Board Meeting January 11, 2012

Please refer to the minutes for more details about the meeting. 

There isn’t enough time for me to review all that I learned at School Board Conference and with the BOLTS training coming up next week I am, yet again, requesting we schedule a Work Session to review the topics we have learned and discuss which we may be interested in implementing.

Nominations for Cochise County Teacher of Year are open.  I suggested each school have a nomination committee to select their choice, then the Board would make the selection from three.

AZ received funding from the 3^rd round of the Race to the Top funds.  This is the funding necessary to make the Regional Centers a reality as they will now receive $500,000 to provide Professional Development to our schools.  As a district we must resign the Memorandum of Understanding signed during the 1^st application, because less funds were received during this round the agreement, for what we will do is different. 

As part of the Race to the Top Grant, there will be more training and implementation of the Common Core Standards, now called AZ 2010 Standards.  I have participated is lots of Professional Development as part of my day job and when attending the School Board Association Conference.   I attended one presentation today where I Dr. Nicodemus, Past President of Cochise College, praised the School Board for the focus of decisions on enhancing education and was impressed about the decision to have same sex classrooms. I suggested we get some presentations at our Board Meeting to inform the rest of the Board Members about the AZ 2010 Standards.

Another component of the Race to the Top is Teacher Evaluation.  I attended a presentation at the Az School Board Association Conference about a new method for Teacher Evaluation.  I also read the NEA’s Three-Point Plan for Reform.  We need to start looking at these different Teacher Evaluation method’s to be better informed of information before we make a decision.

A member of the community approached me about getting students to volunteering around the community.  This person had been told the students were asked to volunteer to help clean up around a non-profit organization known for supporting the school and its students, but the students haven’t been there to do anything.  I would like for our students organization to address this and be more active with our community.  This is the best way to build the relationship with our citizens and show them the great things our students can do.

Because our time to report out at our Board Meetings is limited to 5 minutes and there isn’t enough time to discuss everything I would like, therefore, I have created a blog.  I went through all my journal notes from the past year and made them public for all to read.

My requests to be updated about items we approved during the past year were honored with updates from JROTC, Academic Decathlon, and the Technology Committee.  It was exciting to hear about the progress of the student program and learn how students were working to achieve such wonderful successes.