School Improvement Team
Members:
Sam LeDeaux, Principal
Colin Reynolds, Student Support Specialist
Ann Labak, Data & Technology Coach
Katrina Beck, Music
Karolyn Serio, Kindergarten
Deborah Sarno, 2nd
Kate Whitley, 3rd
Amanda Jones, Parent
Kathleen O'Connor, Parent
Our Team has been hard at work all year. Among the many tasks at hand have been transitioning from last year's School Improvement Team's membership to this year's, and a new state mandated format to follow. Our Team has responded well, and is excited to make use of this communication to share with you!
Our Team is made up of staff members and parents, and represents our Mann School community. Our objective is to lead our school to continuous improvement, maximizing the learning experience we provide for our kids. This year, a state mandated process has directed our work through a goal identification process, which resulted in the following 5 goals:
1. Use SIT to facilitate communication among all stakeholders
2. Improve staff development
3. Support instructional teams
4. Improve the quality of parent-school communication
5. Improve the effective use of data about students' educational and behavioral progress
Our Team meets monthly to discuss ways to work toward meeting our goals. Our Team provides updates to our staff, and encourages staff participation. As one of our goals, we continue to brainstorm ways to involve you, our parents, which has led to this webpage, the mannschoolimprovementteam@gmail.com email account, the input form below, and our 5/20 & 5/21 forum. We are excited about the progress we've made and continue to make, and enthusiastically look forward to the improvement opportunities that lie ahead for Mann School!
* Please take a few moments to click on this form and offer your
suggestions to improve the learning experience we provide our kids!
May 31, 2013
From what has been shared with us, the overall feeling from our forums has been very positive. Thank you to all who participated! We anticipate holding two forums next year. One will take place during an evening in the fall, tentatively set for the week of November 18; the other tentatively during a morning in mid-April. We will determine the topics as the forums approach.
Our team has volunteered to meet over the summer to continue analyzing the feedback that resulted from our forums. A few major takeaways are:
- Grade level communication consistency
- Teachers sharing the communication expectation at curriculum night
- Parent interest in in-services (for parents) on topics such as interpreting MAP reports and creating a twitter account
We are also contemplating ways to improve our current digital school calendar to be more convenient and family friendly. If you have positive and productive suggestions you’d like to share about this, the bullet points above, or anything else related to strengthening our school for our kids, please email mannschoolimprovementteam@gmail.com or access our suggestions form.
May 19, 2013
Based on the feedback we’ve received, we will conduct the forum as follows:
- Tables in the staff lounge will be set up with laptops, one per table
- Laptops will be open to a google doc
- All tables will discuss each of our 5 goals, one at a time for 10 min each. The same goal will be discussed by all tables at the same time. Guests are encouraged to switch tables for each goal, to mix up discussion groups and points of view.
- Prior to each goal being discussed, a staff member will briefly introduce the goal, what it means, and some current strides being taken to meet the goal
- Staff will be present, but all discussion points, suggestions, and questions should be documented on the google doc
The objective of the forum is to provide another communication avenue between school and home. The forum will not focus on providing on-the-spot answers; it will focus on brainstorming, discussion, and documenting questions and suggestions for improvement. Our School Improvement Team will then use the resulting google doc to drive future improvement planning for Mann School.
This is a first for all of us. When we take risks and try new things in the best interest of our kids, only positive things will result. Some of these positives may be immediately evident, while others will be evident in how they drive revisions and future planning and action.
We appreciate your partnership, support, and patience.
May 17, 2013
We are very excited about our SIT Forum on 5/20 @ 8:15-9:15am and 5/21 @ 6:30-7:30 in the staff lounge! We want to share some background on how we have gotten here.
As a result of a laborious process imposed by new state mandates, our School Improvement Team was tasked with identifying 5 school improvement goals using a state provided resource, “Rising Star”. One of the goals identified in this process using this resource is school-home communication. Our SIT parent voice shared there are families that feel limited opportunities to share, be heard, get in touch with staff, find out what’s happening here at school, and/or be a part of the great things happening here. Our SIT took this to heart, and brainstormed ways to address this. From that brainstorming came 3 ideas: a mannschoolimprovementteam@gmail.com email account, the form above, and the forum on 5/20 & 5/21.
We are very excited about our Forum, and want to be sure expectations are clear. Some of our families communicate with staff via email, phone calls, appointments, conferences, blogs, webpages, the form link above, Twitter, volunteering, and informal chat on the blacktop. This SIT Forum simply provides one more avenue and format to involve our families that have not found comfort in other communications.
Because this forum idea is new, and hosted by our School Improvement Team, the decision was made to use our newly identified state mandated goals as a starting point and to provide direction. We want to be sure our families know that this forum is not the only way to be heard, and that these 5 state mandated goals are not the only things you can communicate with Mann School about. If you want to be heard via other communication, please contact us in a way you are comfortable. If you would like to share about items outside of the 5 goals that will be the focus of the SIT Forum, please contact the appropriate person or team. If you are not sure who to contact regarding your topic of discussion, please contact our main office @ 708.524.3085 or email mannschoolimprovementteam@gmail.com, and our friendly office staff or parent SIT representatives will direct you.
