BOE agenda July 25, 2006
Here's a link to a .pdf of the agenda for Tuesday's BOE meeting. If you've got a minute cruise through that and let me know if anything jumps out at you.
The BOE is allowing 13 BOE candidates to have 3 minutes each to speak to the public.
The Organized Neighbors of Edgehill have asked to speak as has the Encore Parents Advisory Council.
Contracts for approval:
West End Middle to Robert S. Biscane & Co.
Eakin Elementary to Porter Roofing
Hillsboro High to Shankle-Lind (ADA upgrade)
East Literature to Competition Athletic Construction
Textbooks for approval:
Appleby, et al, The Language of Literature; World Liteature, 2006, McDougal Littell
Interesting comments about the book here."Such texts bastardize literature and history, reducing authors and their works to historical facts to be memorized - what Alfie Kohn, author of The Schools Our Children Deserve, calls "the bunch o' facts" theory of learning. Students are jerked from one excerpt of literature to another, given no chance for the kind of sustained reading that stimulates the imagination."
We're into reading whole books around our home. The only 'jerking" that occurs is when chores haven't been done or it's dinner time.
Negotiation issues with the MNEA.
A zero tolerance discipline hearing appeal.
We'll hear from Steve Heyneman of Vandy regarding Poverty and Academic Achievement.
The Director will report on Gifted testing and Pre-K.
They'll be reports from the Naming of Schools Committee, the Committee to Evaluate the Director and the Governance Committee.
All between 5:00 p.m. and 8:10 p.m. this Tuesday, July 25, 2006 at the Board office 2601 Bransford Avenue.
5 comments:
Whew! Hope they'll be coffee or coke or something for you all.
These adopted texts do contain novels and full length plays. More importantly, students also read books in addition to what's in the adopted text. You can see the pdf for our essential literature lists here:
MNPS Essential Literature
The lists aren't until the last half of the document, but they are whole books; many students in English and Language classes most certainly read them, and engage in "sustained reading that stimulates the imagination"- the comment about the textbook would not be an appropriate analysis of the Language Arts curriculum of MNPS, which does provide a balance of breadth and depth. Please remember that while there is definitely a need to increase reading ability (and consequently scores), many students are learning to read. There are many students achieving, please don't discount them in your efforts to show the need for improvement and change.
So the comment from that site may not be a fair one if you're trying to analyze MNPS's reading program, but I did enjoy the side links to "Leftist Elitism," "Fascism is Leftist," and "Leftism is authoritarian." Really "stimulated my imagination." ;)
Don't worry. I won't vote based on the interesting comments from one website. I'll put much more weight in first person testimony from MNPS parents, teachers and voters. So have you read the text and what do you think about it?
Well, they do offer a meal during a break but I've promised not to partake of any MNPS paid meals until Litton Middle School repairs are done. It may be 2008 before I can. It's a parent request that I'm glad to honor to support them in their efforts. I'll be brown bagging it.
Thanks for the link to the MNPS essential literature. We worked off of two lists. One was from the book "Honey for a Child's Heart" and then the Classical-Homeschooling.org list "1000 good books, 100 great books". (For some reason I am unable to create a link at this moment.)
The "political campaigning" was a unilateral decision by the chairman (Pam Garret of District 5 Goodlettsville/Joelton). There was no discussion.
The Operating budget information is, I believe, just our receipt of the OFFICIAL budget now that the Council has voted on it. I base this assumption on the fact that a bound copy of the budget with information about MNPS, it's mission, vision, directives and head shots of the BOE members who did this budget was included in my packet. I just missed all of that fun.
That packet already contained the Sales Tax Collections as of July 20, 2006: $14,570,717.86 which is up a million and change from the year before.
I've already decided to pull a few things from that consent agenda so I don't think it'll be just 25 minutes.
I am looking forward to learning how it is that poor kids are excused from learning.
My apologies to Eric. I accidentally deleted his comment instead of my own which blogger had messed up. Thankfully I could retreive it by using the back button on my browser.
Here's Eric's post:
Eric Holcombe said...
You find out what the operating budget is and sales tax collections are after you decided which capital contracts to approve? I hope it's in your consent materials.
25 minutes devoted to governing
50 minutes devoted to political campaigning
60 minutes devoted to 'developing the board' on the concepts of poverty and academic achievement. If it truly is on a 'world view', maybe he will explain how lavish we are on spending for k-12 education in America, yet lagging behind relatively 'impoverished' nations academically. Otherwise, it will be the same mantra: more money = smarter kids, (although the Washington DC and NYC systems will not be evaluated). I suspect it will be the latter since the next step is to stick the not-for-discussion operations budget under your noses.
11:40 AM
The "political campaigning" was a unilateral decision by the chairman (Pam Garrett of District 5 Goodlettsville/Joelton). There was no discussion.
The Operating budget information is, I believe, just our receipt of the OFFICIAL budget now that the Council has voted on it. I base this assumption on the fact that a bound copy of the budget with information about MNPS, it's mission, vision, directives and head shots of the BOE members who did this budget was included in my packet. I just missed all of that fun.
That packet already contained the Sales Tax Collections as of July 20, 2006: $14,570,717.86 which is up a million and change from the year before.
I've already decided to pull a few things from that consent agenda so I don't think it'll be just 25 minutes.
Here's a link to Mr. Heyneman's page at Vanderbilt.
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