Bishop Program Committee Report

The Superintendent’s committee on Nathan Bishop met this evening. The program subcommittee present its recommendations regarding the academic program for Bishop. (Full disclosure: I’m one of the report’s authors).
The short version:
1) A neighborhood middle school (grades 6-8) that provides adequate and appropriate educational opportunities for all students in each of the following groups:
[...]

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Survey: Comments on ESPEC’s future

In the recent email survey, we also asked you what you would like to focus on in future meetings and forums. Here are your comments (be sure to click below for more comments):
a) Future forums on the state of the elementary schools as well as on the public school system as [...]

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Education Funding and Property Taxes

There’s an enormous amount of information available about public education in Rhode Island at http://www.infoworks.ride.uri.edu. Those interested in issues of education funding will find this particular link interesting. It leads to a PDF file that compares property tax rates and effort for various cities and towns. For instance, Barrington has assessed property [...]

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Nathan Bishop Committee Recommendation

In the survey sent to the mailing list, there was a summary of the recommendation from the Bishop Committee that the Superintendent endorsed. I’ve just realized that the full version was never posted. Here it is (in outline form)
- Nathan Bishop be a high quality middle school with 100-150 students/grade
- One grade to [...]

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Comments from the Survey

Michelle McKenzie was kind enought to transcribe all the comments from our recent survey. Below, you’ll see what ESPEC members thought about the K-8 and Middle School options:
Forty-seven parents responded to the ESPEC survey. The following represents all the comments on the surveys (there were a number of surveys with no comments). The text [...]

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Superintendent Accepts Subcommittee Recommendation

Several of us went to the School Board meeting tonight. During the public comment period Harlan Rich informed the School Board of the sentiments of ESPEC members by presenting results from our recent survey.
Here are those results in a nutshell:
Our brief survey elicited 47 responses in a short time. That’s less than [...]

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Smart Counseling/ Smart Math

Julia Steiny has a very interesting column on North Kingston High School in today’s ProJo. It discusses the use of “Comprehensive Guidance Counseling”, a proactive approach including advisories. Steiny concludes: “A commitment to comprehensive guidance is one of the few strategies I’ve run across that has the power to change the structure or, [...]

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More on middle school v. K-8

Follow this link for a followup on K-8 vs. middle school. Contains links to information and presentations, and written responses by Ken Fish and Superintendent Evans to questions that didn’t get answered at our forum. Also, a bibliography on K-8 v.s middle schools.

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Email Survey & School Board Meeting

Earlier today, I emailed a survey on K-8 v. middle to everyone on the ESPEC mailing list. I wanted to offer a word of clarification.
We had meant to do this survey in a more sophisticated way right after the Sept. 6th public forum, but our lack of budget slowed us down. We apologize [...]

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After-School Activities for Middle-Schoolers

Linda Borg has an article in the ProJo about PASA- the Providence After-School Alliance:
The Providence After School Alliance will launch more than 30 afterschool activities for middle school students, starting today.
Sponsored by the Education Partnership, the Alliance has organized a network of schools, recreation centers, libraries and other nonprofit groups to provide safe, fun programs [...]

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