12/21/15 Daily Bulletin

Shout Out

Shout out to Tenacity for hosting a Mid-year Ceremony for our students and families. They transformed the Lower School Gym into "The Flying Lion King" theme. Students were recognized for their hard work and many families were in attendance. Thank you for being such wonderful partners to us. Also thanks to Jordan Smith who has been our Site Director since September. She will be moving this month and will not longer be with us. We wish you the best of luck! Also congrats to Payne Schanski who will take over in January!

 

 

Staff Breakfast

Please join the Admin Team in the Teachers Room on Wednesday, December 23rd at 7:30am for some breakfast treats before we all head off on vacation. We will provide the food and drinks and request only your presence.

Curley Shares

No, they are not happening this week but we are meeting on Thursday, January 7, 2016 with all classes. We are asking teachers to nominate students for awards before we leave for break. Kate Davis will send the links later today.

New Doors

The new doors for card key access are starting to be installed. Tomorrow the Lower School my entrance will get its new doors. Families and staff will be able to use the entrance from 8:15am-8:35am but should otherwise use Centre St to enter/exit the building. Please do not ask the workers to let you in or out. Thanks!

Auditorium Sound System

Do you ever use the sound system?
Can you spare 15 minutes of your time?
If you do use the sound for any events, there will be trainings in January to know how to properly work with the system. It is important to have one member from each team, so that we can make best use of our equipment. Kim will send out a Doodle on Sunday to find out which times work best for the most staff. Please let Kim Taylor Knight know of any questions or concerns you might have, as well.

Budget

BPS budgets came out Monday and were be presented at SSC on Tuesday. There are errors in the budget that have been caught early on and the budget office and working on fixing this in our favor. More details with the final budget will follow.

Book Swap (THIS IS GOING TO BE POSTPONED TILL JANUARY)

Bring a Book, Take a Book, K-5 Book Swap
Bring in 2 or more lightly used books from home and choose 2 ‘new to you’ books from school. The deadline for bringing 2 or more books from home is Friday, December 18th. Please email all questions to Caitlyn Gable and Eileen Cronin.

ACCESS Certification

Training for ACCESS needs to be re-completed by the entire staff by Monday, December 21, 2015. To complete the training go to the wida website: https://www.wida.us Log on (if you can't remember your password remember that your email may have been yourname@boston.k12.ma.us ) all accounts previously created are still active. To create a new account: Type in username: massachusetts, password:patriot and create a new account. Once you log on you need to go to the paper-based Grades 1-12 training. Make sure you are under the Test Administrator tab (not coordinator). You will find a checklist that needs to be completed as well as the link for the tests you have to take. Once the test is completed please turn your training certificate to Kathy or Madeline. Kindergarten teachers need to take the Kindergarten training and test. All SAR and PACE teachers need to take the Alternate Access Training and test. If you have questions please contact Waverly.

TNTP Survey

Boston Public Schools is continuing a partnership with TNTP, an education nonprofit, to once again participate in an ongoing survey, administered twice a year, called Insight. Through Insight, you will have the opportunity to share your thoughts on the leadership practices and conditions at your school that support strong instruction. Your voice is critical in helping leaders across BPS better understand what is working well and what can be improved at your school. Just last week, we asked principals to review last year's data to make a plan to empower teacher teams and distribute instructional leadership at your schools. Your voice influenced those plans. BPS genuinely values your feedback, which has allowed school and central office leaders new views into what is working, and what needs work, at your school and across the district. Some results from last year's administration are attached to this email and we appreciate your continued feedback. Your responses to the survey will be kept completely confidential, and will be aggregated along with your colleagues’ responses in a report that will help drive school-level improvement. If you have any questions about the survey, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your principal or Principal Leader. Thank you in advance for your providing your school leaders with your honest and valuable feedback.

Writing Rubric Tracking

Please see the email from Katie on 12/9/15 regarding the tracking of writing data. We realize how long it has taken us to get this to you all and we apologize. I lot of thought and debate went into how to organize this document. Please check your grade level CPT folder on the drive and you will find your spreadsheet. Teach teams need to complete this for each write task students are completing as part of the writing curriculum map. Staff can have an extension on adding this as an artifact due to the late timing. Everyone should be adding a completed spreadsheet to EDFS by 12/23/15. If you submit it before you head on vacation you won't have to think about it! :) Please direct all questions and feedback to Eileen Cronin.

A2 ANet Testing

All action plans are due to teams administrators by Friday, December 18th (math).

School Showcase

We have two more showcase sessions Friday, December 18th from 9-10am and Thursday, January 14th from 3-4pm.

ELT Planning Meeting

Today 4 staff volunteered to attend the ELT Planning Meeting. We met at the BTU from 8:30am-3:30pm with 7 other schools that will be adding 40 extra minutes to their day in SY2016-2017. We want to be sure to communicate with staff after each meeting to assure that this process is transparent.
Here are some key messages we would like to share from today's learning:

• Our Extended Learning Time initiative is about building a better school day for our students, teachers and families. 
• With more time, our school will have more opportunities to provide targeted learning time for students, increase small group instruction, provide enrichment opportunities in order to increase student engagement and academic outcomes. At our first session we identified these urgent needs: 
• African American and Hispanic males do not perform on standardized tests at the same level as their White and Asian peers. 
• ELL and SPED students do not perform on standardized tests at the same level as their general education peers. 
• Overall as a school we struggle with reading and writing skills according to standardized tests. 
• We are just at the beginning and we need you to play an active role in the process of developing a new school experience for our community. 
• Between January and June the ELT Team will implement a community engagement process moving forward, stay tuned for meeting dates and other pertinent updates. 
• In the coming weeks you can get involved by reaching out to a member of the ELT team with questions and ideas (Ciardi, Grassa, Kidd, Peters, Wright). Click Here and you can submit your ideas and questions anonymously.