Hi All,
I hope that you all had a good weekend and that you got what you needed from the weekend. This past week was a wild one. I learned early last week that a dear family friend died very unexpectedly, we will celebrate her life next weekend. I was quickly reminded that we need to remember to tell people we care for that we love them and that life is just too short. Smile, eat the cake, hug your people!
Please know that I recognize that you all have lives outside of this incredibly demanding career and I am here to support you in what you need wherever I can.
Lastly, it always feels good to have conferences behind you! I know the level of energy and brainspace that each conference takes up so, hats off to you all. The paras and I had a good day on Friday that focused on our Humanity and Justice work as well as De-escalation techniques.
Staff Shoutouts:
- The Lisa’s for helping out with snacks for the kiddos
- Marcus, Chuck and Ali for tweaking cleaning schedules to work around the influx of parents in the building
- Amber B for her extra support of students in that 4th grade classroom.
Often in the business of our schedules closing portions of a lesson and the closure of the day can get rushed. Here's a great article on the importance of closure and some tips for how to be successful: Smooth End of Day
Reflection and finding a moment of calm is so important to our health as educators. Here is a great set of meditations: Moment of Calm.
Budget Announcement: The WCUUSD administrative team is working hard on a Draft of Budget #1 to present to the board. We worked hard to make judicious cuts to the budget with the pillars of EQS (education quality standards), equitable distribution of resources and student needs as the foci of the work. Budgeting is always a challenge and this year is no different. Given the guideposts of our budgeting process and looking carefully at where I think we will be in a year the two recommendations I am making at this time will be: a reduction of a 1.0 FTE classroom teaching position and the reduction of a 1.0 school counselor.
Given the Project SERV funded BCBA and the projected enrollment numbers these cuts seem to make the most sense for our building's budget and is supportive of the cuts that we were directed to make by the board. I have spoken with the district staff and have been assured that we will have a classroom para in a K class that is over 18 and we will reevaluate staffing/class configurations if the total class size exceeds 22.
These reductions at this point are proposals and as we move through the budgeting process I will continue to communicate and we will make more solid plans as the budget moves along through the next phases.
What's Happening at Berlin?
Where is Celia?
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