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The Examiner U-46 News Feed

U-46 Board updated on school year readiness


By Seth Hancock
  The 2016-17 school year has started in School District U-46, and officials said they’re ready for the school year.
  U-46 CEO Tony Sanders addressed the Board of Education as did other administrators on the preparations for the year at its meeting on Monday, Aug. 15. The first day of classes was two days later on Wednesday, Aug. 17.
  “We’re ready, 40,000 (students) coming back and maybe a little higher than 40,000 depending on what happens,” Sanders said.
  Sanders later noted “this is the first year in 12 years that we have boundary changes in U-46.”
  Jeff King, chief Operations officer, said that “as usual, operations have been very busy all summer preparing our schools.”
  Among the work done over the summer included building 26 additional classrooms and 80 percent of rooms were ready by Aug. 1 according to King “which is I think earlier than we have ever been ready to allow teachers to come in and access.”
  Work on wireless infrastructure has been done at 10 buildings with eight buildings left to complete in the near future, and security infrastructure work on interior doors has been completed at one site and by early winter the district “should have all elementary (schools) on their way to being done” said King.
  Exterior cameras have been placed at 10 schools, floor work has been done at 17 sites, three schools have had their interiors repainted, 21 parking lots have had work done, lighting has been upgraded at eight schools and nine gym floors have been refinished.
  King said more than 4,500 devices for students and staff have been replaced or installed, food service staff has been trained, transportation routes have been completed and “ordering and delivery of hundreds of pallets of product has been completed so all of our classrooms are ready to go.”
  Melanie Meidel, the head of Human Resources, said that 262 new teachers have been hired including 119 for the implementation of full-day kindergarten (FDK) which she said is “right on task to what the plan was.” Meidel said 171 of the new teachers are new hires to the U-46 teacher’s union, 21 of whom were U-46 employees but not members of the union.
  All teachers who were sent Reduction in Force letters last spring have been offered their jobs back, 52 of whom returned, and 18 employees who were on a break in service or long-extended break returned according to Meidel. All para-educators have been recalled with more expected to be hired depending on numbers and Meidel said “we do have a pool of candidates who are ready, willing and able.”
  Suzanne Johnson, assistant superintendent for Teaching and Learning, said there was “a very robust and rigorous” professional development (PD) schedule over the summer including two eight-day offerings for FDK.
  “We want all of our students to start their educational career in U-46 feeling confident and safe in their learning environments and really want to help them just love learning and love being a student at U-46,” Johnson said. “So that was very successful this summer.”
  Johnson said there was PD offered for dual-language, Common Core aligned Eureka Math and Standards Based Grading among others.
  There were two days of district collaboration hosted at Elgin Community College, the last held on the day of the board meeting. There were 51 offerings for elementary teachers and 79 for secondary according to Johnson.
  “We do have to send a tremendous thank you to this team effort for providing professional development and launching the district collaboration day effort,” Johnson said. “It’s not only a teaching and learning effort, but we certainly partner with our sites. We partner with our operational staff to provide these opportunities, and we have to send a thank you to our presenters.”
  Johnson added: “This is no small undertaking when you have 2,400 teachers who will participate.”
  Board member Sue Kerr asked how early registration compared this year as well as if there were any positions still open.
  “We were ahead of our previous years going up into June,” King said of early registration. “We’re about in the same place right now. We expect probably anywhere in between 200 and 1,000 students that still need to register, but that typically streams on all the way through the start of school and the end of this week.”
  Meidel said that there were 18 positions open as of that day that had offers pending and three positions that there were some concern. She said there are long-term substitutes in place.
  “There’s only three that we’re nervous about out of the several hundred that were open,” Meidel said. “So to say three is really quite phenomenal.”
  The start of the school year is “bittersweet” for board member Jeanette Ward as her children return to classes. She said she attended the supply drop-off earlier that day at her daughters’ school.
  “I’m always a little bit sad when school starts up because I have so much fun with my kids over the summer, but the teachers are so happy to see them and they make it easier,” Ward said.
  Board members Traci Ellis and Donna Smith thanked the staff for their work.
  “I’ll just say kudos to you guys,” said Ellis who added: “What that takes [to open schools] from an operational standpoint is, I mean the magnitude of what it takes is huge.”
  Smith said that “we know there’s a lot more work to do as enrollment changes and a lot of other things,” but she was happy with the work that has been done so far.
  Along with the opening of schools, there are some important upcoming dates at the board level with public meetings to be held at the Educational Services Center: 355 East Chicago Street in Elgin.
  The first is a legislative committee meeting on Monday, Aug. 29 at 5 p.m. when the board will start work on changing its policy once again regarding access to closed session tapes after the board’s majority misinterpreted the Open Meetings Act last year. Despite the Illinois General Assembly clarifying that board members have, and previously had, the right to unfettered access to closed session recordings, Smith has said she still wants board members to come through her for access.
  A couple key dates are also upcoming regarding the Fiscal Year 2017 budget as a public hearing will be held on Monday, Sept. 12 and the board’s vote on Monday, Sept. 26, both meetings starting at 7 p.m. The budget can be accessed at u-46.org.

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