Board of Education Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes Draft

March 18, 2009

ATTENDANCE: Shirley Mosby, Chair; Glenn Iannaccone

STAFF: Tony Daddona, John Keough, Helene Becker

CALL TO ORDER

Ms. Mosby called the meeting to order at 7:40 p.m.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES FOR JANUARY 21, 2009

** MS. MOSBY MOVED TO APPROVE THE MINUTES OF JANUARY 21, 2009 AS SUBMITTED ** THE MOTION PASSED WITH ONE IN FAVOR (MOSBY) AND ONE ABSTENTION (IANNACCONE).

UPDATE ON MATH CURRICULUM.

John Keough came forward and greeted the Committee. He said that in reviewing the progress that Norwalk students have made, Norwalk should be proud.

In analyzing the math program, it became apparent that the elementary levels needed a better program. Once that issue was addressed, there was a major improvement. Now it is time to address the Special Education program. Norwalk now has a double digit advance over the State in terms of the Hispanic students and African American proficiency.

There is now an improvement of over 80% in the third grade scores. That is the best single grade report in the last fifteen years in Norwalk.

At the middle school level, where the program has been in progress a bit longer, Norwalk was 12th out of 13 districts, but last year, the scores were the best ever. In 7th grade, the ranking is 1st in proficiency and 2nd in goal, but eighth grade Norwalk is 1st in both proficiency and goal.

Mr. Keough went on to review all the percentiles and noted that major improvements have been made in the “gap” groups.

Norwalk High School and Brien McMahon now rank number 1 and 2, and every single subgroup against the State in every aspect.

The math programs are now in their fourth year and are doing well. There have been steady increases in achievement in all the groups except for Special Education.

Norwalk staff and administration have done a good job.

Mr. Iannaccone left the meeting at 7:51 p.m. A quorum was no longer present.

Ms. Mosby said that she was very happy with the improvement report and will be very pleased to report this to the Board of Education.

Mr. Keough said that a major focus was to insure that everything on the Improvement Plan is done.

Mr. Keough said that he does his own professional development. This saves the District hundreds of dollars.

Ms. Mosby said that she just wanted to get an update on the situation. Ms. Mosby thanked Mr. Keough for his report.

CREC REPORT UPDATE

Mr. Daddona said that the group was reviewing the seven points and required procedures from Mr. Brian Cunne, from the State.

A draft has been created for the Parent Special Education Committee with an eleven member team. He then reviewed the details for the Committee.

Ms. Helene Becker joined the meeting at 8:00 p.m.

Currently there are 24 parents who are on the list as possible candidates. The Committee will be advisory only and the original suggesting was that the Committee be no larger than five. Based on the suggestions from the last BOE meeting, the committee has been increased to eleven. However, the parent must have a student in the IDEA program. A discussion followed about the selection of the parents and the efforts towards diversity and representation.

ELL (WELCOMING CENTER AND TEXTBOOK ADOPTION)

Ms. Becker said that there was an ELL welcoming center at Brookside and that the group wishes to expand the Center. She then distributed a handout to Mr. Daddona and Ms. Mosby, which outlined what the Center already does, such as testing and keeping files on the ELL students, which is State mandated. She then went on to outline the various other tasks such as helping parents with filling out forms, and introducing the families to the many available resources. There are also a number of other duties, like providing interpreters during parent teacher conferences. Ms. Becker said that currently the District has the ELL staff in the classrooms to interpret the instructions in Spanish or Creole for the CMTs and CAPs testing.

Ms. Becker said that having central registration for all the ELL families would be extremely helpful because some schools have many resources to provide support to Spanish speakers while other schools have fewer. By having the families all come through one facility, problems such as forms in Spanish or translation of transcripts can be handled efficiently. There is also a need for a parent interview to be more consistent. If the student has special needs, it helps to have some background information from the parents.

Ms. Mosby asked if the Free Lunch program forms would be handled at the Center. Ms. Becker said that it would. A discussion then followed the fact that foreign language speakers may not be able to handle the complexity of some of the forms even in their own native language.

Ms. Becker said that she would like to have a welcome kit that contained items such as a dictionary. With a centralized welcoming center, when the student arrived at school, the forms would already be filled out.

Mr. Daddona said that this type of outreach would be at Brookside and be a very positive program. Ms. Becker said that she had presented this to the middle and high school principals and will be presenting it to the elementary school principals in the near future. The principals that she had spoken to suggested that this be piloted. Brien McMahon was very excited about this and indicated that that they wanted to be part of the pilot program.

TEXT BOOK SELECTION

Ms. Becker said that in the last three years, she realized that there was a need for better textbooks for the middle school ELL programs. The teachers were using old mainstream textbooks that had simplified language. A committee was formed to look at ELL middle school textbooks, including Ms. Glass. A series called Access was piloted last year and the teachers find it to be very helpful for ELL Levels 1 and 2. There are charts, timelines and a language lesson in each chapter. This series follow the District guidelines series and also has a student workbook.

Ms. Becker said that the local budget was closing on Friday and there are funds that were allocated for this. A discussion then followed about how this would be handled since the next meeting scheduled would be in two weeks.

Mr. Daddona and Ms. Mosby then discussed the next steps for the pilot program for the ELL Welcome Center.

ADJOURNMENT

Ms. Mosby adjourned the meeting at 8:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Sharon L. Soltes Telesco Secretarial Services

Category: Committee Minutes