Thanksgiving Holiday and Recent Posts Recap

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday. Family, Food, Football, and what eventually became amazing weather for this time of year!

Plenty happening this week - School Board meeting on Monday, Borough Council on Thursday, and the fact finder is to present the contract for review by NASD and NAEA on Monday.

A lot of issues, mostly related to the school, were addressed here last week. If you were like me and took some time off to smell the turkey and recover from it - here's a recap of topics related to NASD that came up last week:

New MS Building and creation of an Intermediate School (IS)(in current MS building) dominated with a variety of sub issues:

• Appearance/design additions to make building meet the colonial appearance of borough buildings.
  
• Pool being built at the MS instead of the planned HS athletic complex.
• IS school hours, transportation arrangements.
• School bus stop equity between the borough and townships.
  
• Road and bridge project connecting HS to new MS.
• Traffic with new facility along Tatamy, East Lawn, Friedenstahl, Mitchell Avenue, Liberty and the other connecting streets in the neighborhood by Mitchell Avenue.
• Possibility of a casino being built next to the IS on Tatamy Road.

General education/school administration:

• teacher tenure (many have less 10 years experience) and available mentors within system (those with more experience) to produce better teachers.
• curriculum changes and impact on teachers as well as money spent/wasted as a result and continuity of curriculum being disrupted.
  
• 65% solution - challenge to earmark 65% spending on in-class education of students out of every school budget (PTA program).
• PSSA test scores not meeting expectations for a "good" school district.
• Community Task Force Meetings status - still being held, stopped?
• Tax Commission Recommendation and Vote (must be made before mid-December)

In addition to the new contract, building details, and other immediate concerns, I think I'm most fascinated with the concept of the 65% solution. To ensure our students are the budget focus of each academic year, I think having a target and tracking it is a good idea. The next area of interest to me is the test scores, particularly as they relate to declining math scores on the secondary level and the possible impact our 4x4 block scheduling is having on them.

Everyone has agreed on one fact - they want excellent schools. What constitutes an excellent school, how we get there, and how much it will cost to have them are going to be a big challenge.

Now that this dialog has begun and been taken out of the Board room and into the community, I think we have a much better chance of getting there.

Thanks to everyone who has participated, provided information on meetings, posted comments, and read and told their friends about this site.

I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on these issues as well as the outcome at this week's meetings.