Thursday, January 28, 2010

Budget Q&A: Why Middle School Deans?

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This is the first of an ongoing series of budget questions asked by School Board members, and the answers provided by the LCPS administration. You can also read the full set of questions and answers from this year.

Q: When did the MS Deans first come to LCPS? Please provide a more detailed description of the middle school deans duties.

A: LCPS has had Middle School Deans since the first middle school opened in 1971. In LCPS, our middle schools are highly effective because of the specific organization and operation that match the unique needs of the students in this age range. The LCPS approach to the middle school is research based and excellent. This allows for large middle schools to exist and be high functioning. This organizational structure creates “schools within schools” all within a size that is conducive to meeting the developmental needs of middle school children. In this model, the role of Dean is critical.

The Dean is the grade level house leader and is able to address affective and/or social emotional issues very quickly in the current model. The families develop a strong relationship with the Dean who follows the children for each year of middle school. Our parents expect (and so do we) that all these issues are addressed quickly. This allows us to return to academics with minimal disruption. With no Deans, students will be sitting on benches waiting, instructional time lost, resulting in a negative effect on the academic environment that we are building.

In addition to working directly with students within a house area on these affective/social issues, deans conduct classroom walk-throughs to monitor instruction, facilitate grade level team meetings, provide lunch room and hallway supervision, organize before and after school activities, initiate parent contact and facilitate parent conferences, review student grades, conduct child study meetings, and participate in a variety of school level committees.

The Deans work under an LCPS teacher contract, with extra days at the beginning and end of the school year. This model has been in place since the middle school was created in LCPS in the early 1970’s.

The daily responsibilities of the Middle School Assistant Principals are in two major areas: Special Education and Testing. With all three grades in the middle school participating in SOL testing every year, AP’s are not always readily available for affective concerns especially considering the volume of Special education meetings and testing that occurs within schools.

This model allows the Principal to be the instructional leader in the building at a level that the research demands to achieve excellence, including monitoring instruction and assessment, data analysis, and teacher evaluation.

LCPS currently does this better at the Middle School level than most places in the Nation. The removal of Deans would adversely affect this model.
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12 comments:

  1. This is the second post that seems to be addressing citizen concerns about how our money is spent. This is also the second post that appears to be justifying the added and extra expenses of (what I would consider to be) luxury, unnecessary expenditures. Until our school board can stop, take a step back and view the bigger picture, we will continue to have unrelenting spending on frivolous items.

    Just because we've always had a position or always done something a certain way does not mean that it is necessary or needed for the daily operations of the schools.

    I know the Loudoun County motto is "I Byde My Time" but the time is now for action and I task the school board to make and stand by difficult decisions regarding their funding choices.
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  2. I'm going to be absolutely honest here. As a parent of 2 middle schoolers in LCPS I have NO relationship w/the deans. I have contacted them on occasions due to bullying problems w/my kids and never felt that helpful "closeness" you speak of. I'm sure they are helpful in some way but in my cases, they were just another person "dealing" with an issue.


    Sorry, didn't mean to be a downer!
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  3. Farmwell parentJan 28, 2010 08:32 AM
    Middle School deans are not a luxury! I am a parent, not a teacher, and I can tell you my child's dean is a godsend.

    The deans have your children for three years, and believe me nobody in the middle school knows your child better than his/her dean. Their list of responsibilities is endless. They are in the front lines of discipline, keeping boisterous kids in line, and protecting the kids that are being bullied. They are also there at night at the band and chorus concerts, the school plays, the dances, the countless other functions that they do not get paid to attend. If the position is eliminated, who is going to do their work? Who is going to know your kids, be their advocate during what we all know can be three turbulent years? It's not possible. It's an absolutely awful idea to eliminate these positions.

    Thanita, I'm sorry to hear you have an ineffective dean. By no means does that mean that all are ineffective. I went to the most horrible middle school in the world and there were no deans there for us. There was nobody there for us. The things that went on in that school still make me cringe.

    Please, to eliminate positions look first to the administration building and the countless "supervisors" there, not to the essential personnel in the schools. Look to programs like foreign language in elementary schools, which may have been a good idea in concept and which I was excited about when my kids were younger, but in practice has proven to be a COMPLETE waste of time. It even turned countless kids off of Spanish in the middle school, rather than opening them up to it. For five years, it was the same thing every year, and the kids never learned anything useful at all. Now that is my definition of a frivolous program.

