Saved the Best for Last...The Last 15 minutes that is!

I enjoyed being in my daughter's alma mater Cedarbrook and seeing familiar faces as well as Mr. Asante and Mrs. Salinas holding it down! What was NOT so encouraging was the "light" attendance (~50 people) with about half representing District staff. Mr. Spivey of the Courier News was also present and I am looking forward to reading his version of the evening's event.

There was nothing new in terms of information presented if you attended the last district address held a few months ago.  That was a  bit frustrating but it was billed as an 08-09 update on the strategic plan and that's exactly what it was; as the saying goes -- there's nothing new under the sun. 

There were very few questions asked, in fact just two and one received a genuine thank you from the Superintendent and the other --well -- touched upon the front page article that appeared in the Courier from the PEA President. The reply should not surprise any of us as Dr. Gallon was well prepared to hit on all "8" points or areas of complaint in his usual syncopated fact-laced, but biased retort to the allegations, often calling them false and/or lacking substance perhaps bordering on moral turpitude.  I was glad it was brief as I was NOT in the mood to be flimflammed -- I mean finessed.

The highlight for me, because I'm a "gett'er done" kind of gal, was the last 15 minutes of the meeting were we broke off into groups to provide suggestions to two areas as provided by the district (I'm paraphrasing here):

• What can the district do to support student's academic achievement / improvement?
• How can the district increase community partnership / involvement?

The majority of my "team" were parents and we came up with about 6-8 suggestions for improving student performance and engaging parents -- again paraphrasing -- this list look something like this:

• Create tool(s) that assist parents with helping their children with homework
• Install and Utilize State-of-The Art Technology i.e. Net Meeting/ Live Meeting were parents can network with one another to ask for or offer homework help
• Develop a peer-to-peer mentoring program; high-achieving HS students conduct tutoring sessions for elementary/middle school level students
• Reinstitute a competitive classroom environment where individual student achievement creates healthy competion among one another
• Create an online resource where homework assignments can be found

These were a few I could remember.  Good Stuff -- RIGHT!

There were two other teams as well but I have no idea what ideas they came up with, but given that there was a very highlevel of engagement by those in attendance-- I suspect that the yield was fruitful.  My hope is that this information will be used!  Better yet, my suggestion is that they (the district) take these lists, and using the sign-in sheet they collected, hold another EVENING working session, inviting ALL those who participated in this exercise, to help flesh out an actionable plan based on the input from the various teams.

Now that would be progress! As well as creating more opportunities for Community Engagement/Involvement...
As always I look forward to the district's forward motion.

*Tootles*