Work sessions are open to the public as observers.  Some like the Work Session on Facilities Master Plan  two weeks ago was very interesting and an excelent preparation for the important Board - Community Conversation on Facilities Master Plan meeting last week.

The topic for this session is reported to be related to a set of programmatic proposals put forward by Van White (he is calling it the “Revolution”).   A number of important initiatives that could come out of this are: 

- smaller elementary class sizes in priority and focus schools;

- more highly qualified reading teachers actually teaching reading with proportionate emphasis according to status as priority, focus, good standing;

- Ralph Spezio’s community accredited school model for promoting neighborhood community schools/ can be linked with an idea from Van in which schools with a certain threshold of poor results must bring on site supportive wrap around services and programs; 

- parent report cards and other measures of family involvement;

- improved access to high quality early childhood pre-K including possibility of all day pre-K;

- replication of proven school models that do not over-emphasize testing such as NYS Performance Consortium Schools and Freedom School models;

- more intentional use of professional development for teachers and other staff by collaborating with unions in establishing PD standards and expectations. 

The governor’s statements on education seemed to support wrap around community school concept as well as all day pre-K so there may be some real potential to see some of this through.

Finding out what the views and concerns of the various board members are will be valuable for us when shaping proposals we would like to see adopted.

Parking should be available in the Central Office parking lot at this time of day.