We appreciate and want your partnership in teaching our kids!
May 13, 2013
This is a reminder to join us for our School Improvement forum which will be hosted Monday, May 20 from 8:15-9:15, and Tuesday, May 21, from 6:30-7:30. Your constructive suggestions via the form above are very valuable, and we appreciate those that have taken the time to provide them for us. These will provide the guidance of discussion for our forum. Please understand that our forum will be focused on whole school improvement centered around the 5 goals which resulted from the state-mandated identification process which our team diligently worked through.
Please remember that the form and forum are not places to vent or target individuals; if you would like an issue addressed involving an individual or small group of individuals, please contact the individual(s) directly. Otherwise, please contact Mr. LeDeaux immediately and directly and a conference with parent, principal, and staff member(s) will be set up asap, as that is more of a personnel issue to be addressed by administration than it is a global issue to be addressed by our School Improvement Team.
On Wednesday, May 15, we will begin designing the direction of our forum based on the global input we have at that time centered around our 5 identified goals. Please provide input by then if possible.
Thank you
May 2, 2013
We are excited about continuing efforts for two-way communication between our staff and parents! We have scheduled a parent-teacher forum for the end of this month. Although the forum will be the same, to accommodate schedules we will host it twice; Monday, May 20, 8:15am-9:15am, & Tuesday, May 21, 6:30pm-7:30pm. There is no need to attend both, but you certainly are welcome to.
The purpose of the forum is to provide another way for our parents to share input and partner with our staff to continue to strengthen the learning experiences we provide our kids here at Mann School. We expect this to be positive, constructive, and productive. The forum will not be a place to vent or target individuals. To make effective use of our time, we would like to:
- organize talking points ahead of time by sorting input into topics for discussion
- work together during the forum to brainstorm ways to address the discussion topics
Please take a few moments to offer your suggestions to improve the learning experience we provide our kids on the link above, or by directly emailing our SIT parent reps at mannschoolimprovementteam@gmail.com. This is a first for all of us, so we will make adjustments on the fly, but our objective is to collaboratively further extend and enrich the learning experiences for our kids here at Mann School.
We look forward to our continued partnership!
April 18, 2013
Please help us improve the learning experience we provide our kids by clicking here or the link above. This is an opportunity to partner with us and become an integral part of the solution to concerns you may have. Using this to offer realistic and possible suggestions will provide our staff valuable information and assistance to enhance our kids' learning experience here at Mann School. In the spirit of collaboration and productivity, please refrain from using this tool for venting or negativity.
If you would like to directly contact our parent representatives, even if simply for advice on how to best constructively utilize the suggestion link above, please email Ms. O'Connor and Ms. Jones at mannschoolimprovementteam@
Please contact any of our members in any way. Whether it's the suggestion form linked above, our parent rep email, direct emails to any staff member, phone calls, scheduled appointments, or face to face visits on the playground, we welcome your input.
Thank you for your partnership, and we appreciate your support!
March 26, 2013
Your School Improvement Team (SIT) has analyzed the results from the parent survey sent out early last winter. Thanks to all who completed the survey, and especially those who wrote in their comments.
First, parent comments from that survey were the impetus for grade levels to discontinue the Math Facts program run by parent volunteers for students in grades 1-3. As a result, grades 1-3 have restructured curriculum support of math facts within the school day during the homeroom teacher’s instruction, and our Math Committee has created our Mann Math Power program. This program takes place before and after school and is taught by 8 certified Mann teachers for students in grades 1-5. Grade level teams work to develop alternative strategies to support our current math curriculum. For more information, please contact your child’s homeroom teacher or our Math Committee chairperson, Ms. Serio (kserio@op97.org).
Second, the Mann faculty has implemented a new program of "Pop-Ins," in which teachers "pop in" to observe one another's classrooms in order to gain new ideas, inspiration, and to share positive professional feedback with one another. It is hoped that this plan will be the beginning of a more extensive program of staff development in which teachers provide each other with on-going peer support and honest and constructive feedback.
Finally, the SIT is working on an effective way to cultivate two-way communication between school and home, which the team can use as an important source for on-going goal-development and program initiatives. We desire constructive comments and suggestions to productively continue our professional growth as educators of our children. Our SIT is considering several ideas, one of which is an SIT email account. As brainstorming continues and things begin taking shape, we will share with you.
Additionally, the SIT has fulfilled the state-mandated process of goal identification, which the state will soon make available on-line to the public. We have five goals, which are a result from an identification process provided by the state. The goals are summarized as: 1) using the SIT to facilitate communication among all stakeholders, 2) improving staff development, 3) supporting instructional teams, 4) improving the quality of parent-school communication, and 5) improving the effective use of data about students' educational and behavioral progress.
Our SIT looks forward to continuing our work to further improve our school for our kids. Please feel free to contact any of our members, including our parent representatives, Amanda Jones and Kathleen O'Connor, with any comments you would like to pass on to the committee.
