Milford - One home football game this year!

We had our first meeting of the High School Project Management Advisory Committee today. The meeting was a good get-to-know-you type of meeting, and it gave everyone a solid understanding of the scope of the project.

One very interesting bit of news that came out during the meeting is that as of now, the plan is to have one home football game held in Milford. All the other "Home" games will be held at a neutral site such as Souhegan.

It now looks like the August 31st game against Souhegan will be held in Milford! This is usually our biggest rivalry, and will be great to have it on our own home turf. We need all the psychological advantages that we can get since they are usually such a tough opponent.

The plan until just recently was that there would be no home games this year. This was needed to allow the track and field renovation plan to move forward at a pace that would enable the project to be complete in time for the fall of 2008 season. There were a bunch of assumptions that led to the project plan being structured this way.

There have been some changes in some of the assumptions, and one is that the Architect (David Laurin) is submitting the site plan review for a "fast-track" approval that, if granted, will allow us to change the sequence of site construction activities and get more things done this year.

I had not heard of the fast-track approval process before now, but supposedly, this process has been used successfully by a few school districts in the past. This process has the potential for turning a permitting process from a couple of months cycle time to less than two weeks.

This is great news if this does occur as is currently planned. It will be nice for the seniors to get to play at least one home game on the home turf, and not miss out on the home field experience in total.

Milford School Board Meeting 7/16/07

Superintendent’s Report

There are about 339 students taking part in some sort of activity in the District this summer. Some of the activities are reading programs at Jacques, special education/Title 1 programs at Heron Pond and the Middle School, and remedial programs at the High School.

There are many training programs in place for the Teaching staff for the summer. Most of these are in-district programs, but there are a few out-of-district programs. There were 22 programs listed, with titles such as DIBELS Essentials Workshop, Earobics Workshop, ePortfolio work, Writing across the curriculum, and Introduction to Harcourt Reading.

Renaming the Bales Elementary School

The Bales Elementary School is really no longer an elementary school, and we are looking at changing the name to better reflect the current and future uses of the building.

Sarah Clark, who will be a senior next year at Milford High, gave a very nice report on the history of the naming of the Bales Elementary School. She did an excellent job of researching the history of the school from the late 1800’s until the present.

We are going to find out a bit more information before we decide what we will do, if anything. The school was named in 1969 in honor of Harold Bales who was the Superintendent of Schools from 1919 to 1939. We want to find out if the naming was done by a vote at town meeting, or if the School Board did it. If it was named at Town Meeting, then we might need another vote by the Town to change it again.

Review of District Goals

Superintendent Suprenant reviewed the progress for the past year for the District goals that we had set a year ago. We had gone over all the items at various times during the year, but I was very pleased to see the summary for the year that showed that all goals were achieved.
The items that we reviewed were:

* District report card,
* Automated messaging for parents and teachers,
* Implementation of policies in support of the new state minimum standards,
* Development of renovation proposals for the High School and Bales
* Union contract negotiations
* Literacy Professional development
* Individualized learning / Follow the Child
* DIBELS Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
* World language curriculum development
* Wellness committee
* Improved communications with local private kindergartens
* Adult education planning
* Evening alternative student education planning

World Language Curriculum

The new world language curriculum was presented. This aligned the French, Spanish, and Latin curriculums through all the grades. There were a few significant changes, mainly at the high school level where there will now be five courses offered in French and Spanish instead of four. The top two courses in each will be studies in History and Literature related to the particular language. We will also institute a 1B course to provide a transition option from an introductory course to the second level course.

Daily Physical Activity Policy

We implemented a new daily physical education policy that is consistent with the new minimum standards from the state. We are now in compliance with this requirement.
The policy is somewhat of a motherhood and apple-pie policy statement that basically states that we should encourage daily physical activity for everyone.

Track Update

The next track and field project fundraiser is a scramble golf tournament to be held Thursday August 2nd at Amherst Country Club. I plan on entering the event, so the winning team is all locked up. There will be plenty of competition for second place, so come on and sign up.
We moved $35K from the athletics trust fund to the track fund, as planned in the overall project financing.

