Agenda - 04-28-2015 - 1 and 2 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Pre -K students and translation expenses, that are increasing due to additional students and the continued growth of ESL students /families. Priority Related Expansion Requests Careful review and consideration of the district wide budget requests was performed to arrive at the $1.66 million of expansion budget requests. Our primary focus was around the priorities identified at the Board Planning Conference and our Strategic Plan, specifically: Board Priority: Professional Development Needs Project ADVANCE: Planning and implementation support: Goal 4 of the district's strategic plan focuses on the professional development needs identified by teachers in our district. Specifically, the strategies are: • 4.1 Create a model for career and financial advancement based on instructional excellence and professional growth • 4.3 Create new systems and practices and/or adjust current systems and practices that will sustain effective professional development and proven research based practices Over the past three years, teachers and administrators have been working to develop a new model for professional growth, leadership, compensation and career advancement. Our ADVANCE model has been created and shared with the General Assembly for possible pilot consideration. This is an enormous undertaking and will require a significant investment of time and resources to move from our model to implementation. We are not requesting additional funding for 2015 -16 as we can reallocate funding used during the model development process towards implementation. Learning Focused /Understanding by Design (UBD) training: Goal I of our strategic plan focuses on instructional excellence focused on thinking and problem solving in every classroom. One of the goal's primary strategies is to develop a research -based curriculum template from which all written curricula will be aligned, UBD is the preferred method for developing our curriculum as it focuses on helping teachers identify learning goals, helps teachers create meaningful assessments to measure student progress, and most importantly, helps teachers develop meaningful and engaging lessons designed to make students think and problem solve. Another Goal I strategy focuses on developing common expectations of all our professionals. Lesson planning is an expectation that we have for all of our teachers. Administrators, teachers, and instructional coaches are being trained on effective lesson plan development. They are being trained on the high yield strategies that when implemented, will increase student achievement, and on a monitoring system that will ensure implementation and accountability. In total, we are requesting $ I50,000 for these priority professional development offerings. We need to continue to invest in our teachers and leaders by providing them with the tools and skills they need successfully elevate student achievement. 1 -3