ADL Parents As Partners: January 2014

Facilitators: Kelley Charland (tkmac22@hotmail.com) and Paul McLaughlin

ADL Parents as Partners Links:

Our page on the ADL website: http://www.ccsuvt.org/adl/parents-as-partners/

Blog you can subscribe to: http://adlpap.blogspot.com (announcements and news)

Knowledge base: https://sites.google.com/site/adlparentsaspartners/kb (how-to documents)

School calendar in Google format: https://sites.google.com/site/adlparentsaspartners/calendar

ADL Rideshare Request Form: http://tinyurl.com/adlrideshare

WELCOME-Happy New Year All!

Attendees: Paul McLaughlin, Mindy Diesler, Amie Conger, DeAnn Charron, Laurie Singer, Leah Joy.

PRINCIPAL’S ADDRESS: Laurie will discuss standards based learning and reporting and Amie Conger, Assistant Principal will review newest draft of discipline system at ADL.

Laurie shared about standards-based reporting. We looked through two articles describing why we want to go to standards-based reporting. If you find anyone with questions, Laurie encourages them to contact her.
As a school, we've designed a new report card based on the Common Core standards. You can search the web for “Common Core” to learn more about the standards. Even if it's a subject without CC standards, you can still find a national standard that applies. The standards help shape the curriculum from one grade to the next and helps teachers know what instruction has already occurred. They give us an idea of how a student is progressing relative to a standard (strengths/weaknesses). There'll be a separate area for work habits and behaviors. It helps bring consistency between teachers.
Laurie expects to post a presentation about all this on our ADL website.
Amie Conger shared about an upcoming project related to discipline and positive school community. We're looking at going through a book together as a school throughout the next school year: Wonder by RJ Palacio. The themes and activities in the book contribute to our social contract themes. We got a grant that's already providing 70 of these books, but we're looking for ways to fund enough books so that everyone in the school can have one (i.e., another 320). There are several other projects that we'd like to tie in.
Paul or Kelley will send out a note to the PaP folks to see what kind of support we can give.

FINANCIAL REPORT: As of January 6, 2014, we have a balance of $2900.81. Parents as Partners gave $200.00 towards the fee to bring Jeh Kulu back to ADL again for a performance at the finale of the Winter Olympics unit. Jeh Kulu is a multicultural performance and educational ensemble specializing in music and dance from Guinea, Senegal and Mali. They are located in Burlington. When they were here before, the students absolutely loved them!

Approximately $194.00 was spent on Beautification Day for bulbs, soil and lunch. Approximately $625.00 was made during the Book Fair, $64.50 was made with sweatshirt sales and the first Box Tops deposit for the school year was also deposited. This was a check for $85.80.

ROLLING CALENDAR: January:

1/13: Final Technology Information Meeting 6:30-7:30 pm

1/17: Early release for students at 12:00 pm (noon)

1/20: NO SCHOOL-TEACHER INSERVICE

1/22-1/24: School Wide Winter Olympics Event.

Families are invited to the opening activities right after the lunches on the 22^nd. We can use several parent volunteers on Thursday, the 23^rd. On Friday, we'll have our closing ceremony in the afternoon, and families are again invited.

1/24: Dance 7-9 pm

1/29: 8^th Grade Orientation at EHS 8:30-10:30 am

1/29: Bridge Band Concert at ADL with 8^th grade and EHS bands 7-9 pm

February:

2/4: Parent/Guardian meeting for Incoming 9^th grade students at EHS Auditorium 7-9 pm

Dance dates: 3/7(8th grade only with EMS, Westford at EMS), 4/4, 5/16

PaP dates: 2/6, 3/6,* 6/5 with School Report Night *Please note date change from 4/3 to 3/6

NEW BUSINESS:

Date for Empty Bowls? Thursday, April 10.
Formation of GASP Committee (GASP is on March 14 this year) [Paul & Kelley will work on this further]
I have emailed Kevin Barber to see if he is in need of PaP’s assistance to round up volunteers for the Basketball Tournament. I have not received a reply yet.

Follow Up Business:

How did NECAP testing and conferences go? Great turn-out at the conferences.
Beautification Day follow-up … to continue in the future? The two raised beds in front of the school were moved back and plants were moved and bulbs were planted in all four beds in the front of the school. Not well attended. We did enjoy a delicious lunch together.
We're thinking the light turn-out might have been due to the timing (fall instead of spring). Let's keep planning on doing these for now and revisit the plans before we wind up for the year.
Book Fair follow-up, set next year’s dates, Spring Fair this year? Total sales for 4 days: $2511.72 which includes $40.96 raised by All for Books. Th$40.96 was used to purchase some books for the Learning Center/Library. Total cash profit was approximately $625.00. The Golden Ticket raffle book was won by 6^th grader, Aidan Haggerty … a book of his choice. Thank you to Peer Leadership helpers, student poster makers, Caitlin Classen and all the parent volunteers who helped make the Book Fair another big success this year. A HUGE thank you to Chris Catterton and Tracey Williams for again organizing this Book Fair this year. Chris plans to update the How-To document, as well.
We decided not to try to have a spring fair this year. We don't have the dates for the concerts yet, but we expect to figure that out around March.
Thank you very much to Renee Dezotelle for coordinating sweatshirt sales again this year and also to Barb Edwards for helping her with the financial end and handing out the sweatshirts right before the Holiday Break.
Dates for Guest Speakers?

Please remember to continue to turn in Box Tops to the front office.

Once again, we are signed up in the Price Chopper Tools for Schools program. Please go onto to www.pricechopper.com to enroll your Advantedge card points to be assigned to ADL and we will receive enough points at the end of the school year to “purchase” some art supplies that the entire school gets to use.

Our next meeting date is February 6, 2014 at 6:30 pm in the ADL Learning Center. Please join us!

ADL Parents As Partners

Friday, January 31, 2014

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Thursday, January 9, 2014

ADL Parents as Partners Monthly Meeting Minutes - January 9, 2014

Thursday, January 2, 2014