The Becker School board met Monday evening with a light agenda and an absent chairman.

 

Aaron Jurek was unable to make Monday’s meeting so member Jason Kindred filled the void. Bryan Olson also was absent in body, yet he attended remotely from Tennessee.

 

Superintendent’s Report

Dr. Stephen Malone said the 2018-19 calendar committee will meet March 21. The committee includes parents, teachers, a local 284 representative, a transportation representative, the director of curriculum and instruction, principals, students and a school board representative. 

 

The calendar, developed by the committee, is recommended to the superintendent and his recommendation will be submitted to the school board at the April 3 meeting.

 

Malone said the school is updating their online food services menus using Nutrislice. The new format will provide more detail to parents and students about the school’s menus. 

 

Nutritional information will also be made available for each item. Malone said the background work to launch this platform is underway and he is planning to have this available beginning in May. 

 

Malone said the interface will be available as an app or a website. Parents and students will also be able to “rate” food items, which will provide the school with valuable feedback.

 

MCA testing began in early March. Testing for various grade levels and subject areas are scheduled to conclude in early May. NWEA testing for grades K-2 is the first week of May.

 

Malone said at the high school level, the English teachers met with a reading coach  Feb. 2, 7, 13, 23 and 28. The professional development focused on how to teach informational text and how to use standards to identify and select curriculum. 

 

The teachers worked with the reading coach to generate standards based assessments. Teachers identified reading samples, aligned with standards and discussed how to help students analyze the passages. The rigor and pacing for ninth grade English was adjusted by the teachers.

 

 In the intermediate school, The DIBELS data, combined with the winter NWEA data, show the need for more intervention to ensure students achieve one year’s worth of growth in math and reading. WIN was changed to Power Hour  Feb. 23. 

 

During this time. BIS students were divided based on their math and reading proficiency. Class sizes were smaller during Power Hour by utilizing the reading interventionists. During this time teachers are providing differentiated instruction for remediation and enrichment based on the proficiency data for each student.

 

The principal conducted data meetings with each teacher to analyze the winter data. Each teacher is to develop a plan to address deficit areas in math and reading with their students. 

Board & Administrator

 

The Board & Administrator newsletter pointed out that boards should emphasize “team” in its work. It also mentioned separating “parent hat” from “board member hat”.

 

The newsletter suggested board members encourage board service in their communities and set parameters before talking compensation with superintendents.

 

Another area of notice was boards creating trust in their communities, specifying teamwork as a major component.

 

In its Ideation Overview, 2016 statistics were discussed for the employee, parent, student and community sites of the portal.

 

There were 97 unique visitors, a population of 304, a 31.9% engagement and 12 ideas produced on the employee site.

 

For the parent site, there were 264 unique visitors tabulated out of a population of 2,638 with 62 ideas produced and 10% engagement.

 

At the student site, 61 unique visitors were charted out of a population of 874 with seven percent engagement and nine ideas generated.

 

For the community site, there were 15 unique visitors and one idea spawned.

 

The next Becker School Board meeting is April 3 at 6:30 p.m in the Teaching and Learning Center of Becker High School.