City schools to receive surplus money

The 2-hour school board meeting Monday, Nov. 30 drew in a crowd of people including school principals and administrators.

Lisa McMurray, finance director for MCS said that with a surplus in the fiscal year’s budget, each school would receive the leftover money to purchase money on school-related material and supplies.

The elementary schools will receive $12,000 each, the two middle schools, $15,000, while Bob Jones will receive $30,000.

“We began with a proration and ended with a proration,” said Superintendent Dr. Dee Fowler. “Everyone did their part with cutting back.”

Fowler said the board is “very pleased” to bring the money back into the schools.

Katrina Allen, the school’s new technology coordinator, presented a technology update to the board.

Brian Mull and Jim Wenzloff from November Learning visited the city’s schools last March to examine what is going on in the technology efforts and compared them to the ideas and advancements in other school systems. Allen said they helped define action plans and steps to move the district forward in terms of technology.

“They identified practices and initiates and observed and documented how technology is being integrated in learning,” Allen said. “They discerned areas of improvement and made recommendations and provided short and long-term action plans.”

The 35-page study showed that areas of success were in students’ collaborations with teachers; their use of technology to differentiate instruction; arrange students in small groups at different ability levels; and teachers’ use of models solve problems.

The areas needing improvement: developing assessment rubrics and improvement on working globally with experts and peers, teachers collaborating beyond the classroom. She also said teachers felt they did not have high enough access overriding Internet filters.  The issue of students not having home computers was also addressed.

In conclusion, Allen said the technology staff has done a tremendous job with the Web portal.

“School need to conduct leadership workshops to establish a common vision for leaders to help them learn to model this change,” Allen said.

Allen expressed her interested in forming various committees to handle technology issues in the school system.

“This is going to be a springboard for a lot of great tings in this district,” said Superintendant Dee Fowler. “It’s going to be a lot to chew and these folks are going to have to be very committed. They are going to have a lot of responsibility and free range to do some things but they’ve got t o be really committed to doing this.”

-Bob Jones senior Jordan McRae presented the Superintendant’s Student Advisory Committee Report to the board. The report contained likes and dislikes from secondary and middle school students. The report said students at Bob Jones liked the challenging classes, the internship opportunities, the openness of teachers, as well as the sports programs. She said the report showed some of the least favorable items were the dress codes and the lack of dietary cafeteria food. She also reported that the students at the school would like to have more class activities and social time with more of an emphasis on art programs.

-Scott Dow, a senior at BJHS received a national golf award. Dow participated USA Special Olympics National Games in Lincoln, NB.

-Maria Kilgore, director of special education, presented Articulation Lab. The lab helps students who have articulation and language delays.

“The unique thing about the lab is that Madison is growing, which means there are more children with articulation and language delays,” Kilgore said. “We decided if we can reduce numbers on the speech pathologist case load and find children who have articulation delays to keep them from being pulled out of the greater classroom.”

The lab would run four days a week, Monday through Thursdays for 30 minutes a day for 10 weeks.

-Mary Moreillon, a representative from the American Red Cross, presented a plaque to Madison City Schools for the money the board raised for Haiti relief effort. She said the schools raised $2,935 for the Cross My Heart campaign.

In business actions:

-The board approved minutes from the Oct. 27 and 28 meetings.

-Approved an amendment to salary schedule.

-Approved an At-Risk Grant that requires that 20 percent of funds be used to partner with non-profit community organizations. The Springboard Foundation, the National Children Advocacy Center and the Enrichment Center all received money as a result of the grant.

The board will meet again, Nov. 30 in the Central Office at 5 p.m.