Barr Foundation Convening
This week, the district team will meet with the Barr Foundation team over the course of a three day period to continue planning our work with them and other schools in the cohort. If you have thoughts or questions that you want your school Barr team to be thinking about, please pass your comments along by Tuesday, as the convening is Wednesday through Friday.
Littleville-Linda
Chester-Jenna
GRS-Lexie
Barr Learning Excursion to Portland, Maine
Last week, invitations went out to those who expressed interest in attending a learning excursion to Portland, Maine to see Casco Bay High School and Ocean Avenue Elementary School March 9-11. If you would like to attend but didn't express interest before, please reach out to Cheryl Wright, Amy Mason, or Kristen ASAP to be put on the wait list.
This trip is in addition to the Kentucky trip planned for February break. We hope to accommodate as many as possible!
JANUARY Instructional Vision Challenge! (Yes, there are still fabulous prizes!)
We will continue into January with inviting staff to share how YOU are implementing a part of our instructional vision.
This month's focus are the third two bullets in the instructional vision are:
- Gateway students will work together to support each other as members of the learning community.
- Gateway staff will push every student to grow as a learner and as a community member.
Staff are invited to fill out a brief (2-3 sentences!) summary of how you are implementing this part of our vision. It can be specific or general, and it should clearly describe how your actions are moving this part of our instructional vision forward.
Here is the link to share!
https://padlet.com/ksmidy1/january-instructional-vision-challenge-qhfhko8arphwpo3j
To add to the board, click the plus sign in the bottom right corner and write in your submission. Finally, hit Publish and voila! You're done!
Staff who share how they are implementing or supporting implementation of December's focus area of the instructional vision by January 31 will be entered to win a $50 gift card to one of the following locations: Carms, Common Table, Moltenbreys, Amazon, Big Y, Dunkin or at a place of your choice that I can get a gift card with relative ease 😂
District Data for your review
I am going to try to share some data with you each week that may be of interest to you.
You may know that there is a statute in Massachusetts (G. L. c. 71, § 94) that allows school committees to restrict the number of students from that district to attend virtual school. There are two virtual schools in Massachusetts that are considered public schools, and therefore when students enroll there, they are considered choice students and the sending district loses money. Therefore, the law permits schools committee to decide if they are going to put a cap on enrollment to virtual schools. The Gateway School Committee did vote several years ago to cap enrollment at 1%, so no more than 8 students can enroll in virtual schools. Every school choice student that leaves the district is a loss for Gateway of $5,000 plus special education costs.