Heron Pond Addition Fund

I made a motion that we take $200K out of the Heron Pond Addition Construction Fund and return it to the general fund for distribution back to the taxpayers on this year’s taxes. There is about $318K left in the fund at this time, and removing $200K will leave about $118K for the projects that remain to be completed. One of the remaining projects will be done soon, and this one will add a second culvert under the access road to drain the swamp area quicker during times of high water flow.

There are two more projects that are potentials that still need to be costed. One is to add lighting of some type to Heron Pond Road in the area from Whitten Road to the corner turn. Right now there is no lighting of any type in that area, and it is a traffic hazard when there is a night event such as parent-teacher conference night. It can be pitch black in that area and it is difficult to even see the sidewalk.

The second potential project is to do some sort of a retrofit to some or all of the windows in the original section of the building to make them easier to open. The windows are extremely difficult to open, and they have been a problem since they were first installed. When they were first installed, they were designed following accepted design practices, and they were built to specification, but they are still difficult to operate by some women teachers.

I am pleased to report that the motion to return the $200K passed unanimously.

Update on Adequate Education Bill

I reviewed my thoughts on the adequate education bill that was recently signed by Governor Lynch.

Peter Bragdon basically agreed with my opinion on the bill, specifically that the bill requires us to provide kindergarten starting in the ’08-’09 school year, that only half-day kindergarten is required, and that we will not know the details on the funding until after the voting next year.

He did mention that there is a nuance to the interpretation that the bill requires half-day kindergarten. The language in the state specs states that school districts should strive to offer half-day kindergarten. The word strive is not a mandatory word, so there is a possibility that someone could interpret that it is not required.

Peter stated that he thought that there would be some sort of correction language that will be implemented this year that will correct this interpretation. I think that that even if the language is not corrected, that there is other language in the bill that supersedes the strive wording and that kindergarten is required.

Next Meeting

We decided to cancel the first August meeting since it appears that there is not really a need to have a second meeting at this time.

HB 927-FN and Milford Kindergarten

I reviewed the HB 927-FN adequate education law that was signed by the governor on June 29th. These are my interpretations as to how this new law will relate to Milford. The full text of the law can be found at HB 927-FN

1. All 5 year olds will be entitled to attend public Kindergarten starting with the 2008-2009 school year. Attending Kindergarten is optional, but Milford is required to offer public Kindergarten starting in ‘08-‘09.

2. My interpretation after reading all the detail is that the minimum acceptable program that meets the definition of an adequate education is half-day Kindergarten. This law does not mandate full-day Kindergarten.

I come to this conclusion because HB 927 references ““school approval standards”…as adopted by the state board of education through administrative rules.” The current rules contain this standard for public school approval: Ed 306.25 Kindergarten. Every district shall strive to offer at least a ½ day kindergarten program to every eligible student. A kindergarten program shall comply with all pertinent provisions of Ed 306.

There is also this section that defines minimum school day duration: Ed 306.18 School Year. c) Each school with a school year option based on days shall be subject to the following requirements: (3) For each elementary school: a. The regular school day shall be 6 hours in duration with at least 5.25 hours devoted to instructional time;… d. Kindergarten sessions shall be at least 2.5 hours in duration;

3. There is a good chance that the state will provide start-up funding of some significant amount to the school districts that do not currently offer Kindergarten, but we will not know what the funding will be until after the March voting is completed. My guess is that the adequate education state funding formula will be completed just before the June 30, 2008 deadline mandated by the courts.

Since we don’t know what we will get under the new law, it would be prudent for any warrant article that is put on the ballot to assume that we will receive aid according to regular state aid formulas, such as the current 30% building aid formula. The articles should be written in a manner that allows for increased aid to be accepted and applied to the project.

