Principal's Message 4/28/08

QUALITY REVIEW ON THE 12TH OF MAY


Spring Break…I mean Spring Work


I hope everyone had a great break. I was informed on Monday, the 21st of April, that our Quality Review will be taking place on Mr. Tatum’s birthday. Although we have been doing a tremendous job to prepare for this day, I guess the pre-Test jitters have kicked in. We are all quite aware we were rated undeveloped last year. I find the Quality Review system to be entirely rewarding. It helps better our school by bringing our attention to areas in need of improvement. We were blessed with a reviewer last year who was very helpful in recommending first steps to reach a higher rating this year. I am confident we are proficient in all areas. With our latest initiatives manufactured by discussions with our cabinets, grade team leader meetings, grade teams, and more, we could very well be rated well developed. Hence my nervousness, I would love for your hard work and creativity to be recognized in a worthwhile way. I think taking our school from undeveloped to well developed is a great way to do that. This only drove me to drop all spring break plans and commence gathering all of your input from the Self-Evaluation forms we had you fill out in January and generating a final copy to be submitted to the city. I worked my tail off to give justice to the work you have been putting forth in your grade teams, in your departments, and in your classrooms.


Overview of the Quality Review Process


The quality review inspects the school for how it looks at data and how it uses the information to adapt the classroom to meet the needs of the individual students. It also investigates how the school supports its teachers to be successful with using data to set up goals for students and to measure how well they are progressing toward those goals. There are seven main parts of the evaluation. There is the overview of the school which includes distinctions, accomplishments, and the barriers we face during our school year. The bulk of the review falls into the next five parts ask the following questions: How well does the school gather data to understand student performance, How well does the school use the data to plan and set goals, How well does the school align instruction with the data gathered, How well does the school align professional development with the needs of the staff, and How well does the school evaluate its progress towards meeting its goals for the year and adapt goals and plans as necessary? The last part requests how the school addressed its areas identified as underdeveloped the year before. This portion is reflected in how we answered the six previous parts but is important when measuring the progress of the school.

I have decided to share the first section of the report with you this week and I will continue to share the other parts next week to remind you of the great work you are doing. It will also give you an opportunity to provide your feedback before I submit the report on Friday. So, if you get a chance, feel free to e-mail any thoughts or additions. Please enjoy.
First Part of the Self-Evaluation of the Quality Review. The responses are a collection of what was provided by all of you during the staff meeting.

What is distinctive about your school?
Our school resides in East Harlem where the number of adults graduating high school is only 50% of the community. We are housed in a building that was once known for its educational foundation of a breakthrough approach created by Debbie Myers many years ago. Since then, the educational structure of a secondary school has been separated into three schools making up for the age range of Pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade. Our school comprises of the middle school portion of those grades. It was formed by disconnecting the 7th and 8th grade of Central Park East Secondary School (now Central Park East High School) and combining with the former middle school of the building, Central Park East Prep (JHS 13). These entities were put together to form Central Park East Middle School (JHS 13, also known as the Jackie Robinson Middle School but not its technical name) in August of 2004. In 2006, we expanded our school to include a sixth grade. We are now a 6th through 8th grade middle school. We are a zoned school. Most of our students live in our neighborhood. A little over 50% of our students walk to school without the aid of public transportation.

During our 2006-2007 school year, we were placed on the SURR list for our low test results in both ELA and Mathematics. Since then, we have increased our ELA scores. 90 percent of our school scored a level two or higher. The remaining 10 percent was made up of special education, ELL students, and very few regular education students. According to our school report card, in mathematics, only 30 percent of our students reached or exceeded their achievement level from the year before. A distinctive feature about our school is about 25% of our student body in both ELA and Mathematics, scored 16 points or less from scoring a level 3 according to their raw score. We refer to these students as our 163 Club (16 points from a level 3). We used this data to provide separate instructional plans to support these students within the classroom so that they could score a level three. Some of these ideas included showing work at all times, coaching to a higher level book according to the Fountas and Pinnell, expanding on their writing, and many others gathered from research into the data accumulated from previous tests, diagnostics, and interim results. The students identified in the lowest achieving third of each class in the 7th and 8th grade, determined through the information in our data binders provided at the beginning of the school year, receive additional assistance in ELA and Math. Each teacher in the ELA and Math departments, provide academic intervention services (AIS) for their own students. This structure also provides them the opportunity to not only address the students in the lowest third but it also enables the teachers to support additional students who were determined to need extra help through classroom assessments such as a tests, quizzes, projects, or conferencing. This instructional time has groups ranging between four to eight students. In the sixth grade, a separate AIS teacher supports our lowest third by either pushing into the classroom or providing additional instructional time with Read 180 and Math Navigator. As for special education, we assessed our students for Wilson at the beginning of the school year. Any students who tested out were mainstreamed for the reading portion of their ELA class. Our self-contained classes provide Wilson for most of their reading periods and follow Teacher’s College Writing workshop for the other ELA period.

