As we congratulate Dave Davison, our HS Principal since 2004, on his appointment as the superintendent of schools for Westfield, we look to the future and our hiring of his replacement. Dave has worked diligently in Randolph for eight years, he will be greatly missed but we know will be an incredible asset to our neighbors in Westfield.  Congratulations and Best Wishes Mr. Davison!

We will have a rigorous hiring process including committees of students, teachers, support staff, administration and BOE members, and parents and community members. The final interview will be with our full BOE, as they look to this person for leadership with integrity, commitment, passion and innovation.

We aren’t interested in maintaining the status quo at Randolph Central. As we’ve seen so much success on our athletic fields, we look for that same success academically. We are on that path and we’re looking for someone who can lead our HS faculty and staff, connect with our students, show imagination and enthusiasm for our programs and future, and understand the changes from NYSED. I personally want the very best person available, someone who can strengthen us as an Admin team–who brings something more to us than what we have now. I want someone who’s going to help us to be our very best.

We are such an incredible district with wonderful students, hard working, dedicated teachers, a smart, supportive BOE, and a caring, close knit community. Of all the districts in which we could work, none provides a better opportunity for success. We’re figuring out how to take a great district to even greater excellence, we’re looking for someone to help us get there.

Do I have high expectations for this person? Absolutely. The same high expectations I have for myself and every other RCS employee. Only the very best need apply. Think you’ve got what it takes? Deadline is April 27, 2012. Come and help us achieve even greater academic excellence!

The RCS Board of Education and Administration began developing the budget for the 2012-13 school year in December 2011. As always, our goal was to develop a fiscally responsible budget that maintains our educational programs and at the same time reflects our responsibility to our taxpayers. Therefore, our RCS budget was prepared, using the Governor’s proposal, before the state budget was passed on March 31, 2012. Upon passing the state budget, some of our aid was restored. This amounted to an increase in aid to the district of $91,663.

We are confident that the budget we developed, prior to the restoration of the $91,663 in state aid, is a sound and responsible budget. Because of this we are instead using the $91,663 to reduce the tax levy, thus reducing the burden to the taxpayers.

We  present a budget of $18,470,469 which is an increase of $557,918 or 3.1%. Of this increase to the budget, 80% results from increases to payroll and mandatory NYS retirement contributions. Still, we have a local tax levy decrease of $91,633 or -1.9% (amount of money to be raised by taxpayers in the district). This is the fourth year in a row that there has been no increase to our taxpayers and the second year in a row for a decrease.

The election of two Board of Education members will also be on the ballot on Tuesday, May 15. Incumbents Janet Huntington and David Adams will be running for re-election, along with newcomers Daniel MacLaughlin and Thomas Deacon. Please join us for the public hearing of the budget on Tuesday, May 8 at 6:30 in the HS Auditorium. Immediately following the public hearing will be a “Meet the Candidates Night”. PTA Member Janell Sluga will organize the event and ask questions of the candidates. Please join us to hear what your BOE candidates think about the issues most affecting our District.

I love Spring Break. Not for the reasons you’re probably guessing.  I’m not on a beautiful beach somewhere relaxing in the sun. But I am working quietly in my office with the sun streaming through the windows.  It’s wonderful to have the time to think, to analyze, to work virtually uninterrupted.

I’m hopeful that this Spring break returns our teachers and students to us relaxed and rejuvenated. We will have one week with our students before NYS testing in ELA and Math 3-8 begins so we’ll be focused on reinforcing the learning from September through March and testing tips to best prepare our students. Please make sure your children are getting a good night’s rest each night upon return from break and coming to school with after a good breakfast.

This break has been a wonderful time to catch up on projects and to analyze data. It’s a time to research even more about the changes from the New York State Education Department. I’m confident we have a good handle on the teacher evaluation process, including next year’s implementation of Teachscape, a wonderful technology and training tool to help us learn more and improve on the Danielson 2011 rubric. We have a plan in place for the principal evaluation process, utilizing the Learner-Center Initiatives (LCI) MPPR Multidimensional Principal Performance Rubric. This focuses largely on reflection, goal setting and feedback. Both of these evaluative methods should lead all of us to focused, analytical thinking about our work.

Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) about which I’ve written previously are falling into place. I’m still not sure that I’m convinced this piece will make a difference in student learning, at least not proportional to the amount of work needed to implement, but thanks to my friends Theresa Gray at Erie 2 BOCES and Tiffany Giannicchi at Catt/Alle BOCES, I’m at least beginning to see the direction here. I’ve seriously needed SLO AIS :-)— or remediation in this initiative.

I’m also thinking a lot about our upcoming NYS assessments, our work toward improvement here and the work we’ve done through our iReady interim assessments and data analysis. I’m hopeful that increasing the rigor of our work with students and intentionally teaching the common core curriculum will improve our results. I’m concerned about what the assessments will bring in these transitional years to full implementation. Will it look like the tests from previous years? Will our students be better prepared because of the iReady work? Are the changes from NYSED impacting individual teacher practices yet? So much change at once leaves  for much opportunity and also for much uncertainty.

At the end of the day I can say that we have worked very hard as an admin team, a School BOE and a faculty to learn and implement all of the pieces to this changing puzzle. I’m cautiously optimistic that our hard work will pay off.  Let’s finish strong Randolph, we’ve got much work to do upon your return but as always, we’re all in it together. If anyone can do it and do it well, it’s us.

I’ve done some more research since Monday’s post about the composite score based on guidance from the NYSED website. According to the website the,

The field guidance previously available on this page is being revised and will be reposted as soon as possible.

