Minutes of the November 7^th, 2017 meeting of

The 19^th Ward Community Association Schools Committee

Attendees: John Boutet, Dan Ross, Jay Ross, John Laing

October minutes Approved

Spelling Bee Status

The word lists for this year have been distributed to the school coordinators, all of whom participated last year. Two early winners are eligible for scholarships and we are working to contact them directly. The Bee will be in April, likely either the 14^th or 21^st. Contact has been made with the fraternity and they have their elections soon at which point we will know the contact person for us.

Table at the 19^th ward convention

John B has architectural renderings of the renovation and we will show these at our table at convention. Also a chart of the Spelling Bee winners will be there.

School 16 Renovation Status

There is lots of activity including two shift operations and weekends. We discussed the need for some signage and I was to contact Allen Williams to discuss the need. We also need to continue the discussions with the district on the strategy to transition to a neighborhood school starting with preK and K students in the fall of 2018. Dan offered to write a proposal for recruitment of neighborhood children into school 16.

Old/New Business

GS₄A has been active in sponsoring talks (one by Nikole Hannah-Jones was particularly excellent) and workshops on their proposal of a network of magnet schools to jointly service RCSD and suburban students to achieve a more diverse population. We also discussed the New York Schools Quality Index reporting.

Next Meeting

Tuesday December 5^th at 7 pm in the 19^th Ward Community Association office.

Submitted by John Laing