Achieving grade-level benchmarks, helping English-language
learners and broadcasting school board meetings are trustees’ final
goals up for public review as part of the Times Accountability in
Community Leadership Project.
Morgan Hill
Achieving grade-level benchmarks, helping English-language learners and broadcasting school board meetings are trustees’ final goals up for public review as part of the Times Accountability in Community Leadership Project.
Members of the Morgan Hill Unified School District Board of Education are up for their last round of scrutiny as part of the newspaper’s community journalism project.
A quick look at how they’re doing this period reveals student scores are increasing but not all children have achieved or exceeded grade-level markers. District principals report they regularly review English-language learners’ assessment data and the district is waiting to find out who will spend $9,000 needed in infrastructure to begin televising their board meetings.
As they near the end of the project’s evaluation, trustees have already scheduled a workshop to consider new goals or possibly amend old ones reviewed this year.
Board members are using their meeting Nov. 20 to have a workshop with a facilitator to discuss goals.
The Times’ project school board goals were adopted in July 2006. Trustees approved specific measurements for four broad goals. The Times asked Board President Peter Mandel to identify a projected completion date for the measurements.
The goals are also listed in a report card accompanying this story and uploaded on the newspaper’s Web site at www.morganhilltimes.com.
The school district is working with the city to begin using a public access channel that will feature educational programming, including broadcasts of the board meetings. According to City Manager Ed Tewes, Charter Communications is asking for funding to cover infrastructure costs, but he doesn’t believe the city or the school district should have to pay. Discussions between the city and Charter are continuing.
The district is monitoring the progress of it’s nearly 2,000 English learners, according to coordinator Ricardo Amador, who gave a report to the board during its Nov. 6 meeting. School administrators, counselors and others are using the California English Language Development Test results, as well as other assessment data, to plan for students’ growth in proficiency.
For the second student achievement measurement, the district is making progress. While student test scores are improving, however, not every child in the district is meeting or excelling grade level benchmarks, as the measurement states.
“We’re doing fine, there’s still work to do, of course, and I’m looking to our workshops, to getting input from our educational community and the wider community, to see how we need to set our next set of goals so we can help our students continue to improve,” Trustee Bart Fisher said.
Fisher said the board did “fine” with the last goals, but he is anxious to get started on the next set.
“I think what we’re gonna want to do is take a look at our set of goals, see what we can improve on,” he said. “I’m focused on that and on moving forward with those. I’m looking forward to having the opportunity for community input, and with our staff and teacher input, I think we can create the kind of high value-added goals to push us forward for next year.”
Fisher said it is important to him that the board create goals that are highly measurable and clear.
“I’m a little more focused with the particular goals with goals we pick, I want us all on same page with some good actionable things,” he said.
The Times has created the accountability project to better connect with readers and public officials. The newspaper’s editorial board, headed by Times Publisher Steve Staloch, feels the project also empowers public officials keeping them on track of goals as they seek to serve taxpayers, who pay their salaries and put them in office.
As part of the project, the report card runs for an entire month in the newspaper and on the Times Web site. The newspaper then tallies those votes and asks the editorial board and the trustees to grade their progress on the goals evaluated.
