Lee looks closely at school choice

Superintendent Jason P. McCandless (center) discusses school choice with the Lee School Committee.

LEE – School choice is becoming a major topic of interest for Lee Public Schools.

“There is not a single thing that costs the same as 1993,” said Superintendent Jason P. McCandless.

When the school choice program started in Massachusetts that year, it cost towns and school departments $5,000 for any student choicing out of their districts. Nearly 20 years later, that cost remains the same.

Districts can opt out of accepting choice students, but not out of sending them.

This is a growing issue in Lee, as Dr. McCandless admitted last year was not a great year for the district. The number of students choicing out was up, and the number choicing in was down.

“It was the worst year we’ve had in eight or nine years,” he admitted.

In a presentation to the school committee on Sept. 11, Dr. McCandless shared the choice numbers for the 2011-12 school year. The district sent 76 students out and got 95 students back in last year. For the 95 students choicing in, the district received over $549,000.

The numbers for this year aren’t finalized, but Dr. McCandless estimated the district would receive $510,000-520,000 in choice money for the 2012-2013 school year.

As a result of the presentation, the administration and the Lee School Committee will be starting to send out surveys to families of students that have both choiced out and in of the district. They are doing this in an effort to build on their perceived strengths and determine what their weaknesses are.

New evaluation process

Dr. McCandless also went into detail on the new teacher and administrator evaluation process in Massachusetts, which included a wealth of information from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website.

In the new system, educators will be rated as “exemplary,” “proficient,” “needs improvement” or “unsatisfactory.” Depending on the result, they will then have to follow a self-directed growth plan, a directed-growth plan (principal-led) or an overall improvement plan.

They will also be rated as having a low, moderate or high impact on student learning, which will primarily be measured through test scores.

The evaluations will go through a five-step cycle: self-assessment; analysis, goal-setting and planning; implementation of the plan; formative assessment and evaluation; and summative evaluation.

Administrators will be evaluated on the four standards of instructional leadership, management and operations, family and community engagement and professional culture. Teachers are evaluated under the headings of curriculum, planning and assessment; teaching all students; family and community engagement; and professional culture.

The new evaluation process will go into effect for Lee (and the rest of the state) in the 2013-14 school year. Currently, only “Race to the Top” schools are required to use this process.

To prepare for the change, Lee is conducting after-school sessions for teachers and training sessions for administrators.

Lee Youth Commission

Anyone who is interested in joining the Lee Youth Commission should send a letter or email of interest to the Lee Select Board at town hall or cbelair@town.lee.ma.us before the group’s Sept. 19 meeting.

Posted by Catherine M. Krummey on September 13, 2012. Filed under Education News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry