Each elementary school will make an effort to collect a one-time, once-per-year "fee" of $1.00 from every student. Students unable or unwilling to pay the fee will be "scholarshipped" by the school in order to ensure all students will still be able to participate in all extracurricular activities.
Thanks for doing this.
Calendar
- Wednesday, 19 Sept.
- Elementary Admin Meeting at Marshall in the Library, 7:30-10:30
- Thursday, 20 Sept.
- Faculty Meeting in the Library, 7:45
- Fire Drill #1 10:00 (note change of date/time)
- Friday, 21 Sept.
- Mustang Gallop Assemblies in the Gym
- Primary 9:00-9:20
- Intermediate 9:30-9:50
