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Staff readies for first day of schoolBy Joel Stottrup The new school year will begin in Princeton on Tuesday with not just some new instructors, but three new principals - Greg Blodgett at the middle school, Mark Sleeper at the high school and John Beach at North Elementary. Blodgett will be hearing the voices of as many as 750 young people on the first day of school. There is very little staff change at his school but he pointed out a major adjustment in courses. The allied arts that includes technology, graphics, family and consumer science, art and industrial tech will be aligned with a team. Students will rotate to a new subject area within the allied arts every six weeks. It will mean better communication and teamwork among core teachers and allied arts, he said. The core courses of math, English, science and social studies already had a team concept, he noted. This is a district-wide movement of having teaching and learning teams to analyze what is being taught in the curriculum and how it is being taught, he continued. He explained that staff will use different tests to see if they are meeting achievement levels. The team teachers, according to Blodgett, will come up with recommendations and even use staff development funds to look at: "What are we doing and why are we doing it? Are we meeting the needs of the kids. Everything is going to be data driven." Blodgett, who was an associate principal at Mounds View for two years and taught once at Brooklyn Center in a building with grades 7-12, said he has done a lot of research on the concepts Princeton will be using. He said all of it shows Princeton Middle School being "exemplary." Some evidence is the school being parceled into houses, so to speak, within the building, and using interdisciplinary teams. The advisor and advisee groups, and co-curricular activities are also a plus, he said. The school has caring and nurturing staff members, he said. "It's a great opportunity for kids." Blodgett is anticipating a lot more students entering the middle school than before. The school enrolled as many as 24 families just in one 11/2-week period, he said. He expects that some of the phy ed and music classes will be large but added that those classes can stand more students than others. He anticipates the size of the core course classes will be in the upper 20s. Blodgett was asked to comment on the new bus setup in which the middle school will be the transfer site at the end of each school day. "I think it's going to work out really well," he said. "Students will spend less time on buses than in the past." Blodgett requests that parents dropping off students do so at the activities door of the middle school and not the administrative offices entry. Because the middle school class day will begin at 8:30 a.m. it is likely there will be people wanting to bring their children in sometime before 8 a.m. if those parents are on their way to work, Blodgett said. But as of last week he was unable to say just how early students can be dropped off there, explaining there is the issue of supervision and needed staff. High school The largest facilities change being made inside the high school prior to the start of school was the fashioning of a resource room for special education. In past years that instruction took place in various small pockets within the school, said new principal Mark Sleeper. But now it will be in a room complete with restroom facilities and teaching features, including a kitchen for learning life skills. The room was remodeled out of a former wrestling room and an adjacent area for maintenance. Another new capital improvement at the high school campus for which construction has just begun, is a 24x48-foot greenhouse. The location is just west of the student parking lot. FFA and other classes are expected to be using the greenhouse for studies. Sleeper, giving estimates last Friday on what the high school enrollment will be, said he expects about 1,040, compared to last spring's projection of 1,000. "We have 60 more coming in and 15 have requested a transfer out, so right now we are expecting 45 more kids, and a good share of those are ninth graders," Sleeper said. He added that with all the expected students and because of budget cutting in the district, there will be the possibility that some classes, such as electives, won't be available when the school year opens. Students in the higher grades at the high school have already learned not to wait until the start of the year to register, he said. Sleeper anticipates classes sizes at the high school to range from 30 to 35 in the "worst case scenarios," but less for other classes. Sleeper characterized the space at the high school as getting tighter with the increased enrollment. Like other administrators who talked about enrollment projections, no one can tell accurately until the first days of the school year. That's because students who have left the district for another school sometimes don't notify the district in advance that they're leaving. The high school will be having eight new staff members, including Sleeper. Among the new staff are a new director for each of the choral and band departments. One of the new staff members, Katy Nelson, will be part time at the high school and part time at the middle school in her job of speech/language (educational) pathologist. Sleeper didn't anticipate any problems with busing at his school which will start at 8:15 a.m. and dismiss at 2:55 p.m. Sleeper said he would not venture much about changes he might push for until he has more time in his new job. But he did bring out a goal. "One thing as a new principal I would like to look at - what we can do to make the building a more warm and welcoming place for students," he said. "Make them feel this is a place they want to be at." Sleeper was aware of some "trouble spots," as he called them, that occurred in the past at the high school, namely student misbehavior at one or more pep fests and students running around the inside of the building on the last day of school throwing around paper materials. Last year's principal, Wayne Harper, and other staff worked to head off the paper throwing on the last day and had stopped pep fests at one point because of student behavior. Any such problems will have to be addressed, Sleeper said. Concerned about students leaving Sleeper's biggest expressed worry, however, is the number of freshmen leaving the school by the end of the year for any number of reasons including dropping out, going to the alternative learning center, or to attend a private school or home school. Sleeper called the numbers "troubling." Sleeper said he wished he knew what could be the cause of ninth graders not completing the year at PHS. "Is it our programs?" he asked. "Is it the class size, the atmosphere here, the water?" Because of that worry, Sleeper said he will be asking office staff to track