During the day, several activities can be witnessed which characterizes our school. We open our doors for students to enter beginning at 7am in the morning. We offer students the gymnasium for activities such as basketball, track, football, and more. We also open up our auditorium for students to read and catch up on homework. At 7:30, the cafeteria is launched for the students to have breakfast. The students’ bags are checked as they enter to ensure they have the proper supplies to participate in their school day. Our requirements are the following: writing utensil, independent reading book, writer’s notebook, and reader’s notebook. Every student must have a book bag to enter our building. If a child does not, contact is made with the parent at home to remedy the situation. At 8:00, the students gather in the auditorium by class. They say the Pledge of Allegiance as a school and recite our school motto, “Destination: Excellence.” During this time, the staff gathers across the hall in the gymnasium to share the morning announcements or any last second changes to the daily schedule. At 8:08, we gather as an entire school to hear any school announcements and news and to, once again, recite our school motto. Following the motto, the students are escorted to their first period class by their teacher. During 6th period, right after our 6th/7th grade lunch, we host an independent reading period. Every teacher and student picks up a book and reads for 37.5 minutes. We dedicate the entire period to reading. Throughout the day, our 8th grade special education students in self-contained settings switch classrooms for ELA, Social Studies, Science, and Mathematics. Depending on the day, while the students are at lunch, teachers meet according to their department or grade team to discuss students while gathering data and input from contributing teachers, to participate in professional development, or to develop whole grade initiatives such as award ceremonies or remedying latest concerns. At the end of the day, students are escorted by their last period teacher to the front entrance to ensure a safe departure. Throughout the day, you will see students in their dress code for the first time ever in JHS 13 history. Each grade is separated by different colors. Our sixth grade wears white shirts, seventh grade wears baby blue shirts, and eighth grade wears gray shirts. All three grades are expected to wear black pants along with the distinctive colors.

For the first time ever in our school, parents, teachers, and administrators developed a discipline code for the staff to enforce and the students to follow. The members of the disciplinary committee, established in April of 2007, listed the behaviors we wanted to see of our students which would promote student success. We aligned this vision to the Chancellor’s Regulations and developed a leveled and tiered system with interventions to support students in teaching proper behavior within our school and in life. The code was shared with the rest of the staff and with the student body several times during the school year to maintain a clear communication of the expectations within our community. The system is regularly reviewed by the discipline committee to strengthen areas and build it to meet the needs of our school. The student’s behavior is tracked through a binder system which maintains the period to period infractions and the overall school year records per child. This system allows for us to identify students who are in need of additional support which can consist of interventions such as mentoring, conferences, referrals, and counseling. These records are readily available to our grade teams and are shared with parents after each infraction.

Finally, one of the distinctive features of our school is that we are the first National Junior Honor Society of our zip code. Students are selected to apply according to their grade point average. They must fill out an application, write an essay, and gather teacher recommendations to be considered. These students participate in many initiatives which build and improve our community. Our students have participated in activities such as helping at a Soup Kitchen, supporting at the Breast Cancer Walk, walking in the AIDS Walk, and collecting stuffed bears for children in Africa.

What have been the greatest accomplishments over the last couple of years?


These are our accomplishments in no particular order:
Strongest relationship between the UFT and Administrative Team – In the past, the union in our school has had weak communication and fell to two different sides on many issues. Last year, the two entities united to develop a vision and mission of the school. They have established several lines of communication to make sure all concerns are addressed at all times and to make sure the contract is followed. The UFT consultation committee meets with the principal on a regular basis and the representative of the union meets with the principal on a weekly basis.


Staff Feedback – The administrative team has established several routine measures to provide and collect staff feedback. This will be the first year we have done at least three formal observations on every teacher which included a pre and post meeting. Each teacher has also been informally observed and provided with feedback. Walkthroughs are conducted on a regular basis to give day to day pointers on how to improve their classroom. We do midyear evaluations and end of the year evaluations for all teachers. These sessions are used to set up goals for the teacher to reach before the end of the year and to measure whether or not they met them. They are also used to identify areas where support is needed and to gather professional development needed to help improve instruction. A classroom rubric is used to measure their instruction, classroom setup, and classroom management. Grade team meetings, online surveys, and staff meetings are used on a regular basis to collect staff feedback on initiatives and administrative decisions.


