CCPTA meeting 11.18.2013 Ed Center
As a carry over from the PTA presidents meeting, here are a
couple of places where you can make a PTA website, endorsed by nobody ‘official’
but used by Barrett www.my-pta.org and Glebe
http://www.drupalgardens.com/
Introduction by Ted, first of three or four meetings
covering budget, CIP, community engagement
In
attendance this evening are: Nottingham, Science Focus, Tuckahoe, TJ, Taylor,
Jamestown, W-L, McKinley, Budget Advisory Committee, Hoffman Boston,
Williamsburg, Barcroft, Patrick Henry, LongBranch, Randolph, SEPTA, Carlin
Springs, Jefferson, Glebe, Barrett, ATS, Facilities Advisory, Yorktown, Wakefield,
Transportation Committee, Abington, Ashlawn, Clarement
Ted: pre meeting was well attended and take aways
will be addressed.
Emma Violand-Sanchez http://www.apsva.us/site/Default.aspx?PageID=3064
Emma is creating a family engagement leadership group. She wants
to build capacity of family / student engagement towards student learning. They
are meeting six times over the course of a couple of months to build and share
a best practice model.
School Board: funding gap, va retirement system, growing
enrollment, many secondary issues. APS contributes to the county in many ways,
strategic plan presentations are happening now. SOL scores. New reading test
and reading score has dropped. Will be looking at legislative package, she will
be testifying at the state board next week about legislative issues that APS is
for and against.
Students are advocating for
passage of the dream act, which allows them to go to college at in state rates
instead of out of state rates.
QQ do you expect a change in
tone from legislature? AA There is commitment from Governor to sign dream act.
OEI Opportunity Education
Initiative, is the State Agency that is taking receivership over the school
boards for the schools that are failing. Court case is going on now.
FAC, Don Weinstein CCPTA and FAC meet at the same time when
there is a Holiday. Last FAC meeting was on 21 OCT at Yorktown. MCMM minor construction and major maintenance
list was addressed, the list is smaller this year than last, as a result of
better long term planning.
Security coordinator is emphasizing school cameras, radios,
and visitor management. This will happen at all levels.
New elementary school has county board approval now. There is
now a permit to disturb the ground at Ashlawn.
Budget
advisory council: shortfall, they are looking at priorities and how to cover
gaps and trade offs that are being made.
Transportation:
starting to work on final report. Also happy to come to schools and talk about
transport issues. The responses to the survey were quite low only 3000
responses. Probably not enough data to make an informed decision off of. LOTS
of people voiced issues they had with the survey.
Technology: Chris Didda is not
here, but there is a tech project report?
ACI is
meeting twice a month and needs input.
Betty Hobbs http://www.apsva.us/page/24
Recruiting for the calendar
committee, they meet only once and make suggestions for next years calendar. Tentative
calendar was shared with CCPTA, real published calendar will instructionally sound,
and will better line up with the neighboring jurisdictions. Also went over the
tentative calendar. This will be emailed to principals tomorrow. Committee will
meet on January 18th YOU can be a committee member. If you want to
join, you can reach her by clicking the hyperlink above or contacting Ted at
the CCPTA.
QQ it would be better to start
the schools earlier to have more instruction time for SOL’s.
QQ can the calendar be published
in a way that we can tie it to our outlook calendars?
Contact List for parents / ptas that are trying to develop
directories. This will be available to the front offices of each school for
PTAs to create student directories.
QQ many questions about parent vue
QQ parent vue and mining for data for school directories.
QQ what about parents that do not have Internet access?
QQ what about the emails that are going to the wrong place?
If you have access issues please call the helpdesk 703-398-1246
He is working with Linda Erdus to create a parent academy
class. Clearly recognizes lack of understanding.
Has a very acute awareness of sensitivity of student information
and is erring on the side of caution.
QQ what about the parents that don’t speak English?
There is a new ability to query a report coming out in the
next week.
StudentVue is ready to be rolled out, but the password
information reset ability was not tight enough. 22 november will have all passwords
reset. 25 november is when the student vue will roll out to middle schools.
QQ do I need to ask my kids for their passwords? Yes. In the
future there should be an ability to have a parent account control multiple
student accounts.
Anyone
looking for more information on directories contact Geneva through Kathleen.
Presentation that was created by
Michael Walden: http://www.apsva.us/cms/lib2/VA01000586/Centricity/Domain/99/APS%20Economic%20Impact%20Study.pdf
about statistics around value of a high school education. Impact of APS budget
on Arlington County, the more that is spent on schools the more they will make.
APS students are more likely to be fiscally successful through their life.
Pat Murphy:
That report by Michael Walden was made to quantify how
important it is to conserve the long term investment that has been made in APS.
The school division is an economic engine for the county, to keep meeting the
needs of the kids we need to keep spending money on the schools.
Big Data Competition: provide data sets to create an analytical
model. There is an article in todays (11.18.2013) Washington post education
section.
An article from ‘the Atlantic’ ‘You’ll be shocked by how many of the world’s top students are American’
Thank you for your patience with APS go, thank you for
participating, we are looking for results of the survey to be presented in the
spring of 2014.
New Elementary School at Williamsburg campus community
meetings were November 13th and 14th. Web page will be
launched soon, principal selection will begin soon. New Principal will be
selected by April 2014, on board by July, one year prior to school opening.
There was a meeting last week at Williamsburg middle around
the construction for of the new school. Middle school activities will not be
effected or obstructed during construction.
QQ please create a PTA entity of some type to help educate
potential parents of new school students.
QQ construction timeline. How can you pick a GC and start
two weeks later?
Congrats to the student athletes at W&L, Yorktown, and
Wakefield. All of the schools are doing well and continuing to improve. Athletics
are sometimes glossed over and need to be recognized.
QQ athletics are a huge opportunity for some kids and they
are not paid enough attention to? How to consistently let kids know that sports
are potentially a way to get into schools, or a different place in life?
QQ not just athletics, band, and many other activities can
help extend opportunities.
Grading period is Q2. Grades for kids in 6-12 should all be
home.
Dr Richard Allington Tuesday November 19th from 7
to 8:30 pm at Wakefield parent meeting, to talk about reading
Arlington Teacher Job Fair December 9&12 www.apsva.us/jobs they are hunting for high
quality staff and are looking to attract high quality staff.
APS budget meeting December 11th at W&L for
2014-2015 budget. Anticipating a budget shortfall again and trying to find more
ways to close the gaps.
QQ what is the plan to fund technology for the new schools
and the schools that will have additions?
No school on nov 27 thru 29
Next month the CCPTA meeting will be on the 16th
at Kenmore Middle School.
