Spotlight – Superintendent’s Column

Greetings all,

Scheduling is on my mind this week, as I suspect it is also a topic of discussion at the schools. Some decisions have finally been made around the calendar and school day for next year. The Board has approved the calendar for the 2012-13 school year. It took longer than usual this year, but had much input from the BEA along the way (very much appreciated). You can see the calendar on our website: www.bsdvt.org. BHS will be starting earlier than usual, with students returning on August 27^th and staff returning on August 22^nd. We will have an all-faculty welcome on August 24^th, which is the first day for K-8 staff. K-8 students return on August 29^th. The reason for this differentiated schedule, as requested by the high school, is the first steps of the work they are doing to transform learning at BHS. Starting early allows them to finish the first semester at the December break and start the second semester in January. This allows the second semester to end in May and to use June as a Year End Studies program, a program focused on student centered learning and choice projects. Next year will also be the first year of the new 9^th Grade Academy. Stay tuned for more information on this; it could be a good topic for a future column. K-8 will follow our traditional schedule. An additional change this year is that MLK Day will be a no student, no staff day in 2013 as the Board studies how it should best be used in the future.

A change at K-5 next year is an increase in the student day by 15 minutes. With the change in the planning time with the last contract, students lost 15 minutes of core instructional time each day, which totals quite a bit of lost time annually. As all of our schools are designated as not meeting the standard, and with a focus on improving literacy and math scores across the District, this loss of core instructional time does not make sense. The teacher day, however, remains at 7:45-3:30, with one meeting that can go an hour after school once per week, per the contract. We had made this change at the middle schools awhile back.

As you root around the website for the calendar, take note of our new look! We will be adding the layers to this site in the background as we go, but the front page is quite different and, we hope, easier to navigate. This site will not need webmasters and is easy to update. It is available to all schools and will be made available to teachers as well in the future.

Enjoy April break. I am wishing flowers and sunshine for everyone!

Jeanné

 

North Avenue News – April Superintendent’s Message

Greetings all. I must start with a heartfelt thank you for supporting Burlington’s children in the budget vote this year. It was a very complicated year, with a complicated story, and one we do not plan to repeat in the future! Our schools serve nearly 4000 students, with a variety of complex needs, and we do it very well. With a post secondary rate of over 80% and a drop out rate under 3%, with the awards our students and faculty receive, it is a school district to be proud of and the faculty, administration, Board and I appreciate the support of our community in keeping our system excellent for all students. Thank you.

We are moving forward with the high school transformation work which includes the 1:1 technology planning. We have approved bids for a wireless infrastructure for BHS and EMS (HMS is already complete). The cost for BHS will come from the Nellie Mae grant. We are under discussion with teachers and administrators about what hardware to use, with the criteria being what is most related to the educational needs of students and teachers.The team of 9th grade BHS teachers is meeting on a regular basis, and plans are underway for a 5-day intensive School Development Institute in June. We are having discussions about a class option for a student-run help desk, to deal with tier one support and training issues. This will also engage students more fully in the ownership of the computers. We plan to talk a team of high school teachers and tech staff to visit Burlington High School in Burlington, MA where they have miplemented an iPad curriculum for grades 9-12, and we hare having discussions with Franklin West and Franklin Northwest here in VT about their implementation of iPads across middle and high school grades. The Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education is supporting our work at the middle school level, as they have supported the current project at EMS for the last three years. A large focus is on staff professional development, as integrating technology does change the way one teachers significantly as it increases student engagement. We will continue to update you, the community on these plans as we move forward and will be asking for your input along the way as we work to transform our secondary education in Burlington.