I think that the LEA members who attended the Lexington Forum with our new MTA President, Barbara Madeloni, left feeling uplifted and hopeful. Certainly we all realized we were in this crazy, shifting world of public education TOGETHER. And together is the key purpose for this email. One of the issues that arose during the forum was the issue of time ñthe fact that there are so many endeavors that all take up time and how do we deal with all of them?
To that end, in collaboration with the LEA, the Superintendent wrote and the School Committee passed a district goal that reads:
In view of the time demands required to successfully implement new State mandates and the districtís learning goals centered on continuous improvement, the administration will establish a collaborative process to increase efficiency and effectiveness and eliminate low-leverage strategies.
Dr. Ash and I met with the new Director of Planning and Assessment, Maureen Kavanaugh, to develop the script we would use to visit the schools and find out from you what initiatives/assessments/time consuming projects we should continue to do as they yield rich results for our students, and which we should eliminate as they do not In order to learn from you what efforts are valuable and which are not, we will visit a total of five schools (two elementary schools with the 6 schools divided into two groups; one middle school with both middle schools invited; and two visits to the high school. These are voluntary meetings, but we hope you will choose to attend and help us finally weed that infamous garden that has not been weeded since. Sometime in January there will be a follow up survey so that those educators who could not attend the live sessions will also have a voice.
The schedule for school visits and where the meetings will be held is below:
- Wednesday, Jan. 7 at ES for Estabrook, Hastings, and Fiske; 3:45-5 pm
- Wednesday, Jan. 14 at BO for Bowman, Bridge, and Harrington; 3:45-5 pm
- Thursday, Jan. 15 at CL for Clarke and Diamond; 3:15-4:30 pm
- Wednesday, Jan. 28 at LHS; 3-4:15 pm
- Thursday, Jan. 29 at LHS; 3-4:15 pm
Rooms will be announced at a later time.
Carl Sandburg said, “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” We hope you will come and have a say in determining how the coins are spent.
Respectfully and with genuine hope in the process,
Phyllis Neufeld
Paul Ash