Woodstock Public Schools is holding the final community workshop regarding the future of the town’s public school facilities. The workshop will be held at 7 p.m., Wednesday Nov. 8th, in the Woodstock Middle School cafeteria. This last meeting will complete a series of feasibility study meetings to address long-term enrollment growth and planning.
New digitometer stats.
“There’s no such thing as excess funds. “
The October 1st Woodstock Academy student count was 459. The Woodstock BOE voted to pay the tuition fee of 475 students because that was the number the Academy had based their budget on and the funds were already approved in the town’s budget. The Academy Board of Trustees decided not to accept the excess funds of $216,678 (created by the unexpected withdrawal of 20 Woodstock students from the Academy over the summer) because doing so wouldn’t have any benefit to the Academy.
These monies, however, remain in the BOE budget as approved by the voters last spring. So, what to do? Given the current year’s testing requirement of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the BOE has decided to use the funds to try to bolster our students’ abilities to achieve the adequate yearly progress goals set.
Woodstock is a smaller rural school district and as such was given a ‘free skate’ with the NCLB requirements last year, actually the proper terminology is ‘Safe Harbor’. The essence of this was to allow us a one-time exemption from full compliance to the adequate yearly progress goals. This year will be a different story.
Woodstock has a ‘subset’ population that exceeds the 40-student threshold. We are now required to achieve the adequate yearly progress goals set for that entire subset (as well as the overall student population). For all intents and purposes, there are no exceptions. Technically, we can exempt 1% of this subset, but until that subset population reaches 100 students it doesn’t mean anything. Of the various subsets identified by the NCLB, the only subset with a population large enough to require the adequate yearly progress goals achievement is special education.
Based on discussions with staff, the administration developed a strategy to address some concerns that may affect our ability to meet our adequate yearly progress goals. Since we ended full-day kindergarten, staff has indicated our children are lagging behind with phonetic development (a necessary building block for reading readiness). The Superintendent asked Principal Toth to survey the kindergarten parents for their response to a possible reconfiguration of the kindergarten classes that could begin on January 2, 2007. The reconfiguration would be to have three all-day kinder classes and two half-day kinder classes. This would require the hiring of one kindergarten teacher. The survey also informs parents that these changes would mean that their child may be reassigned to a different teacher. The survey is in progress at this time and the resulting responses have not been collected and compiled. The administration has not made a final determination, but has gone forward, posting the openings to expedite the process (application reviews, interviews, reference checks, fingerprints, background checks, etc.).
Also, in anticipation of the increased required compliance to the adequate yearly progress goal set by NCLB, we are looking for seven additional teacher assistants, a reading intervention teacher, and a math intervention teacher to help prepare those students needing additional help to achieve adequate yearly progress. (Also advertised is a posting for a speech and language pathologist teacher which is to fill a current vacant position.) In considering the undertaking of this course of action, the BOE fully understood that these positions may not be able to be maintained beyond the completion of this school year, but felt the gains made would justify the endeavor. Read the rest of this entry »