the movement of ninth graders out of PHS. He estimated there will be as many as 318 ninth graders at the start of the school year. Sleeper, like other principals, said he was looking forward to using the district's new strategic plan as a guide for improving the instruction. "I enjoy that kind of thing," Sleeper said. "Princeton is not in the doldrums." But Sleeper added that he does feel PHS needs some leadership to "decide what it needs to be." The school's strengths and weaknesses should be analyzed, yet there are a "lot of wonderful things to protect here," he said. "I'm impressed with both the staff and the community. It is very friendly. It has been very good to me." Sleeper looks at education as being much different now than in past years in that families want education to be more customized to their children. "It's not the principal's school, it's not the staff's school, it's the parents' and community's school," Sleeper said. "It was more when you and I went to school that you got what was there. Now parents ask, ëWhat's there for my student's individual needs?' " North Elementary When students at North Elementary look to get instruction in art this school year, it will arrive on a cart. Because of increased space limitations at that school, the art room was changed into a room for other subjects. Art instructor Tom Tschumper will have a supply room to prepare his materials and an office area. But from there, he will be wheeling his supplies on a cart to the various classrooms for instruction. "Space is an issue," said John Beach, the new principal at North Elementary. He noted that as of last Friday, 35 new families had registered students at his school and that the projected enrollment is 740. The class sizes are manageable now but the issue should be looked at, he said. As it is, there is less flexibility for activities because of lack of space, Beach continued. Even the art instruction will suffer because of the extra time it will take to use the cart. Beach was enthusiastic about the district's move since last year to tie all the language arts courses together so they are consistent from the early childhood family education level up through 12th grade. The plan is to meet specific standards at each building and it will affect other subjects as well because all will deal with the language arts, Beach noted. Beach also spoke about school atmosphere. "We will focus on keeping a climate that is positive," he said. "We want people to feel good about coming to the school as an inviting, more comfortable place to be. That includes staff and anybody walking through the door." The start of the school day at North Elementary will be 8:30 a.m. and dismissal will be 3 p.m. Like last year, anyone bringing students to school other than by bus is to drive to the east side of North Elementary. The same is for when picking up students at the end of the day when buses are operating. At other times, such as during the school day and when buses aren't picking up or dropping off students, people may park in the parking lot in front of the school to transport students. South Elementary South Elementary Principal Greg Finck is likely relieved his parking lot will no longer be used at the end of the school day for bus transfers. Last year there were buses lined up in front of his school to down past the nearby high school. The safest transport location will now be used, he said, referring to the middle school. The starting time at South Elementary will be 8:15 a.m. and the dismissal time 2:55 p.m. The biggest facility change at Finck's school is a strip of acoustic tile in the cafeteria. But space is cramped at South Elementary, he said, pointing out that music will still be taught in the cafeteria. The last enrollment projection he saw for his school was 665. "No doubt it will be higher than last year," he said. Finck, speaking about programs, was enthusiastic about the district's new coordinated approach to teaching reading, writing and written language. The new aids for assessing how any student is doing took California three years and $600,000 to complete and the results are impressive, said Finck. (Princeton will be using that guide.) Supt. Randal Eckart The big question before Supt. Randal Eckart and one he couldn't answer last week was what the enrollment will be this year. "Our projection from our demographer is 3,079 students," he answered, noting last year's enrollment was 3,070. It's difficult to prepare for numbers of new students when it is an unknown because the district only receives state aid based on the number enrolled, Eckart said. "We're pretty much at capacity at the elementaries, and the high school does not have a lot of extra space," said Eckart. Other than the mentioned facility changes, Eckart said there are only more basic things planned, such as roof maintenance, due to budget constraints. Eckart hopes the district will have an improved transportation system this year and said the expectations are there. Eckart, speaking about the programs planned, said the major focus will be on reading, writing and written language. The district, for example, now has a curriculum committee as opposed to a curriculum director, he explained. The committee has representatives from each grade level including early childhood family education. It will be part of the "major function this year" to implement the district's new strategic plan, which has the top priority of "improving student achievement," Eckart continued. Another change Eckart pointed to is the district special education coordinator, Liz Thorstad, who was a special education teacher in Princeton last year. Thorstad will help the district align better services in special ed, such as in the due process area, said Eckart. Another major change is the targeted services program for helping students improve their class achievements. It will consist of teaching after school on certain nights for grades K-8. The program began this summer and had 60 students enrolled, according to Eckart. Wayne Harper, who will be heading the program, said it is for students who need extra help in their studies. The state began the targeted services program but not every district has qualified. Princeton was able to do it because of its alternative school program for mid- level students, said Eckart. Instructors and other staff could be seen working at the various schools in the past few weeks as opening day approached. One of those last Friday was second grade teacher Carol Voit. "It's nice to go through the cupboards once a year," she said. Once the year begins all a teacher has time for is to keep up with the immediate needs, so setting up the classroom in advance is important, she explained. But Voit talked more about programs than she did about her space, talking mainly about the new initiative that she will use for teaching reading and writing. "I'm really excited about building that up," she said. Princeton Union-Eagle |