A-PAGE was in attendance at the Alamosa School Board meeting on 4/9. Items of interest from the meeting:
1) A presentation was made by the Community Resources & Housing Development Corporation regarding their letter of intent to purchase Boyd Elementary and repurpose it into 16-20 apartment units. Their goal is for Boyd Elementary to be a community asset that in addition to apartments would have a daycare center, Broadband technology center as well as maintaining the community gardens.
2) Another presentation/discussion was made regarding the Omsbudman program (which is the replacement for the Alamosa Open High) and the possibility of offering a National Ombudsman diploma in addition to the standard Alamosa High School Diploma. The School Board requested additional information on how that might be implemented as the desire is to have students graduate with an Tier 1 Alamosa High School diploma over a Tier 2 Ombudsman diploma.
This is a copy of a letter-to-the-editor in which your group may be interested. The ASD doesn't seen to want it made public.
ReplyDeleteDear Editor,
The following are some interesting excerpts I found on the Colorado Dept.of Education website defining the “root causes” for Alamosa's dysfunctional school district. Again, I invite you to do your job as journalist and explore the following link to the CDE's data report on the Alamosa School District RE-11J, and to their conclusions as to why the children of this district continue to fail their CSAP tests:
https://cedar2.cde.state.co.us/documents/UIP2011/0100-0000.pdf
Colorado’s Unified Improvement Plan for Districts for 2011-12
Preliminary Report Identifying Root Causes.
The following root causes were identified by the UDLT members after a daylong facilitated dialogue based on CADI findings, student achievement data and perception data.
1. ASD lacks a leadership framework that defines roles and responsibilities for all stakeholders at all levels. The district uses an ineffective
evaluation tool that has not been updated in over a decade which does not hold stakeholders accountable for high levels of professional
practices.
a. Frequent changes in district leadership –lack of sustainability
b. Lack of follow through and accountability –no consequence for non-compliance
c. Scattered focus of effort
d. Many “false starts”
e. Lack of urgency to make changes in the CDE Improvement Planning Template for Districts (V 3.3 -- Last updated: September 6, 2011) 34
2. Inconsistent instructional strategies are due to a lack of continuity of implementation of the curriculum and the lack of accountability and support
measures to ensure consistent implementation. Expectations for student achievement are inconsistent across the district.
a. Lack of a viable curriculum that meets the needs of all students
b. Site specific expectations –each building functions autonomously and lacks district wide focus
c. No district wide benchmarks have been established
d. Lack of support and follow through in the use of interventions and instructional strategies.
e. Looked for the “magic bullet” to solve the problem rather than focus on practices
f. Lost track of student mastery
3. The implementations of PLC (Professional Learning Community) practices are disjointed and lack a clear process to determine professional development needs, accountability and
coaching.
a. Unclear district expectations, protocols, or norms in implementing PLC collaborative teams at the school level.
b. Lack of monitoring of PLC practices at the district level.
c. Decisions were not based on data
d. Professional development is not embedded
e. Lack of coaching and feedback
f. PD (Professional development) not based on need
This is obviously a damning indictment of the ASD administration, and not of
the teachers, who were found to be “100% Highly Trained”.
In ASD's latest improvement plan, done in a halfhearted cut-and-paste manner, they readily admit the problem:
“Inconsistent instructional strategies are due to a lack of
continuity of implementation of the curriculum and the lack
of accountability and support measures to ensure
consistent implementation.”
Isn't that a confession?
If you, the Editor, fail to find this information “Newsworthy”, then you should not be calling yourselves a “Newspaper”. Instead you have become merely a pathetic “tabloid”, having turned your back on the community from which you derive your oh-so-important profits. If you are not making an effort to help solve the problem, then you have become part of the problem. This is no longer about building a monument to the incompetence of the ASD, but rather, the question is, what is this community going to do to fix a horribly broken school system that's failing to educate our youth?
Respectfully,
William Blackburn