Live reporting - SIP Annie Sullivan

2. Guests/Presentations

a. School Improvement Plans

• Annie Sullivan Middle School – Beth Wittcoff

Goals

1. Response to intervention
2. Literacy
3. Annual Yearly Progress (AYP)
4. Mathematics
   

The literacy initiative is working

Q - on "Brain based instructional strategies"
A - getting students involved and engaged more completely with all their senses.

Q - What impact does differentiated learning have on the results?
A - differentiated instruction with an average of 30 students in a class is hard. It is a real issue. As long as we have class sizes and ratios that high it will be a challenge to continue to produce the results that Franklin has become used to seeing.

Live reporting - SIP Remington

2. Guests/Presentations

a. School Improvement Plans (SIP)

• Remington Middle School – Paul Peri

Mostly a continuation and enhancement to last years goals.

Goals

1. Incorporate reading/literacy strategies in the classrooms of all core content areas
2. Targets the skills of the student who are at risk for not meeting district and state learning expectations in math
3. Targets the skills of two sub-group populations of students
4. Connecting RMS to the Franklin Community

Additional text will be added later

Live reporting - Presentations (School Improvement Plans)

2. Guests/Presentations

a. School Improvement Plans (SIP)

• Horace Mann Middle School – Dr. Anne Bergen

Open response writing showing good results.

Video taped an interview with high performing students, cooperative learning doesn't always work for them, pay attention to them, they have a right to learn something new every day

28% of the student lacking in the basic fundamentals, added some focus to this and got great results (with pre- and post-test results)

Action plans

1. Wide reading to develop background knowledge
2. Writing goal
3. Math goal
4. School enrichment model

Additional text from the detailed SIP will be added later

The kids feedback was to do more pre-testing, if they already know it, let's move on to something else.

Live reporting - School Committee 9/8/09

Attending: Armenio, Cafasso, Kelley, Mullen, Roy, Rohrbach, Trahan
Missing:

1. Routine Business

Citizen’s Comments - none
Review of Agenda - none
Minutes: I recommend approval of the minutes from the August 25, 2009 School Committee Meeting.  motion to approve, passed 7-0
Payment of Bills - Mr. Kelly  motion to approve, passed 7-0
Payroll - Ms. Armenio

FHS Student Representatives – Welcome to the new student representatives: Zach Price (President of Senior Class) and Christie Gianetti (Student Government President)

Correspondence

1. Budget to Actual
2. Letter from Kristen Redpath (donation)
   

Interview with Obama on education

President Obama is interviewed by Damon Weaver, from the KEC TV News Team out of Kathryn E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary in Florida, in preparation for the Presidential address to students today.

The video interview (about 10 minutes) can be viewed here:

Schools - Brochure/Flyer Dissemination Process

Based on feedback received from parents and guardians about the overwhelming number of flyers and brochures that have been traditionally sent home in student backpacks, we will be piloting an innovative way to disseminate information this year. In lieu of sending home paper copies of information we will establish a website where all approved brochures, notices and flyers will be posted. A link to the site will be featured prominently on the district web site, school based web sites and in the monthly schools newsletters to parents. The link will be titled NEWS YOU CAN USE and the link is: http://www.franklin.ma.us/auto/schools/FPS/flyer/default.htm

With approval from the Office of the Superintentendent of Schools, we will continue to disseminate information from all Town of Franklin Departments and non profit community groups such as the Parent Communication Councils (PCC), Franklin Education Foundation (FEF) , the YMCA and non-profit community based service and athletic programs such as Boy/Girl Scouts, Metrowest basketball etc.

In the last two years we have been inundated with requests from a number of local and out of town businesses to sponsor programs, fundraisers and special events. We will forward some of these requests to the PCC officers for consideration as we are not in a position to sponsor these types of activities as per our district policies.

Non-profit groups that would like their information to be posted for web site publishing should contact the Office of the Superintendence at 508-553-4819.

National Suicide Prevention Week - Sep 6-12

Did you know that? 

• Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15 to 24 year olds;
• One youth completes suicide every 2 hours and 5 minutes, which approximates 11.5 persons each day;
• For every completed suicide by youth, it is estimated that 100 to 200 attempts are made; and
• In 2006, more than 33,000 people died by suicide in the U.S.

National Suicide Prevention Week is September 6 – 12, 2009. This year’s theme is “A Global Agenda on the Science of Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery.  According to the American Association of Suicidology (AAS), suicide prevention is everyone’s business and anyone can participate in Suicide Prevention Week, including schools. BoardBuzz agrees: the statistics above communicate the need for schools to be more proactive about increasing awareness of suicide warnings and signs and helping prevent its incidence among youth.