One of the things we do here is get the pulse of what is happening in school districts that are in close proximity to Pleasantdale as well as those that feed into Lyons Township, also called feeder schools.
We particularly enjoy following what is happening in School District 102 in La Grange. Our very own superintendent Mark Fredsidorf and middle school principal, Meg Pokorny both hailed from district 102 and the president of our school board, Leandra Sedlack currently teaches there.
They are doing some amazing things in La Grange these days, hopefully some of which will rub off at Pleasantdale!
Last year, they rolled out a full day Kindergarten program for free and have had a tremendous positive response to it. In fact, they had so many students sign up for the full day program, that they had to freeze enrollment! Hmmm, full day Kindergarten? For free? There's an idea.
http://www2.dist102.k12.il.us/school-information/barnsdale/full-day-kindergarten/frozen-summer-kindergarten-enrollment-for-2009
They have a brand spanking new interactive website powered by PowerSchool. Check it out, it's awesome! A regularly updated website? What a great idea! http://www.dist102.k12.il.us
They have a Financial Advisory Council made up of staff and parents. There is no limit on the number of parents in the Financial Advisory Council. This council helps the Board of Ed make important decisions that impact the children of the district as well as the community. They welcome participation from parents! Can you imagine that?? What an idea!
http://www.dist102.k12.il.us/about/fac-volunteer
They broadcast all their school board meetings on the internet! Can't make it to a board meeting? No problem! In addition to that, they upload their board packet to their website for anyone and everyone to read. Imagine that! No secrets there. Talk about open and transparent government! What a novel idea! Check it out! http://www.dist102.k12.il.us/board-meetings/board-meeting-01282010-0
Their new superintendent has even created his own blog on the district website. You can ask questions, and he will answer them!! A school district that values communication and wants parents involved? What a novel idea!! While Pleasantdale just likes to talk about improving communication, the folks over in La Grange are actually doing some thing about it. Check it out!
http://www.dist102.k12.il.us/blogs/shilliwa/encouragement-register-and-participate-blog
Along with his blog, the superintendent created a Wiki on the district website where students in the district can comment or ask questions of the superintendent. A novel idea? You bet! We need this guy over here!
People may think we have an amazing school district because we win the shiny red apple award every year. But really, you have to dig deeper. Ask questions. Investigate. Look at what other schools are doing. How do we stack up? There is a lot more to a good school district than high test scores. Are we really all that amazing?
It may seem to some that we knock Pleasantdale. But hey, we are just stating the obvious and sometimes the truth hurts.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I just saw in the paper that District 102 is thinking of increasing class sizes to cut costs(teachers). I guess all these great things they are doing have a cost.
Thank you for your comments.
First of all, does Pleasantdale even have class size targets?
Our current class sizes are no smaller than most of their *projected class sizes. Pleasantdale currently has 23-24 children in each Kindergarten class. Our fourth grade classes have 24-25 kids in each class. Are these small class sizes?
D102 would like to increase their class sizes by one student in each target. While it is not ideal, they are doing this to save money.
This is what the D102 superintendent wrote on his blog.
"We all would like to see class sizes as small as possible, but our financial realities are we must make some substantial cuts in our budget or we risk losing many programs and services. We are attempting to make reasonable cuts now in hopes of showing the community at large, especially those without children in the schools, that we are being responsible with taxpayer dollars. We first cut over $600,000 from the district budget this year, and these cuts will carry into next year. Secondly, we looked at ways to find savings that we believe would do the least harm to our programs and student services. By raising our class size by one, we may be able to save between $250,000 - $400,000. We cannot be certain now exactly what we can save because we will not be certain of classroom numbers for months.
We believe, however, with the extra services we now provide in the elementary schools with block scheduling and flexible grouping, literacy support, enrichment support, and now tier 3 services being taught by special education teachers, we will still be able to maintain reasonably smaller class sizes for reading and math, even with this small change. These changes will also give us some much needed classroom space to provide classrooms for our students with special needs. Finally, this spring I will be sharing over $500,000 in administrative cuts and another $200,000 in cost saving measures to bring us to over 1.5 million dollars in possible savings for next year.
As with every district across the state, we are projecting a possible two - four million dollar deficit in the next couple of years. We need to do all we can now to reduce expenditures before we can even consider going to the public to ask for additional dollars. No one wants higher class sizes, but we are hopeful these cuts now will gain us the support of the larger community. Without making some cuts now, we risk losing all of our programs and many more teachers. This is why we are making these cuts now in hopes of avoiding much larger cuts in the future."
We applaud this superintendent for looking out for the community as a whole. Pleasantdale's superintendent thinks nothing of losing approximately $250,000 each year on a program that benefits approximately 100 people in our district.
They are looking to save money while we keep throwing money away. Do you think this is financially prudent?
*To view the D102
projected class sizes, go the the pdf found here:
http://www.dist102.k12.il.us/board-meetings/board-meeting-01282010-0
Post a Comment