Minutes of the April 12^th, 2017 meeting of

The 19^th Ward Community Association Schools Committee

Attendees: Mary Adams, John Boutet, John Laing, Jay Ross, Dan Ross, Beverly Usher, and Sarah Yaworski

Guests: Thomas Hogrefe, Giancarlo Giannini

March minutes Approved

Spelling Bee

Not all bills have been received for the spelling Bee as yet – will discuss more next meeting along with a spending outlook for next year.

The Spelling Bee was successful, and we had our first tie using a process devised the day before. Tom commented that the brothers enjoyed the Bee, but recommended that the amount of time spent in the gym and frat house (2 hours) was a little long. We should look at this for next year. Other thoughts for next year included: change the order of the grades to start with 8 then 7 then 6, and then 3, 4 and 5; move the award ceremony to the end and do all the grades at once which should keep people from leaving early, provide better documentation of the spelling bee process itself to add consistency, speed up the time between grade competitions, make sure that the students names are announced, don’t have the alternates sit on the stage, have students move off the stage when they are eliminated.

John L was to send a note to the good news folks at RCSD on the spelling bee, including the names of the early winners who are now poised for graduation.

School 16 status

The early abatement and demolition package was awarded on 4/10 and the Abatement / Demolition Contractor will be mobilizing on site in the next couple of weeks.  This early abatement and demolition is scheduled to take about 3 months.  
The design team has completed the Design Development phase and we have begun the Construction Documents phase which is scheduled to be complete at the end of June.  

Community Task Force Endorsement

We discussed the endorsement of the Community Task Force on school climate. Dan agreed to follow up and attend the monthly meetings. We will communicate that to Delegate’s Council.

School 44 status

There is an issue keeping up with the share table. There is a need for air conditioning in the food prep area of the cafeteria.

School 10 status

School 10 has pulled back from the expanded learning schedule. There have been 50 teacher applications from outside the school to transfer to #10

RCSD Budget ( Giancarlo Giannini)

GC took us through aspects of the budget which is available on the RCSD website. The superintendent stated that she wanted to move resources to the schools, and this can be seen in the school budgets with increases in the headcount of counseling and reading resources at the schools. Also the ELA and Math scores are listed by school. After the budget is finalized, we should look at the changes proposed for our schools.

Next Meeting

Wednesday, May 10^th at 7 pm in the 19^th Ward Community Association office.