September 24, 2008 at 7:00 PM - Board of Education Meeting

Rationale:  Last year, the Board decided to make BOE committee reports more prominent and decided to move them to the first item on the agenda of the second meeting of the month.  Committee chairs are responsible for making reports.

Rationale:  As was reported at the last meeting, the originally scheduled October 8 meeting conflicts with Rosh Hashanah.  After checking with the Town about plans for Town Council meetings, October 15 is the best night for our meeting.  The Council has scheduled a special meeting on October 7 to discuss alternative energy sources at the new high school.

Rationale:  The Community Engagement Committee met with representatives from First Experience Communications to review the results of last spring's survey.  (You may recall the survey was included in the final district newsletter to all residents.)  Buzz, on behalf of the committee, will share those results and discuss plans for this coming year.

Rationale:  An identified need in the district is to increase the rigor and relevance of the curriculum and instruction at all levels.  As a result, the administrative team and a group of teachers have been developing a rubric for the past year while deepening our understanding of rigor and relevance.  Additionally, we identified a web-based tool, called iObservation, that would help make classroom walk throughs simpler and the data more available to staff.  They have taken our rubric and incorporated it into their software, making the rubric easier to use and accessible to all staff.  Brad will share these tools with you, and share our plans for this year with rigor/relevance and iObservation.

Rationale:  As you know, I have been a member of the CT Superintendent's Network for the past year, a collaboration between a group of about two dozen superintendents, Harvard University School of Education, and the CT Center for School Change (see attached article for a broader overview of how the Network works).  On October 15, a group of superintendents will be visiting Killingly for the purpose of observing classrooms and an administrative team meeting.  Classroom observations will be completed at KMS, and the visiting team will be looking for evidence of the rigor/relevance rubric being implemented. 

I will provide some additional information about the purpose of the Network, my experience to date, and the visitation in October at the meeting.