4. This is not in the law, but is a practical outcome. It is likely that we will be able to set up a half-day Kindergarten program by renovating the Bales annex. Although it will be tight, it is likely that this could be done between the time a construction program is approved in March ‘08 and the start of school in September ‘08.

A full day program is much more complicated, and much more expensive. It would require the construction of a new building, which could not be completed by September of ’08. If we were to offer a full-day program, we would have to set up some sort of interim facility or program for the ’08-’09 school year. This might take the form of roughly ten portable classrooms somewhere.

Another possibility would be to fund students to attend local private Kindergartens. I suspect that this is not a viable option since the private Kindergartens would have to meet the No Child Left Behind requirements and most (if not all) of them do not. Private Kindergartens generally do not have “highly qualified” teachers on staff as mandated by NCLB.

5. Netting everything out, it is my opinion that we should offer a half-day Kindergarten program. This will meet the letter (and the spirit) of the law, and will be much more affordable than a Full-day program.

Renovating the Bales Annex is a relatively low cost solution that would be money well spent. Even if the District enrollment increases to the point where Kindergarten and First grade no longer fit into the Jacques/Bales Annex complex, we could build a new facility at that time for Kindergarten, freeing up room for First Grade.

The only exception to this thought process is that the State may provide special Kindergarten Adequate Education construction money only on an interim basis, and then rescind it later. This may be a one-time only opportunity to get a new school built at a lowered cost to the School District. The problem with this is that we won’t know until after the voting is over as to what the State has decided to do. Since we need to have a Kindergarten program in place for the ’08-’09 school year, we can’t wait to find out all the funding details.

Selectmen Crush School Board!

Selectman Noreen O'Connell, School Board Member Paul Dargie, and Selectman Tim Finan held a sack-race death-match for world domination during the Fourth of July festivities at Keyes Field.

Tim was the ringer in the race as he showed off his superior sack race hopping skills. He pulled ahead steadily during the race and completely crushed the outclassed Dargie.

Noreen came in first place out of all female Selectmen entered in the race.

School Board Meeting Monday 6/18/07

Superintendent's Report

• The graduation on 6/9/07 went well despite the bad weather. The event was moved indoors to the gym, and went well even though we were in cramped quarters. There was a video feed into the cafeteria for the overflow crowd. The administration did their usual fine job with the event, and it went off without any major problems. All the student speakers gave excellent speeches, and Dr. Craven gave a nice speech of his own.
  
  
• The annual scholarships awards night was held, and $126,810 was distributed during the evening. [I'm proud to say that my daughter Jenna won several of the awards. I had never been to one of these events before this year, and I was very impressed with the generosity of the Milford community. I'd like to give a heartfelt thank-you to all that donated in any way to the scholarship programs.]
  
  
• The High School Destination Imagination team placed 4th out of 13 in their category at the Global finals in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Middle School team placed 35th out of 65 in their category. Attending the Global Finals was a rewarding but tiring experience for all that attended.
  
  
• There was an evening for parents of incoming first grade students that were identified by DIBELS testing as perhaps in need of special services. Parents for 58 students attended the event, and they received home packs for use over the summer.
  
  
• The Superintendent issued a press release on several topics including a summer reading program being put on in conjunction with the Wadleigh Library, an announcement that we will be restarting an adult education program this fall with classes in Conversational Spanish, We the People…the Citizen and the Constitution, Digital Scrap Booking with Photoshop, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel, and an announcement that we will be offering night school for high school students that have failed or are struggling with Math and English.
  
  
• All schools are now approved by the state without any qualifications. The Jacques Memorial had a qualified approval last year since we did not have an approved homework policy in place. We instituted this policy during the past year, so the qualification was lifted.

ATC Annual Report

The ATC group presented their annual report. Presenting at the meeting were Rosie Deloge, Director of Technical Studies; John Leslie, Committee Chair; and Steve Martin, Computer Technology Chair.