Luckily, Richard Iannuzzi, President, New York State United Teachers issued two guidance docs on the subject, “Setting the Record Straight: New York’s Teacher and Principal Evaluation Law” and “NYSUT and State Education Department (SED) Settlement FAQ”. As Dick says, he was personally at the table throughout the negotiations, so I’m hoping it’s good information. If you’re wondering why I don’t just sit back and wait for NYSED to issue more guidance, remember we have to implement this in the 2012-13 school year. And at RCS, we have a contract expiring June, 2012. That means I’ve got some preparation to do, need to know what I’m talking about, consider the District position, plan… you know, just generally do my job. Maybe it’s my learning style, I am analytical and I tend to over-prepare, but that clock’s ticking (Plans submitted by July 1 if possible) and I want us to make good decisions about all of this. For that, I need solid information and guidance. Now.

So here’s where I’m at since reading Mr. Iannuzzi’s guidance docs. The composite score will be 80% locally negotiated–60% for the other measures, at RCS we’ve agreed that’s evaluations and portfolio review. And 20% iReady as our locally selected student achievement measure and we don’t know yet what that local measure’s going to be for teachers other than K-8 Math and ELA.

I’ve no idea how we’ll measure this 80% to fit into a scoring band and contribute to the composite score. Will there be more guidance on how the iReady results will equal the 20 points? Or will we decide that ourselves? And here’s my point, if we negotiate that individually in districts, won’t it look very different from district to district? And if so, how will these composite scores be a fair comparison across districts? Couldn’t one district set a scoring range that indicates something like, I don’t know, if 50% of students are at grade level by the end of the school year on iReady the teacher achieves a 20/20? And could another district negotiate and set a scoring range that indicates 100% of students must be on grade level to achieve a 20/20? Now consider the evaluation tool in the same way–one district could set a range that says all teachers who achieve a 2.5 or better on the rubric receive 31 points while another sets a range that says teachers must achieve a 3.8 or better on the rubric to receive 31 points.

Doesn’t this cause you to conclude that the public use of this composite score business is lunacy? I hope Mr. Ianuzzi is right when he says  in the FAQ document,

We will take legal action in an effort to prevent the public release of APPRs, as such release would be contrary to the purposes of the APPR law.

I’m guessing he means the public release of the teacher’s composite scores not APPRs. Can you imagine the parent phone calls when they can look to see that one of our fourth grade teachers has a composite score of 88 while another has an 84 and a third has a 78—guess which teacher every parent may insist upon? This cannot happen, it will not help us to improve. But I digress, that was yesterday’s post.

What about this? How do I make good decisions in negotiating this 80% that strikes the balance between holding safe from a Teacher Improvement Plan the vast majority of our teachers who are effective, while still holding everyone accountable for greater student achievement (which we’re all working on collectively), AND that affords me the latitude to use this information effectively for the small minority of teachers who may need to be removed? How does it not become overly punitive and humiliating in one district while being a shallow farce of compliance in another? And what are we accomplishing with all of this at the end of the day?

Please note: If this is your first time reading my posts, PLEASE review previous posts, in which I’ve shown how much work we’ve done in implementing the changes from NYSED and how on board I am with aligning to the common core curriculum, giving teachers the time and skill to study data and work together to problem solve in data inquiry teams, learning the new evaluation system and in school improvement. My point? I’m not an anarchist (not completely anyway), just a district leader trying to do just that: lead in a time of change and uncertainty when people are looking to me for answers I don’t have.  I’m plugged into the network team, I talk to colleagues in two different BOCES regions and I’m not hearing the answers anywhere.  If someone’s got the answers I’m looking for or knows where to find them, please speak up.

And all of this during budget preparation season. . . but that’s another subject.

It’s that time of the year when we work on the school calendar. It seems that every year for the last decade, the topic of the Spring Break comes up. For the 2012-13 school year calendar, it’s again an issue as Randolph Central has remained on the two week break as almost all other districts across New York state are on what’s called a split break, a week in February and a week in April.

Why do we care what the other districts are doing? Well, for one thing, we have 22 districts who are part of the Cattaraugus Allegany BOCES. All of the other 21 districts are likely to be on the split break next year, basically following the BOCES calendar. Our BOCES students are one part of the equation, now their instructional days will match BOCES and everyone else’s too. Another part is that we can participate in shared staff development with other districts and share other services more easily.

More importantly, the New York State Education Department, which is initiating wide ranging and sweeping change in education right now, plans the assessment schedule for NYS testing with the idea that a vast majority of it’s districts are on a split break. It doesn’t do us any good to be an outlier in that equation.

Educationally, it’s always been a debate either way. There are those who argue that it’s not sound to take kids out of school for two weeks just prior to the NYS testing schedule and those who argue, as I always have, that it doesn’t make sense to take kids out of school and interrupt instruction  twice instead of once. The truth is that there’s no compelling research to support that one way is better than the other.

Our BOE discussed the topic last evening at our February 1, 2012 BOE meeting and we determined to move to a one week break in February and a one week break in April, following the BOCES calendar for the 2012-13 school year. 

At the end of the day, we are a NYS public school who must comply with and follow the mandates and testing calendar of NYS.  That trumps all of the other arguments. I regret the disappointment that I know some of our school community members will feel. We are developing a draft calendar now and will have it BOE approved at a future BOE meeting.

A reporter recently visited Lisa Burris’ kindergarten class with the purpose of understanding education today at this level. Liz Skoczylas did a great job of capturing the complexity of the day as printed in Sunday’s Jamestown Post Journal.

Liz says,

Going into Lisa Burris’ kindergarten class at Gail N. Chapman Elementary School in Randolph, one might expect a day filled with building structures out of blocks, learning ABCs and possibly eating some paste.

The reality of the day was much different, as the level of knowledge the five- and six-year-olds possess was far beyond expectation.

Read the whole article to learn more. It’s a nice profile of just one of Randolph’s outstanding teachers and classes!