At the November 8 meeting, Kaye also outlined the situation that changed the district’s approach regarding national conference field trips.
“One of the things that happened with the defeated budget last year was that we made the decision to remove the $150 contribution for a student’s participation in national competition. We opened that conversation again to consider the impact of that decision on the young people involved and it requires us to have a thorough conversation. Our understanding is that many of these national, quote, conferences are money-makers for organizations that bring in a lot of profit by sponsoring this. Schools and families pay a premium to go.
“We are informing parents that if students are lucky enough to be invited to attend, that letter could be used as part of a resume and a description of their achievements but you don’t necessarily have to attend and pay the money to get that as you already were invited. We want to let parents know these are money-making operations too,” Kaye said.
Kaye also said the addition of French 3 honors was recommended.
“A growing number of students in French who have demonstrated a mastery of French 2 were surveyed about their interest and approximately 65 percent of them want to pursue a more challenging language opportunity. There would be no anticipated increase in the number of sections because this would require just the reorganization of the total number of sections.
Kaye said the same pool of French students would be split among two offerings: honors and college preparatory. No increase in cost would happen either.
The curriculum committee has also recommended the district’s renewal of its annual subscription to Custom Computer Systems for the Infinite Campus District Edition, WW-P’s student information system. The new software license would go from December 1, 2011 to November 2012. The dollar amount is based upon enrollment and can change year to year, but for the upcoming year it would cost $140,869 based on enrollment (no higher than the system’s per-pupil cost last year).
For curriculum committee updates Kaye said “special education and social studies program reviews are very close to completion of their homework.”
Within the next month or two the board expects to receive more input from internal and external review committees. Presentations to the curriculum committee and the community are being planned with a series of recommendations on how the board of education should move forward in both areas based on data that was collected.