They distributed a nice booklet that described the programs. While nothing is perfect, it seemed as if the program is doing well and is headed in a good direction. They reviewed the various pages in the booklet highlighting areas of interest, including listings of student achievement, awards, State Expo results, Business partnerships, Technical Honor Society inductees, and a review of each program. We had some discussion concerning the possibility of building houses on the two potential lots that may be split off from the Heron Pond School site.

John Leslie is stepping down as Committee Chair after six years in the position. He has done a great job in moving the ATC program forward. Steve Martin will be the Committee Chair this coming year.

Professional Development Master Plan

Chantal Alcox and Laurie Johnson presented the new Professional Development Master Plan that will be submitted to the state by the end of the month. This is the five-year update to the plan, and it contained some significant changes. Most of the changes that were incorporated were dictated by the recent changes in the State requirements. The Professional Development Committee has worked hard over the past year in developing the new plan.

The old method worked well, but the expectation is that the new methods will work even better. The old method was based on obtaining designated clock hours (CEU's, credit equivalency units) for professional development work during the year. This has the benefit of being easy to administer, but does not focus on outcomes and instead just focuses on the process.

There are several methods that can now be used, including the old clock hours (CEU's) approach. The primary method that will be used involves the development of three year goals for professional development, and the creation of portfolios that provide evidence of development. Since District professionals often have multiple certifications, they may decide to use a different approach for their various certifications depending on the suitability for each one.

High School Renovations Committee

We decided to appoint all ten applicants to the Committee rather than try to cull it down to a smaller list. The thought process was that each person provides a point of view and a strength that will add to the group, so having more people will add to the group. Some will be more interested in the track, and others will be more interested in the facility renovations. We also expect that not everyone will attend every meeting, so the meetings should not be too unwieldy despite the large committee size.

We modified the charge to the committee to match the larger size group. We changed the spending approval limits for the committee, set up the emergency approval procedures, and set up the quorum and voting parameters. I was appointed as the School Board representative to the committee.

Policy Proposals

Most were moved on to the next reading. The only one that wasn't was the Computer Software and Hardware policy. The proposed new first paragraph is very restrictive in that it basically bans the use of non-school district equipment from being used in the schools, except for personal printers. I expressed my thoughts that this was too restrictive and asked the administration to review the requirements again to see if it could be toned down. John Leslie had expressed similar thoughts at the beginning of the meeting.

We had a long discussion on this topic at the Technology Committee meeting the next day. The net result is that Matt Ballou will go back and develop a revised version that is somewhat less restrictive. One area in particular that will probably be loosened up is the restriction on PDA's. This will probably be rescinded since many administrators and faculty use PDA's to coordinate their home and work schedules.

Bales Study Committee

This committee will be set up in the fall.

I asked that the district change the sign on the front of the Bales School during the summer, so we will have a fresh start in the fall. Right now the sign says "Bales Elementary School" since that is what the building was used for when the sign was created years ago. The school is only used for the Sage program today, and this is for Middle and High School students. I hadn't thought about it before, but it just struck me a few weeks ago that it must be demoralizing for a Middle or High School student to enter a building identified as an elementary school each day.

The sign is in bad shape and needs to be redone in any event, so it makes sense to do it now before school starts. I think that it should be changed to "Bales Building" since that would allow it to be used as a multi-purpose building, but "Bales School" would be acceptable also since that is what it is right now.

Questions? Suggestions?

Is there anything that you want to know, but you don't know where to go to ask the question? Do you have an idea as to how the Milford School District can improve? If so, then please contact me and I'll try to help out.

You can contact me by email at pauldargie@aol.com, or you can post a question or comment on this blog. Blog postings can be anonymous.

In general I will try to get an answer for you, but there are some things that I won't be able to get into. The School Board is part of the dispute process for the School District, so I can't get involved in any complaints that may eventually require a review by the board. An example of this would be a complaint about a specific teacher. These types of issues need to be addressed through the chain of command to insure fairness to all parties.

School Board Meeting Monday 6/4/07

Construction Manager Selection

We started the meeting at 5:30 instead of the usual 7:00 start time in order to interview candidates for the construction manager position for the High School renovation project.