School Improvement Team – A group of teachers, parents, and staff members were assembled to put together a vision and mission for the school to follow. They gathered feedback from the rest of the staff to make sure all people were represented. They constantly establish and revisit school initiatives to meet the needs of the students and staff. The members researched successful schools and gathered ideas to bring to our school. Some of the ideas are the grade teams, grade team leaders, and the expansion of the lab period for 8th grade students. Their latest task has been developing a professional development plan for the school to follow for the remainder of the year and next year. They will soon be revisiting the plans for next year as far as organization, scheduling, and raising student achievement.


Discipline Committee – A group of teachers, parents, and administrators built a discipline code for the school to follow. The committee continues to revisit the policy during their weekly meetings to strengthen interventions, expand on the communication, and align it to the needs of community. They created a mentoring program for students who were identified as having a high need through the binder recording system. The mentors were made up of staff members. The program has now grown to include employees of Mt. Sinai. The committee is now focusing on ways to decrease the number of students who are tardy, effective ways to support the dress code, and developing an anti-bullying campaign. These areas of focus were determined by the data recorded in discipline binders, attendance records, student surveys, and a student panel to collect feedback.


Curriculum in Science and Social Studies – Last year, the science and social studies teachers wrote a curriculum in each department to meet the needs of our students. Past tests, student data, state standards, and other resources were used to develop a curriculum to prepare our students for the 8th grade state assessments along with their year to year ELA and Math testing. They also built a stronger year to year connection in each department. The departments continue to investigate past tests to include test questions in their day-to-day instruction to expose students to the test and are coaching through common mistakes gathered during the grading of the tests.


Grade Team Structure – The school improvement team, after researching successful schools of change, created a grade team structure to establish smaller communities within our school. Each grade would have a grade team (except for the 8th grade – they have two grade team leaders) who would be in charge of recording the discipline code, maintaining communication with the administrative team and teachers, developing protocol, planning and facilitating meetings. The grade team meetings are used to provide professional development for all teachers on a weekly basis and provide time for the teachers to discuss the academic and behavioral support each student needs. The teachers have developed a student improvement plan (SIP) for each student. The plan consists of their state test scores, report card grades, interim results, reading levels, educational strengths and weaknesses, discipline code record, and ideas on how to work with the student in the classroom (the plans vary according to each grade). These plans are a tool to dive into each child to discuss what can be done within our community to help each student be successful. These sessions are also used to write referrals for additional staff to discuss a student (referrals are used by the Child Study Team to identify students to be discussed).


Whole School Initiatives Preparing our Students for the ELA and Math State Tests – The staff supported our students by participating in whole school initiatives to prepare our children for their state tests. After researching past tests and trends within the city, we identified a weak area as the read-aloud section of the exam. We demonstrated how to properly do a read-aloud during a staff meeting. We shared areas where students made common mistakes. We gave a set of tips to share with the students to organize the information and how to respond to questions. Each subject area did at least one read-aloud per week with an article related to their subject. For the mathematics test, we used the results of the interim assessment to identify topics which were already covered that a majority of the students were unable to perform well on. The math teachers of the grade levels provided materials and questions that teachers of the other subjects could infuse into their daily lessons during their “Do Now” problem or when students finished their independent/group work early. In addition, the last month to month and a half, administrators, teachers, and coaches pushed into classrooms to support students, model for the teachers, and differentiate instruction. The teachers continued to level their groups within the classroom. The work they prepared for the various levels was used by the administrator/coach/teacher to support a specific group with test preparation work matched to the students’ needs. It helped the teachers improve their classroom instruction as administrators and coaches were able to model how to work with students in groups and how to maintain student engagement.


Instructional Cabinet/Inquiry Team – There has been an instructional cabinet in existence for the last two years. Recently, we expanded the role of the instructional cabinet to take on the responsibilities of the Inquiry Team initiative brought forth by the city. Our cabinet used to meet for one period. We now meet for two periods. We share out according to our departments, we explore the latest instructional initiatives, and we investigate our focus group of children. We use data to identify areas in need of support. The population we selected was based on a comparison of reading levels, low ELA scores, and classroom participation. We wanted to include ELL students, special education students, and students receiving AIS. Lately, we have been using the student work of our focus group to dig deeper into the work taking place in the classroom. We have been looking at reading logs, reading responses, and reading assessments to identify patterns in our 6th and 7th grade classrooms. This investigation is also giving us an idea of our special education population and the support provided through our academic intervention services. We have already discovered several patterns such as our teachers need additional professional development on assessing reading levels. In addition, the need for high interest – low level books has become greater as we have students who continue to try to read books too high above their current reading level.


