District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC)

January 12, 2010 Meeting

The upcoming bond vote was discussed.  E-mail blasts reminding people to vote would be helpful.  If an e-mail is sent from school it should ask voters to “vote on” not “support” the bond issue.  E-mails sent from private computers can ask people to “support” the bond issue or “vote yes”.

LESA taking over bussing for the district is being considered.  The savings countywide would be about $1 million.  Hartland’s savings would be between $150,000 and $200,000.  The savings would come primarily from salary and benefits.  Each district will still provide their own busses.

Hartland High School received a grant for their efforts in going green.  Part of the grant funds will be used to teach students about green technology, including bio-diesels and wind turbines.  Actual wind turbines will be available for the student to work with.  One of the science teachers is scheduled to attend training this summer and will begin teaching about  the new technology this fall.

Laurie Mayes, Assistant Superintendant of Curriculum, spoke about the districts efforts in raising literacy.  The four primary initiatives are as follows:

Writers Workshop  - focuses on teaching students the components of good writing as opposed to just the mechanics of writing.  Teachers receive six days of training over the course of the year that they then implement in class.  After the first year of this program, testing of students going from kindergarten to first grade showed a drop in kids testing in the “at risk” range from 35% to 12%.  Third grade testing showed an improvement of 20% on test scores.

Reading Apprenticeship – focuses on training science, math and social studies teachers to encompass reading comprehension into the teaching of their subject.

Leveled Literacy Intervention – this program is designed to aide elementary special-education and reading recovery teachers in diagnosing reading issues and gives them strategies for teaching the children to read or to improve to reading at grade level.

Scholastic Reading Inventory Assessment – this is a tool used to determine the reading skills of student in third thru eleventh grades.  The test result is a score which lets the teacher and student know the student’s reading level, as well as identifying books that are best for the student to read, based on reading ability and areas of interest.  The test is given three times per year so the students can progress to more challenging books as their reading level increases.

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