Every Memorial Day I think of this quote by John Adams, in one of the many letters he sent to his wife Abigail while he was away from the family helping get a new country established (and she was running a farm and raising 5 children...gee I wonder who was working harder?!)

“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”

This Sunday at 2pm is Newton's Memorial Day parade. The route goes from Our Lady's church on Washington Street in Newton Corner, down to Walnut Street in Newtonville, and ends at Chapel Street in Nonantum.

This year there is a FREE BARBECUE at the end of the parade route, at Pellegrini Park.

Attending the parade is a simple way to recognize the holiday which honors those who gave their lives so that we might have the freedoms and quality of life that we Americans are privileged to enjoy.

Hope to see you there!

Last night's meeting was quite interesting.

Social & Emotional Learning
First there was a power point presentation on "social and emotional learning", mostly in elementary school. Many parents know about the "open circle" and anti-bullying efforts.

Instructional Rounds
According to David Fleishman, "Instructional Rounds” began 5 years ago and was designed by Harvard Ed School professor Richard Elmore, modeled after medical rounds in which groups of teachers and administrators from across the city do focused and intense visits at each school to observe, learn, and share ideas. It is not intended to be punitive in any way; David Fleishman said "It’s describe and define, not evaluate." He said, "It’s amazing what you can see in one hour." (Here is the power point presentation that was shown)

- Reinforces goals of school improvement plan.
- Principals come back and share with their own school what they have observed.

The Mason-Rice principal said these rounds "made us feel like we’re part of something bigger," made staff feel important to have people from across the city coming into their classrooms. Teaching can be an isolating profession - another teacher said going on the rounds and having others observe her made her feel more professional, especially at a time when the teaching profession is under a lot of criticism.

It seems like these instructional rounds are a terrific advance and kudos to the superintendent for initiating it.

I'm a bit late posting my update to the April 9 SC meeting, but April "vacation" with the kids home didn't leave much time for blogging.

There were 2 big items from this meeting:

Summer starts a week early
June 15 is the last day of school, thanks to the dearth of snow days this year. (And June 15 is a half day). I'm guessing a lot of  parents will be looking for somewhere to park their kids that week!

Elementary School Buildings
Deputy Superintendent Sandy Guryan presented this power point which is definitely worth your while to look at and which clearly took a lot of creativity and hard thinking about addressing our myriad of issues.

She offers two “scenarios” in which the condition and space constraints of our elementary schools would finally be solved. She emphasizes that these are not plans set in stone, but rather concrete ideas that can be adjusted. It is quite an improvement over the previous Long Range Facilities Plan which would have taken three decades to carry out.

She starts out talking about the “challenges” – aging buildings, growing population, residential development, funding constraints, etc. – and then the “Desired Outcomes”:

- Up-to to-date teaching and learning facilities
- Capacity for 6,000+ elementary students
- Maximize state funding
- Explore/create model schools*
- Phased and continuous use of swing space
- Maintain neighborhood schools
- Balance North/South feeder pattern
- Eliminate/reduce modular classrooms
- Consolidate preschool location

Basically her idea is to create additional capacity and improve facilities via a mixture of large scale renovations that would increase capacity at each school (up to cap of 450 students) and be completed in 2 or 4 year cycles, simultaneously with smaller renovation projects that would increase capacity and add improvements where necessary such as cafeterias, dedicated art and music rooms, smaller and private instructional spaces, etc.

There is also an assumption that the Mass School Building Authority would kick in 33% of the cost.

Scenario 1: Completion by FY27, estimated cost after reimbursement $245M
Scenario 2: Completion in FY33, estimated cost after reimbursement $276M (but more reimbursement by MSBA)

It is not that we are now choosing between a 16 and a 22 year timeline, rather these are two scenarios (out of many that may gel) used to illustrate different ways we might respond to facilities condition, educational requirements, and enrollment over time. 

Questions asked by School Committee members:
- Geoff Epstein: which scenario would match your population projections best? Sandy Guryan said she wasn’t sure but would get back to him.

- Margie Ross Decter:  Is the plan to have one large preschool all under one roof, or for some elementary schools to house preschools.  Sandy Guryan: “I’m  not sure. I’m assuming in the short term which could be 3-4 yrs that there will be a different location for the preschool.”

- Matt Hills: To what extent does our buffer zone policy impact these scenarios? Right now the buffer zone policy only takes kindergarten populations into account, should it be reviewed to take these issues into account.

- Diana Fisher Gomburg:  I know you said you assumed class size stays the same… how would scenarios look if you lowered class sizes. Sandy Guryan: “We added two classrooms per school that we labeled under “enrollment” but could be used for class size.”

- Geoff Epstein: What about opening a 16th elementary school… we should consider cost per student of these additional small projects and compare to doing a 16th school. Sandy Guryan:  “You could look at the chart and see Carr could be used as 16th school.  But please note that opening a 16th elementary school does not fix the condition of any of the buildings, it just addresses the capacity side of things.”

- Steve Siegel:  I’m concerned with the certainty of enrollments. Private school enrollments look like a particular vulnerability. A 1% reduction in kids in private schools = 120 more kids in our system. Could be something we survey them about.  Sandy Guryan:  Some of them attend parochial schools or there is a family history of attending private school that appears to stay steady.

- Geoff Epstein:  Are we looking at the opportunity to bring more kids into the system [who are on IEPs but being educated outside Newton]?  Superintendent David Fleishman:  We don’t lose kids to out of district in elementary school, the issue in elementary school is having appropriate spaces to teach them in, which we don’t always have.

A report on WBUR this morning notes that statewide, low income students are nearly twice as likely to be placed in special education programs as other students.

The report authors speculate that many of these children may actually need extra educational help - with reading, with math - but instead are being designated as having a disability that in fact they don't have.

I found it very interesting since this matches one of the conclusions of the consultants' evaluation of Newton's SPED program (pp. 44-49) - that we seem to be placing children on an IEP who do not really have a disability as a way to get them extra education support.

Boston Celtics player Ray Allen's love of reading was profiled in this recent Boston Globe article:

"He cannot remember what was in the contest jar - balls or jellybeans or other objects - but Celtics guard Ray Allen clearly recalls the prize he received as a first-grader at his Oklahoma elementary school.  “I won three books,’’ Allen said with a smile. “I remember I felt so proud that I won those three books, those books were mine.’’ Allen traces his love of reading to that moment, and it continues today, as he uses the pleasures of a good book to ease the boredom of long road trips or soothe a particularly bad loss. To the world, Allen’s identity is as an NBA superstar with a smooth 3-point shot. But in the locker room, on the road, or waiting for a game to start, he is the guy with his nose in a book."