Child Study Team – We have expanded our pupil personnel team to include least restrictive environment placement and academic intervention service placement. We renamed the group the “Child Study Team.” In order to guarantee success, we expanded on the constituents involved. We added the following personnel to develop a cumulative investigation into our students who are referred through the grade teams: administrator of special education, administrator of AIS, ELL coordinator, speech teacher, parent coordinator, AIS teacher, classroom teacher, and a director of students. The group already included social workers, guidance counselors, and a SAPIS worker. By extending the responsibilities and expanding the personnel in the group, we are able to get a comprehensive view of a student. Plans are able to be developed where the parent and school are able to work together. We also get a complete history of a student both academically and behaviorally by looking at previous test scores, interim results, teacher feedback, discipline patterns, and more. It has strengthened the communication throughout our school and the interventions have proven to be more thorough and thought out.


Attendance Committee – We have reorganized our attendance committee to include the counseling team, parent coordinator, and the principal. Our focus at the beginning of the school year was our 407’s. Our attendance continued to fluctuate while we placed all of our efforts into these students. We sent several members of the committee to visit a school with high attendance. We gathered several best practices and brought them back to the rest of the team. We changed our focus from 407’s to our students who were falling between the 80 and 90 percent attendance population. We brought the parents in after several mailings and phone calls to establish a contract for the parent(s), student, and the school to follow. Since then, our attendance for the month has been over 90%. In the last two weeks, we have had over 90% attendance. We are now expanding our parent conferences to students who are between the 70 and 80 percent attendance population.


Connecting Classrooms – Our classrooms are connected more than ever. Thus far during the year, we have created a list of resources for teachers to see several aspects of the classroom modeled well. We set up classroom visits throughout the school. We also have included teacher feedback to include visitations to other staff members to see areas of weakness modeled in an efficient manner. We conducted grade team walkthroughs to visit various teachers in other grades. Our latest initiative is having teachers video tape their classroom and sharing it with their grade team to gather commendations and recommendations. As we continue to build community, the teacher’s comfort level of sharing their classroom is becoming more evident.

What are the most significant aids and/or barriers to the school’s continuous improvement?


These are in no particular order:
Parent Involvement – Our school continues to struggle with parent attendance for our events and responses to our mailings. We have expanded our recruitment practices to include workshops on job readiness and ESL classes, offering metrocards for transportation, raffles at events, offering babysitting services, day time PTA meetings, more celebratory events, Phonemaster, calling home for absences and latenesses, and more. We are in the process of setting up a network of parents to focus on parent involvement. We attempted to give a survey at one of our parent-teacher conferences to cater to the needs of our parents. We were only able to collect five responses due to technical complications. We had about 30 parents participate but we lost the remaining responses to a glitch in the system. We will be continue to use the city surveys to develop our initiatives to getting more of the community involved with our school.


Library – For the last two years, we have not had a library for our school. We are currently networking our city councilwoman for funding and several organizations to fund a media center for our building. Several of our partners are helping in gathering resources and grants to help our community. Without a location for students take out additional literature or build on their research it is difficult to hold literacy to a level of importance that is needed. We rely on neighborhood libraries for resources and classroom libraries which hardly have any references. We have placed this initiative as one of our highest priorities to improving our school.
Student Records – We continue to struggle with gathering records from elementary schools throughout the city. We have developed several systems to prevent the acceptance of students who would be out of compliance according to special education and ELL needs. Without immunization records, IEP’s, and any other student information, it is challenging to support the needs of our students. It still remains to be about a one to two month process. This gap of time leaves our children vulnerable to misplacement, medical problems, or unearned promotion to name a few of the issues.


Sharing IEP’s with staff – As of now, we have a locked file cabinet where all of our IEP’s of our school remain. Teachers are offered access throughout the school year. We are exploring ways to bring the IEP’s to them without leaving the school vulnerable to the records landing in students’ hands. We are in the process of putting all of our IEP’s on computers so we can convert them to Adobe to put on CD-Rom for each teacher.
Music Program – We hired a music teacher at the beginning of the school year to expand our arts program. Due to external issues outside of the school, the teacher resigned from the position. The recent budget cuts prevented us from filling in the position and purchasing equipment for the program to continue. We plan to set it up again next year with greater success.


