CSD Community Forum Video – Part I
Decatur Metro | January 14, 2010Garrett notes that Andrea Berry has just posted video of the first portion of City Schools of Decatur’s Tuesday Community Forum online.
The video includes the voices of community members, the CSD Board of Ed, and the Superintendent discussing details of the plan. Personally, I was very glad to see the Board and Superintendent offer reassurances to the community. At this point, no one can answer everyone’s acreage questions, and we can each continue to elaborate on our personal comfort levels regarding site size, but I appreciated that the Board and Superintendent were willing to relay their reasons for being comfortable with 5th Avenue’s current size.
I hope everyone with an opinion/interest in the 5th Avenue rebuild will take the time to watch it.
FYI: Andrea pledges that part 2 would be available Friday morning.
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This is a bit off topic, but I noticed in the Superintendent’s Report for the regular school board meeting that Dr. Edwards is planning on creating several more central office positions. One is a “Chief of Staff” to help Dr. E. handle day to day operations of the school system. Doesn’t the assistant super do that? What about the principals – aren’t they involved in the day to day running of the schools? The Other is a Director of SLT/Community Relations. Can’t our elected school board members do that?
I think we have quite enough admins for such a small school system. How about taking that money and restoring some parapros. They make much more of a difference for kids than “Chiefs of Staff” and Community Relations Directors.
Parapros are badly needed at certain K-3 schools and Glennwood. Not a criticism of the schools, it’s just that a lot of needs exist right now in certain grade levels. And parapros are not only decreasing in number slightly but also are being given more admin tasks which takes them away from the classroom. Frankly, we may have some big CRCT failure rates if we can’t put more parapros into the classrooms for more hours to help the teachers give the differentiated instruction that’s needed. And we lost a couple of real high quality parapros recently to a charter school. Not sure why.
For crying out loud! After all the recent carrying-on about communicating better and engaging the community more, now there’s going to be sniping about hiring somebody to handle community relations? Give me a break! Better yet, give Dr. Edwards a break!
It’s hard for me to begrudge CSD some staffing requests. They have a lot on their plate. As for community relations, seems to me the schools would benefit from having on board someone like Linda Harris, who is a big asset over at City Hall.
Decatur CityNet seems like it has a lot of potential. Hats off to Andrea Berry.
What’s the difference between a Community Relations specialist and a Communications person? Doesn’t CSD already have the latter? Although I see more coming out from Andrea Berry than from the CSD Communications person.
I really don’t begrudge CSD any support it needs. Problem is that they’ve been cutting things for students, e.g. parapro positions, RMS football, RMS cheerleading, etc., at the same time that evidently an admin position or two is being hired. In tight times, we need student needs to come first. It’s the same everywhere in government and business, admin positions have to be cut to preserve the front line of service. I’d rather admin support in the schools so that parapros are in the classroom not the office or giving parent tours than admin support at Westchester.
Looking at Dr Edwards’ report, she’s looking for two (not several) new positions, SLT/Community Relations and Chief of Staff. She says she wants to elevate an existing staff member to the first position, so i suppose it could be either an expansion of an existing position, such as Communications, or someone is already doing the work on top of other jobs and is spread too thin.
Grackle, it would be so great if you would voice your concerns directly to Dr. Edwards at . You could even just copy and paste what you wrote here.
It seems to me that the constant “voicing of concerns” directly to Dr. Edwards and other board members are contributing factors as to why they need Chief of Staff and Community Relations positions. The constant second guessing and rabble-rousing is making more work for them than they can handle.
That said, I am not in favor of adding such administrative positions. I think that the CSD folks have been working on some major things the past couple of years, and they’ve handled it pretty well with the staff on hand. When all of these 5th Ave/Annexation/System Charter initiatives have died down, they will regain some bandwidth.
In general I am a fan of Dr Edwards and the current BOE. I think they have made many positive changes in the system over the last 5 years .
The one area where I do have some criticism is the increase in administrative positions since Dr Edwards arrived. During the reconfiguration debate, she promised to keep administrative costs to a minimum . Maybe she needs a reminder of that promise.
CSD Mom – I, too, will email the BOE members to express my concern about those proposals..
I have seen some previous comments about classroom square footage for K-2 vs. 3-5 classrooms. A simple way to understand the difference in size requirements for the two age groups is that a K-2 classroom is larger so that it can fit a rug in it where the children can sit for storytime and other activities like that.
Just a note:
Part 2 of the CSD Community Forum from January 12th is online now at this link on Decatur CityNet: http://decaturcitynet.ning.com/group/csdboardofeducation
We’ll post the other two parts of the Forum this weekend.
Enjoy!
Andrea