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.