WUSD School Board Notes

Board meeting

Some drama on 4.4: approval of an Honors Physics class, as we no longer have a qualified AP Physics teacher any more

Preliminary CST data suggests some good and bad news:

·      negative growth for EL learners, generally speaking, and the need for more professional development despite the lack of state funding

·      impressive positive 7th-8th grade growth, including Latino/Hispanic subgroups

·      this was a partial release of data, with no definitive recommendation plans

·      language-heavy math problems based on problem solving drove down Math scores

·      once more data is made available the District can get a better idea of an action plan

The technology report was a 3-person tag team provided an interesting overview of District technology services. They feel they will need to replace or get around the problem of old servers through virtualization.

Tammy pointed out the benefits of lowering primary grade class size to 24, and its financial benefits as well as academic ones.

I made a report suggesting they adopt a resolution to support a No on Proposition 32, and then responded to the report on poor EL Learner test scores and made several reflections. The Board continued this discussion, saying that they believe in multiple measures to assess students, including the non-cognitive areas of achievement. They also understand the dilemna of the need for more  professional development but the reality of not having the funds for it.