Friday, February 4, 2000 – One of our students hasn’t been in school all week. The parents say the child has a cold. I think school refusal might be part of it. It is very possible that the parents will blame us for this again even though it has gone very well while the child has been here. Who knows how this will turn out? I was on stand-by at Hills last week and had all kinds of trouble out there. When that happens it takes a lot of time from Longfellow. PTA met last night. The president continues to be very cold towards me and only speaks if she wants something. Staff anxiety seems to be going up here. This seems to happen about every year at this time although this seems to be a little early. Lots of complaining about things and making demands of the secretary and sometimes me.
Tuesday, February 15, 2000 – We had a formal lunch yesterday for Valentines Day and it went very well. This is the second year that we have done this. The school board continues to press for what they call measurable “ends policies.” I think Deming called that rear view mirror driving but I guess we are going to do it anyway. I prefer to build the quality in all the away along. Actually, I think we are already doing that and we have way too many people outside of education telling us what we ought to be doing. One of our frequently absent students is back in school and doing ok though he has had a few problems. One teacher has been unhappy about her assignment all year and can’t seem to move on. The CAO has now given her an associate, but she is still unhappy. Her schedule is not all that bad even thought she goes to three buildings she has 70 minutes of prep daily just at Longfellow but she can’t see that. I don’t think she will stay in the district after this year. Compared to the rest of the Longfellow staff she is not a very hard worker and doesn’t put out the effort that many of them do. She simply is mad about having to serve three schools and can’t get past that. She has made it hard on the rest of our staff. We got our staffing projections for next year. The numbers are not nearly as good as I had hoped. At the primary our ratio is 6.78. We now have 7.0 and I had hoped to have that again. At 3-6 it is 6.90. I hoped it would be much higher…at least 7.0. I don’t know what will happen, but I don’t think half sections will be a popular option. I’ll talk with the site council about it next week.
Thursday, February 17, 2000 – I did storytelling last night at Twain for their Read-In. it was fun and it went well. I used my new poem “Gentle Bill” for the first time and it went over well. I still have to work on getting in memorized but am pleased that it went so well. A frequently absent student refused to come to school yesterday and today. We tried typing a list of things she does well to boost his confidence but she still didn’t want to come in. Forecasts are for heavy snow tonight. Tomorrow is a conference day so I don’t know what will happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment