Sixteen Acres Meeting Minutes for April 16, 2002

Dr. Burke, Superintendent of Springfield Schools was our guest. Dr. Burke spoke about the shortfall of money for next year. The House and Senate have been talking about cutting Chapter 70 Funding.

Dr. Burke plans are as follows:

Create a sense of unity across the city in all the schools

Deal with budget cuts and gubernatorial candidates

New Policy Issues like: All students are entitled to an excellent education; they need maximum opportunities available to be successful.

Need to find ways of forcing people that are teaching to examine their commitment to high quality and equity for all students.

A monitoring system to look at all the pieces that Dr. Burke and his staff are trying to put into place.

There is a Task Force that is on going for the purpose of Pupil Progression Policy Document. It is still in the Draft Form and will be reviewed by many people. Then is will be sent to Beth Conway who is Chair of the Sub-committee on Curriculum.

There have been some principals meeting for a while now to find a new way of evaluating principals. A new document is being designed to have an objective set of criteria and performance standards for principals at every grade level.

There are 7 goals that Dr. Burke and his staff is trying to work on.

1). Must be student achievements

2). Professional Development of all staff

3). Locally developed goals that are important to that school area.

4). City-wide District Task Force on reading , need a system-wide reading plan

for all K-5 schools, and middle schools, and high schools.

5). Involve local libraries, local book stores, local colleges, parent and School

Volunteers

6). City-wide District Task Force for the development of Math and Science.

7). Bench marks for all student performance at all levels.

Revision of the Bi-Lingual education, 46 % of students is Bi-Lingual, and the program really needs to be looked at closely.

A grant from Reader’s Digest was recently given to Springfield to help change the quality of leadership from Central Office to Principals to the classroom.

Professional Development--- there have been 4 days set aside for teacher development for the fall for K-5 schools. 2 days for K-5 new reading program and policies. 2 days for Math and Science orientation.

The formula for funding cuts is very difficult to understand. It could be either 6% or 10%, depending on which formula they use. Title One money from the state will help keep teacher jobs.

The Echoes Environmental Programs at Forest Park will not be cut. It is very important to keep our students learning about the environment.

Parent/Teacher conferences need to addressed by every school. Parents need to be held more accountable, as do the teachers that need to keep trying to reach the parents.

Busing and desegration issues are being discussed. It is very hard for some parents to go to their child’s school because of a car issue or it is just to far to walk for the student or parent. Students spend way too much time on the bus to get to school.

The Anti-Bullying Project will stay in all the middle schools. It seems to be working very well.

Charter Schools---New Leadership Charter School will be coming back to Springfield on Ashland Ave, where SABIS Charter School is leaving. New Leadership Charter School is not a for profit charter school, they are a Horace Mann Charter School. Dr. Burke said that the city is losing money to SABIS Charter School, because SABIS gets $7,800 for each student that goes to SABIS.

Can’t cut principals from schools, by state law you have to have a principal at a school. Of the 51 assistant principal Dr. Burke has proposed to cut 17, which is 1/3. At Central Office where the budget is $2.6 million, there will be a cut of $360,000.00 or 14% and that will be mostly being mostly administrators.

Why is there going to be such a big cut of up to 10% of budget? Post 911 there are many companies along Rte 128 that have had to lay off workers, and many other problems that companies have to deal with. Then the state gets less state income tax and sales tax. That is where they get the shortfall of 2 billion dollars.

SABIS Showcase—Showing off SABIS Charter School will take place on May 9, 01, Thursday, at 160 Joan Street, Spfld. Light refreshments will be served. It is open to the public.

AARP—will hold a meeting on May 2, 02 at 1:00 pm, at Greenleaf Community Center. It is located behind Sixteen Acres Library. It is open to the public, refreshments will served.

A plaque was given to SACA by the Mayor’s office for good deeds done.

It was voted to suspend the SACA meetings for July & August.

Ruth Moorhouse, Secretary