We interviewed representatives from three candidate companies:

Eckman Construction
Hutter Construction Corporation
Turnstone Corporation

All three companies made solid presentations, and I thought that any of them would be able to do a good job for us on this project. We ended up choosing Turnstone Corporation for the job. The principle of the company are Stacy Clark, President; Billy Clark, Vice President; Deborah Clark, Office Manager; Phil Cote, Estimator/Project Manager; and Rick Smock, Project Superintendent.

Superintendent's Report

• There will be an Orientation night on 6/5/07 for parents of Fifth graders moving up to the sixth grade next year.
• The High School scholarship night is 6/5/07, with a reception at 6:30 in WOWS for board members.
• Some parents of very young students were invited to a reception at Jacques on 6/7/07 to learn about summer school activities, and kindergarten and first grade issues.
  
• Graduation is 10:00 on Saturday 6/9/07 at the High School Football field.
• The eighth grade graduation is Wed 6/20/07.
• The Superintendent passed out the list of graduating seniors that are continuing their education next year. 75% of the graduating class is moving on, with 52% planning on attending a 4 year program and 23% choosing a 2 year or certificate program.
• A photo of Jacques School Principal John Foss dressed up as the world famous "Book Fairy" was passed around. John had promised the students that if they read 2007 books or chapters during the year, he would be a Book Fairy for a day. He lived up to his word, but he might not ever live this one down...
• Bert Becker volunteered to be on the RSCC committee.

Milford Athletics Fundraising Committee

Lori Pitsas gave an update of the Family Fun Day fundrainsing event that was held at the Hampshiredome. The event was well attended, and seemed to be a great success. Although final numbers were not available, the event raised something in the neighborhood of $5K for the High School Track project. More fundraisers are planned, with the next one being the golf tournament in August. More information can be found at www.milfordtrackandfield.org.

Bales Committee Charge

The charge to the proposed Bales Study Committee was reviewed and approved for a first reading. The charge to the committee is: "To describe options available to the School Board for the future use of the Bales building, inclusive of the gymnasium and the annex. Such options will detail the educational and economical advantages and disadvantages associated with each option."

The list includes seven items that are specifically mentioned to be included in the review. We discussed item 6 at some length. This item is: "Consideration of the use of the annex to house state-mandated kindergarten." No decision was made as to whether this line item would remain as part of the charge to the committee.

Kindergarten Committee Charge

After a lot of discussion, we decided to not have a Kindergarten Implementation Study Committee. The rationale for the decision is that the main purpose of the committee was to identify the costs associated with implementing a Kindergarten program if mandated by State law, and the administration has the background and capability of obtaining this information without the overhead of a committee.

School Board Chair (and State Senator) Peter Bragdon mentioned that the State Senate had recently modified the adequacy definition that had been established by the House of Representatives. The House version included "half-day Kindergarten" as part of an adequate education. The Senate removed the half-day phrase and just included the word Kindergarten without any modifiers.

With the prospect of perhaps needing to offer full-day Kindergarten instead of the half-day program that we had been envisioning, Bob Willette moved that we add research into full-day Kindergarten to the overall project.

The Administration agreed to provide this information in time for inclusion on a warrant article if deemed necessary.

After some reflection and some research after the meeting, it is my opinion that the current wording of the adequate education definition does not require that we offer full-day Kindergarten. A half-day program should suffice. I expect that there will be some sort of a legal opinion generated when the bill is passed that will clarify this point. This is a critical point, because for Milford, a full-day program will cost a lot more than a half-day program. I expect that we will be able to fit a half-day program into the Jacques/Bales Annex buildings. A full-day program will not fit there and will require the use of a different facility. This changes the start-up costs from perhaps $1.5M for a Bales Annex renovation, to something like $7-8M for construction of a new 10-12 room school.

Policy Proposals

All the personnel policy updates were moved to a first reading.