Technology in the Classroom – We currently have a computer lab and one mobile lab. The infusion of technology in the classroom consists of eight Smartboards and Microsoft word experience in the ELA classrooms. Our school needs to expand on the technology brought into the day-to-day lesson planning. Our student engagement increases when technology is brought into the classroom. As of now, our core subject teachers all have a laptop to perform their daily responsibilities of tracking their students, writing lesson plans, and e-mailing their colleagues and administrators. In order to better prepare our students for the future, as a community, we need to bring more technology into our classrooms as far as research, internet use, hands-on instruction, providing visuals, and more.

ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM THE DISCIPLINE COMMITTEE

The discipline committee meets every Thursday from 3:15 to 4:15 to address issues surrounding the structure, implementation, and effectiveness of the school-wide discipline code. In our last meeting before Spring Break, we focused on the dress code and post-suspension conferences. Listed below are announcements for the staff.

- Dress Code: After Spring Break, we will begin a school-wide crackdown on students violating the dress code. Our focus will be on students wearing hoodies; shirts without collars; and jeans beneath their black pants. Any student seen out of dress code at any time during the school day will serve a detention. Please note that the dress code has been amended to allow students to wear skirts of the appropriate length and shorts that are of the same material as their black pants.

- Post-Suspension Conferences: The discipline committee is piloting procedures to smooth out the transition students face when returning from a superintendent suspension. If you teach a student who you know is returning in the near future, please contact your grade team leader for further information.

- Topics for next week: Next week, the committee will continue discussing the dress code and tardiness. Please attend of you have any suggestions or concerns on these matters!

CHILD STUDY TEAM

What does it mean to “study” a child?
Our Child Study Team is currently creating and refining what this process shall look like.
By this time next year, our hope is that the process shall work smoothly, with protocols in place for each step of the Child Study process and with roles and responsibilities clearly defined.
As we bring our multi-disciplinary skills and experience to the table, we shall develop a way-of-working that reflects fine tuned best practices.
During our last two meetings, we made a critical discovery about a student who was referred to the Child Study Team. The student’s behaviors which were causing concern are directly linked to a serious medical condition that was recently diagnosed. The child shall undergo major surgery to address this condition sometime during this month.

***The reminder here for all of us: What looks like a lack of motivation, laziness, disinterest or defiance can (quite possibly) mask a serious condition or illness in need of immediate medical attention.

As we become more skilled at taking an in-depth multi-disciplinary approach to our work as a team and as an educational community, we shall also become more skilled at creating and implementing interventions that successfully address the needs of our children and families.
What does it mean to “study” a child?…


COMMUNITY CORNER


We will be receiving an additional set of surveys to give to parents. We had requested the surveys be directly sent to our school but something was not processed correctly so they were delivered directly to the homes of all of our parents. We will have a handful of surveys for parents to fill out when they visit the school and for the families who contacted us because they did not receive one. Please ask the students to check in with their parents to see if they received a survey and whether or not they sent it in.

On another note, several staff members and a group of our students attended an NFL Draft event. Students were able to participate in events such as flag football with some of the upcoming stars of the NFL such as Matt Ryan out of Boston College who is now on the Atlanta Falcons and Chris Long out of the University of Virginia who is now on the St. Louis Rams. Judging from the pictures, it looks like everyone had a great time.

ATTENDANCE


This Attendance Interval report lists the number and percent of students whose Year-to-Date (YTD) attendance falls within each attendance interval. That is, the report calculates the number and percent of students whose YTD attendance rate is 100% (Perfect attendance), the number and percent of students whose YTD attendance is 90% through 99%, and so on. The report includes students on register as of the effective date; the YTD attendance is calculated as of the effective date.
100% (Perfect) 18 5.3

90% TO 99% 189 55.9

80% TO 89% 72 21.3

70% TO 79% 37 10.9

60% TO 69% 11 3.2

50% TO 59% 8 2.3

40% TO 49% 0 0.0

30% TO 39% 1 0.2

20% TO 29% 1 0.2

10% TO 19% 0 0.0

1% TO 9% 1 0.2

0% (No Show) 0 0.0

Total Students 338

It appears like the half day and the day before break had an impact on the great progress we are making. We might have to campaign more in the classrooms the day before a half day or the Thursday before an extended weekend or entry into break.


May your preparations meet your vision, your colleagues provide information, and no risk blind you from your mission. Have a great week….

Birthdays:
Emmanuel Okon April 1st
Jackie Brown April 27th
Rachel Levene May 1st
Danita Scott May 2nd
Leslie Tatum May 12th
Rosa Calvet May 15th
John Ciano May 19th

Quote of the Week
“The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before.”
--Vita Sackville-West (poet and novelist)