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CISD school board eyes future decisions
BY THAD JOSEPH, Staff Writer
With no action items up for a vote during Tuesday’s Celina ISD school board meeting, the group took time to discuss several informational items that could help with the shape and scope of the district’s future.
Superintendent Rob O’Connor began the meeting by informing the board members that the evening would be devoted to hearing some plans and proposals being considered for the future of the school district.
“Tonight we are going to start looking at several ways of putting parts of the district’s infrastructure in place, so when the day finally arrives and the amount of people moving into this district increases to the level we have all anticipated, we will not only welcome that announcement but be ready for our move toward the 4A classification,” O’Connor said.
“To date, I’ve been discussing our situation with some outside companies and have received some proposals for both of these areas,” O’Dell said. “In both the area of record management and inventory, it is vital for us to have an up-to-date system, with an outside source keeping all records that, according to law, must be kept for certain time frames.”
He also said that with all of the moving between campuses and acquisition of new equipment, the district must keep records of everything valued at more than $500. The inventory would also be valuable if a natural disaster struck a campus.
O’Dell also gave the board an update on some portable classroom buildings the district currently has listed on an auction Web site. The possibility of these buildings being sold soon looks promising, he said, and will add parking to the middle school campus. He is also working on getting a final list together of surplus equipment stored around the district in hopes of selling this to the public in the spring.
O’Dell continued his report with findings about the Nutri-Kids Online cafeteria management system.
Several area districts are using this system and all reports are very favorable,” O’Dell said, adding that parents could go online and make payments for their child’s school meals or they could continue to send their money to each school as they now do at no cost. Parents could then log into the system to see how much money is left in the account, and even see what their children have been purchasing to eat.
“Many parents find this a good way to keep track of what their child eats while at school,” O’Dell said. “It does not cost the parent any money to go online and get that information.”
He added that the district will look to implementing this on a trial basis sometime following the Christmas break, if possible.
His final report stated that the district is is looking to add a time clock system soon for hourly employees to help keep an accurate account of their hours, including any overtime payments. At this time, the time clock system would probably be an updated version of the punch card system and would utilize an employee’s fingerprint instead. O’Connor said that only hourly employees would fall under this system at this time, including custodial, cafeteria and maintenance workers.
CISD Curriculum Director Debbie Kelly gave a presentation and updates to the board on Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and provided the board with areas across the district where she is specifically targeting both positives and improvement potential. The report also included new state graduation requirements and updates to classes included in that report. While still in the planning stages statewide, she believes the state’s final report should be coming in January.
Again, in an effort to upgrade the district’s student management system and business systems, the district is looking at several models from around the area and state. At this time, it is not a requirement to have one system that can do everything, but she indicated this could be a reality.
“Our student management system is outdated and our teachers are finding it more time consuming using the system for grades, attendance and many other areas,” Kelly said.
With that in mind, she has singled out a few programs being utilized in the area. One such program is the Power School system, which is already in place in 16 districts in Region 10. According to Kelly, the downside is that the system can only be used for grades and is currently in the process of being bought by a company with hopes of making changes.
The RS-CCC system is also being inspected closely, as the business related segment is already in use within the district. Again, this particular program is involved in a transition so it can be utilized for student record keeping, and she is not sure when that phase will be ready. Another system being touted highly is the SkyWand program. This program has several layers and could handle everything within the district, but with few districts using this system, support from the company for training and continual customer support would be needed.
She continued her presentation by talking about a district-wide curriculum plan which she continues to work on.
“The problem remains that working on one curriculum segment and getting it finalized, then spending a year or two on a second, and then a another couple years on a third is not practical,” Kelly said. She added that by the time the plan was finished, the first one or two plans would be outdated, again.
The district is looking toward some programs already in place at area school districts for K-12 core subjects, which are vertically integrated into six week sequences. By utilizing these type guides, lesson plans per day, per week and per six week periods are already in place. O’Connor added that these guides would be used as a supplement to teaching, not as “the only way to teach.” Both O’Connor and Kelly said the guides could be valuable for a teacher struggling to get everything covered in the six week sequence, but the teaching guide would be available so parents could also know just what is being taught during a given week.
Additionally, principals could be given PDA’s to record teaching progress while visiting a classroom, make notes on the PDA and send them to the office to be printed at the same time. Kelly sees this as a great opportunity to better utilize their time by not having to take notes in each classroom, then go back and type reports. All that can be done on each PDA and the report may be printed and waiting automatically.
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