This was a fairly good attended meeting. I think most of the interest was about the school calendar. There was a work meeting before the regular session where we went over the superintendent evaluation. Bart did most of the work coming up with the evaluation. The evaluation process will in part require the superintendent to come up with goals to meet the different areas of evaluation. Most areas will have three levels of performance. We will use this plan this year and see how it works, with possible revisions later.
At the beginning we heard about some district accomplishments, starting with the high school. As many of you heard U.S. New magazine published a report on high achieving high schools. From what I understand most of the evaluation was based on the percent of students taking AP or Advanced Placement college level classes, and how well the students taking them performed on the AP tests. Firth ranked 4th in the state and 937th in the nation. Great job students and teachers.
Mr. Mecham then talked about the reading that has been done in the middle school. Reading had been identified as a weakness in some middle school students so they really worked on improving reading performance. The average student read 1150 pages this year. The extra reading has improved testing scores in many areas. Great job middle school students and teachers.
Not to be outdone the elementary through the accelerated reader program has read an amazing number of books and total words from September 1st to May 1st. The second through four grades read 5,519 books. Average number of books read was 33. Total words was 34,894,559. Average number of words per student was 212,121. Great job elementary students and teachers.
We then had a lengthy discussion about next years school calendar. Scott Jolley went over the results of a survey of calendar options that were posted on the district web site. Of the five options surveyed four of them received almost the same amount of votes. So it was left up to the board to come up with a compromise between the different options. There was mainly those who wanted to start school as late as possible, and didn't mind going after Memorial Day, and those who wanted to start earlier and didn't want to go after Memorial Day. There was concern brought up about how much actual learning that would be done after Memorial Day. Ms. Cook who teachers AP calculus said she needs as much time as possible early in the year to prepare the students for the final test. All the AP tests were taken last week, so going later and not starting early hurts them. We talked about going on three Fridays at the beginning of the year, but was advised against that because it might hurt our attendance too much. Well what we finally came up with is to start Monday August 19th. We had planned on having January 2nd off. But decided to start back on January 2nd and also go on Friday the 3rd, the only Friday school day of the year. School will end before Memorial Day. I made the motion to support this option and all the board approved.
During patron input we heard a report from Liz Killpack about reviving the education foundation. She has been doing a lot of research into what foundations can do and how best to function. They held a meeting the day before board meeting with about 25 in attendance. Liz was elected the president of the foundation. They plan on helping the district writing grants and trying to help fund some of the district needs. They will help the board in other areas were they can. She requested a board member sit in on their meetings which they plan on having the third Thursday each month and will report to the board their activities. She also requested the superintendent attend. I volunteered to attend when I can. I don't know very much about what a foundation can do and thought it would be a good way to learn and understand more how we can work together to improve the district.
That is pretty much all that happened. I will be out of town during the next board meeting. I will be in Washington DC lobbing congress in my capacity as president of the Western States Dairy Trade Association. We will have a meeting and I and another Idaho dairymen will visit our Idaho congressional delegation, trying to get them to support immigration reform. The Idaho Dairy Association will also be hosting a fund raiser for congressman Labrador. I wish it wasn't the same week as school board meeting where the board will hear the budget report. If you have any questions or concerns you would like me to hear about let me know on my school email. Thanks, Brian
