Minutes of the June 5^th, 2018 meeting of

The 19^th Ward Community Association Schools Committee

Attendees: John Boutet, John Laing, Dan Ross, Jay Ross, and Manuel Hernandez

May minutes

Approved

Spelling Bee Feedback

Comments concerning the spelling bee continue to be positive. Schools appreciated the funds for their celebrations and are looking forward to next year.

Feedback from Square Fair

Thanks to John B for setting up the display and including the X-Cats robot. That attracted people to our display and one of them, Manny Hernandez will be joining our committee. He lives on Aldine with his wife and three children. His oldest will turn 3 in September thus he has a vested interest in the schools. He had received information on the UPK program that was different from our expectation. We gave him contact information for principal Roberts. Also Dan was to give him information of the program as well.

Carla Roberts, recently named principal led a large contingent of school 16 teachers and staff to Square Fair. They were excited about moving back to Post Ave.

People filled a signup sheet for tours of the building when available. We need to coordinate the tour with the placement folks to communicate with the neighbors.

Path Forward

There is a large amount of data on the RCSDK12 website, and I will send a link to all. There is an Office of Community Schools, headed by Eric Leroy that is responsible for the framework and plans for the community schools. There is a Summer Summit scheduled for August 2 which we should plan on participating.

School reports

School 10 renovation start has been delayed as the total funding needs to be in place before the work can go out for bids. Thus the building will not be available for September 2019 so the time in swing space will be extended.

School 44 will be open through at least the 2019-20 school year due to the influx of students from Puerto Rico. Additional Spanish and Special Ed resources will be required.

Goals for 2018-19

-School 16

• Work to assure that it is successful – wrap around care, community involvement, extended day, quad A, short distance busing

-School 44

• support the staff

-All

• Coordinate a Successful Spelling Bee

• Work to eliminate inefficiencies and add to teaching time

• Example – when a teacher is absent the students in that class are moved around to different classrooms (e.g. a first grader to a second grade class, etc) resulting in the loss of a day for the student and possible disruption of the host class room

• Testing of first graders requires the teacher to read the questions to the students individually while the rest are idle

The next committee meeting will be Tuesday July 10^th at 7 pm in the 19^th Ward Community Association office. NOTE THE CHANGE IN DATE

Submitted by John Laing