    In middle school, the deans are essential, not frivolous, not a luxury.
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  4. Did everyone notice that new Chairman John Stevens has eliminated roll call votes? So when things like this may come up for a vote for reductions, no one will know who voted what way. Yet another tactic to try to shield the politically doomed school bhoard members from voter accountability. It won't work, each vote will then just tarnish everyone. Of course I expect all of you to be voting per Hatrick's orders anyway, so maybe this won't really matter.
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  6. @Farmwell Parent - I agree that without them who's going to do their work. I get it. I'm not saying they're a waste. Just that I haven't gotten what is expected from them. My kids come home and tell me things that make me cringe. They don't feel like they can go to the dean or principal (or even the nurse) because they have been made to feel unimportant and at times ridiculed. Perhaps it's a personality clash but never the less these are my experience w/my kids and their deans.
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  7. Lovettsville LadyJan 30, 2010 11:12 AM
    How many layers of administrators do we need? Couldn't assistant principals get to know students, handle discipline, and go to band concerts? Or are they all busy in meetings?

    Hiding school board votes is beyond the pale. We should be able to check online for every vote that is taken by our representatives on the school board. Frank Wolf has his every vote on his website. Why can't LCPS do the same thing? Every vote that my representative makes should be available at the LCPS website.

    One minor point, on the side bar you have listed some of the schools that you have written about. TJ is never referred to as TJHS. It is either called the informal, shorten version, TJ, or TJHSST, but never TJHS. That
    is incorrect. http://www.tjhsst.edu/
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  8. Farmwell parentJan 31, 2010 04:51 PM
    From the School Board's budget documents, reducing FLES to one day per week for grades 3 to 5 would result in savings of $1.2 million. The document says this reduction will "reduce the students' mastery of the language upon leaving elementary school." I challenge LCPS to produce students who have demonstrated a mastery of Spanish from FLES instruction. It also says one of the justifications for instituting the program was because of "students' need for global awareness." This program has done nothing to raise global awareness. The elementary school PTOs that put on "Taste of the World" and other similar cultural programs do a much better job of that. At no cost to the taxpayers.

    In the same document, elimination of half of the middle school deans would result in a net savings of $1.5 million. I am not familiar with the responsibilities of assistant principals, but the document says they "oversee the special education and standardized testing responsibilities for the school, both of which are demanding, detail-oriented jobs."

    From the same document, closing the 4 small western elementary schools would save $2.25 million. Schools with less than 300 enrollment are only required to have a principal half time. Reducing those 4 principals to half time would save $240,000.
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  9. Farmwell parent,

    Hatrick has been sold a bill of goods regarding FLES. I teach Spanish at the high school level and I see no difference in kids that have had FLES and those who have not. Many of my freshmen students don't know colors or numbers despite having had FLES since kindergarten. I welcome any board members to talk to the language teachers at the high school and ask our opinion since we work with the students every day. Our supervisor has not been in all of our schools and does not even ask for our thoughts. Parents get the word out that fles is a waste.

    Profe
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  10. Farmwell parentFeb 1, 2010 07:12 PM
    Profe, I find your comment about FLES very illuminating. You know this program is set up so that there is no quantitative assessment of anything the students do during this one hour per week of FLES. This year's freshmen are the first class to go all the way through FLES and SAMs. Isn't it interesting that it hasn't done them a bit of good? Kids I know tell me that, if anything, the program really turns them off to Spanish, rather than serving as an early introduction to speaking a foreign language. If we are not doing it right, we are just throwing money away. Forget just cutting it back to 30 minutes per week. It's time to admit the program is a colossal failure and scrap the whole thing.
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  11. I have to agree about FLES. It's a great idea in theory but, for whatever reason, it's just not working. Maybe the school system should put it on hold for a few years, save the money and use that time to figure out how to make it effective. My son's class last year learned more Farsi in a two-week preparation for the school's international festival than they learned Spanish in the entire year. Some of the classroom teachers could probably do a better job of teaching Spanish than FLES is doing now.
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  12. The FLES program is a complete waste of time and money. I watch in my classroom as the teacher is "teaching" the kids Spanish and from what I observe, most of the kids are playing with things in their desks, not paying attention or daydreaming. The teacher does nothing but play games and go over the same vocabulary. It is nothing more than a form of recess. I could be using that hour a week reviewing concepts that they are having trouble with, using it for writing time or reading instruction or to do enrichment. I hope it goes away- I worry about my kids passing the writing SOL- which they have to do in ENGLISH!!
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