March 22, 2010 at 6:30 PM - BOE Meeting Template

Rationale:  The regular Board of Education meeting will be held in the Board of Selectmen conference room at the Town Hall immediately following the budget presentation to the Board of Finance beginning at 6:30 p.m..

Rationale:  Anna Poitras, SHS Business Ed teacher has submitted her intent to retire at the conclusion of this school year.  Ms. Poitras has been employed by the Somers BOE since 1970.

Rationale: 

The K-10 Science curriculum was approved by the Board of Education in June of 2008.  The nine documents up for approval are the 11^th and 12^th grade electives that have not been previously approved.  Included are:

Anatomy and Physiology
AP Biology
AP Chemistry
Astronomy
Biotechnology
Chemistry – Honors
Marine Biology
Physics
Science and Law

Rationale: 

The Curriculum Development Guide was revised to ensure that our curriculum and curriculum development process meets the state guidelines for curriculum.  In previous iterations, the UbD units have not been included as part of the curriculum.  As the next cycle of curriculum revision begins, subject areas will have to include their unit plans in the official curriculum documents.

The revision timeline has been adjusted to ensure that multiple core areas of instruction are not in revision at the same time and that roughly the same number of teachers are engaged in revision in any given year.  This will cause less variation in the amount of money requested for curriculum revision from year-to-year and ensure that the elementary staff is not overloaded with simultaneous revisions.

Rationale: 

As part of implementing their approved curriculum, the Tech Ed. teachers at the high school have requested classroom sets of three books. 

 

Course	Book
Welding	Welding Technology Fundamentals
Solid Modeling and Design	Print Reading for Industry
Digital Photo	Complete Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Digital Photographers

The books are available in Central Office for perusal.  Second warning/adoption will be included on the 4/12/10 board agenda.

Rationale:  This policy was first warned at the 3/8/10 BOE meeting and is now ready for adoption.

Rationale:  The recommendation from the CSDE Commissioner is to increase our number of seats for Choice students for the 2010-2011 school year by 11 students.  Given the uncertainty of our budget and the potential for significant increases in class sizes over the next few years, acceptance of this recommendation will dramatically impact our class size problem.

Rationale:  In accordance with the provisions of Connecticut General Statutes Section 10-151 applicable to the nonrenewal of nontenured teachers, the law requires that nontenured teachers be notified prior to April 1st that their contracts will not be renewed at the end of the school year.  I am requesting the board's vote to nonrenew the contract of Susan Atwood as per my recommendation and approval for the superintendent to notice such nontenured staff.