Pam's Pages
Week of May 2-6
Employee Make Up Day for Recent Bad Weather
Students are not required to make up the lost school day of April 19. However, the TEA waiver does not apply to employees; the waiver only applies to the state required number of days in the student calendar.
If employees do not make up the day, they cannot be paid for the day.
Next week, Principals will receive more detailed information for accounting for missed staff work hours on Tuesday, April 19 (all employees).
Here are the main points:
Employees will have choices on how to make up the day prior to their last day of work:
Apply time already worked
- Exempt employees (teachers, counselors, administrators, etc.) have likely already worked many extra hours that could be applied or will do so by the end of their duty year
- Non-exempt employees may have compensatory time or may be able to earn comp time prior to the end of their duty year
Apply a personal, vacation, or non-duty day
Work the extra day
Choose to be docked for the day. If this occurs, the employee will be docked on a future paycheck.
Some nonexempt employees may have lost some work time last Wednesday or Thursday, coming to work late or being unable to come to work, due to high traffic and flooded roads and subdivisions. Payroll will send information to administrative assistants regarding this.
More details are supposed to come to principals this week - including communication to employees. Thank you for your patience as we work to find solutions.
District TRIPOD Data
Tripod results were released via email to principals and teachers on April 18, 2016. If you have not received your individual results, please check the email account you provided to Tripod Education Partners. You may also contact Tripod Support at help@tripoded.com if additional assistance is needed.
In the past, the results from Tripod were delivered using favorability percentages. Tripod now uses scale scores referred to as Tripod scores. Tripod scores have a range of 202 – 398 with the average score set at 300 and the majority of scores falling between 270 and 330. For the sake of comparison, campus and district level data were converted to the new scale score. District and campus comparisons will be sent in a separate email.
DIRECTOR'S UPDATE
Bilingual/ESL
Welcome to ESL/Bilingual! For the last month, we have been focused on the following:
- Building BIL/ESL/LOTE curriculum teams to support work prioritizing standards and developing viable curricula.
- Collaborating with American Institutes for Research (AIR) on initial needs sensing phase of Professional Development Framework for English Learner Support.
The ESL/Bilingual team is looking forward to:
- Prioritizing English and Spanish standards and aligning curricula.
- Working on end of year BIL/ESL compliance activities and updates to district LPAC
- Selecting a provider for bi-literacy training and support for dual language teachers.
- Planning for BIL/ESL EL Institutes and summer professional learning opportunities
Content Areas
The core content departments joined forces to help campuses manage their data and strategically plan for instruction, assessment, and intervention, as follows:
- We created the STAAR Accountability Progress Report for each campus that did not meet or barely met the requirements of Index 1 (60% passing on all tests given), to estimate their progress on Indices 2 through 4.
- We systematized district assessment data reports for the classroom teachers and students across all content areas.
- We provided training through iCoaches and on individual campuses by request.
Special Education
Welcome to Special Education! For the past month, we have been focusing on the following:
· Providing support to self-contained classrooms
· Providing secondary Principals with information regarding the Reading Programs available for use in the Resource classrooms
· Gathering data related to areas of improvement of the Performance Based Monitoring Analysis System (PBMAS)
· Sending out campus staffing allocations
· Supporting HR by interviewing potential candidates for Special Education positions for the 2016-2017 school year
In the future Special Education will focus on:
· Meeting with secondary Principals about the Reading Programs available for use in the Resource classrooms
· Visiting campuses and classrooms
· Compiling Suspension data for all campuses
REMINDER: Lead Mentor(s) Application due May 3rd
Last year, principals, iCoaches, or APs ran the campus mentoring program as SITE COORDINATORS. This year Site Coordinators will be called “LEAD MENTORS” and the district is offering this as a leadership opportunity to teachers.
If you are interested in the opportunity, please see Shirley for the application. Applications are due by 5:00 p.m. on May 3rd. Late applications will not be considered.
Selections will be made by the district deadline of May 5th.
FACULTY MEETING
Agenda
* Staff Updates
** T-TESS (information being sent to you via email)
Wednesday, May 4, 2016, 03:30 PM
MWE - library
SUMMER LEARNING
SUMMER TRAINING FOCUS - This summer we will be focusing on three targeted areas; curriculum, access to curriculum in ItsLearning, and ELL training.
Core curriculum –working on a stronger, more viable and guaranteed curriculum and inputting the curriculum into ItsLearning.
Educational Technology - ItsLearning Workshop Wednesdays to support the use of the new learning management system.
The Bilingual/ESL – contracted with the American Institute of Research (AIR) to provide training for campus based ELL teams at targeted schools to help teachers learn how to help ELLs achieve high standards across content areas. We will also offer several online compliance trainings.
TEACHER SUMMER U - July 25-28 and Aug. 1-4.
The majority of the classes will be at MHS and at the Science Center with a few classes scattered at other campuses as needed.
We will have a large number of Bilingual/ESL language acquisition classes offered throughout Teacher Summer U with Dr. Mercuri and the Freemans instructing many of these sessions.
The Summer Professional Learning Catalog is now available! More information will be loaded into the Summer Professional Learning Catalog throughout May and June.
NEW TEACHER ORIENTATION - August 8th -10th at WAIS. New teachers will attend campus level NTO in the afternoons on August 8th and 9th. A finalized schedule will be communicated soon
AUGUST PROFESSIONAL LEARNING - we will have convocation, curriculum access & planning and the new Teacher Appraisal rollout. More details to come on these plans.
May 11th is School Nurse's Day | Celebrate MWE Nurses Rossi & Gruenberger
Meadow Wood Elementary
Email: pamela.redd@springbranchisd.com
Website: mwe.springbranchisd.com
Location: 14230 Memorial Drive, Houston, TX, United States
Phone: 713-251-6200
Facebook: facebook.com/meadowwoodelementarysbisd
Twitter: @pam_redd