Dear East Williston School District Community:
As you know, the district recently instituted a new telephone system. We believe that when we work out a few “kinks” in implementation, it should provide you with much improved access to staff and improve home/school communication. While you are presently able to dial a directory when you call the building to enable you to reach voicemail for specific staff members, we are working on publishing those numbers directly on our website for your convenience. In the meantime, we have put the numbers to reach all district administrators and each school’s main office on the home page of our district website. Thank you for your patience and for letting us know when you have experienced difficulty so we can address specific issues of implementation.
The board of education monthly business meeting will be Monday, Sept. 30 at 8 p.m. in the Wheatley Auditorium.
Building administrators will present an overview of the new instructional initiatives in each of their schools, as well as a yearly review of Regents and AP high school data which concludes our students’ K-12 program.
As I’ve mentioned in an earlier newsletter, one of this year’s districtwide initiatives is a grade level list of Tier 2 academic vocabulary words. (A reminder that Tier 2 vocabulary words are not specific to a particular content area like Tier 3, but are those high utility academic vocabulary words found in many texts and across curricular areas.) The grade 5-12 words are now available on our website at www.ewsdonline.org > click on Curriculum on top navigation bar > click on Vocabulary Words so that you have the opportunity to partner with us in reinforcing this vocabulary as well.
Each building and teacher will implement the study of these words in a variety of ways and on a variety of schedules, with the expectation that all students in each grade level will know the words by the end of the year. The K-4 vocabulary words will be posted later this year, as elementary teachers are currently involved in implementing other related curriculum initiatives.
As you know, this past Wednesday, our school district instituted a lock-out in all three buildings as a result of the police report of shooting near the Roosevelt Field Mall. A lock-out permits our school day to go on as normal within the building. It means, though, that we do not permit anyone to enter the building during the time that we are in lock-out mode.
When we entered into lock-out mode we sent an e-mail message to parents for communication purposes and we also posted the information on our website. A few parents asked me why they did not receive a call as well, concerned that the emergency telephone calling system may not have operated correctly, or that their phone numbers were not properly listed.
While we still maintain our emergency calling system, we continue to be very cautious about utilizing it for only true emergencies when it is essential to reach parents so that parents are fully alert to those calls. Had we been in a situation where it was essential that we reach parents, as for example, an emergency dismissal or a lock-down or lock-out where children were remaining in the building after the time of dismissal, we would then, of course, immediately activate the calling system.
Congratulations to Wheatley senior Jacob Freund, who, as you may recall, was awarded first place in the Senior Historical Paper category at New York State History Day in Cooperstown last year. As a state champion, Freund represented New York at National History Day in College Park, Md. in June.
Freund’s winning research paper, entitled “The Homestead Act of 1862: America’s First Entitlement Program” will be published in the Journal of the West.
11th grade students in AP core participate in writing a paper for this contest. This year, the district under the direction of secondary chair for social studies department Brian McConaghy, will incorporate the National History Day Contest and research paper project into the seventh and eighth grade program as well as continuing the program in the high school.
By the way, you may have recently read in the news media that the New York State Education Department will be establishing a high school research paper as part of its high school graduation requirements. It is expected to be implemented next year. As a member of the New York State ELA Content Advisory Panel, I, along with other educators, was asked to recommend or submit examples of strong student research and writing to the New York State Education Department to assist the SED and Regents in the development of guidelines for the anticipated high school research paper requirement.
I submitted examples of our student work from our AP core history day research project. During my most recent visit to Albany, members of the State Education Curriculum Department told me that reviewing the exemplary student work was very helpful and, in fact, was influential in having the department consider guidelines that will enable the research paper to cross disciplines beyond the English class.
Taylor Brahms, a Wheatley senior, was honored with the Long Island Scholar-Artist of merit award.
As always, please e-mail me at kanase@ewsdonline.org or call me at 333-3782 with any questions, suggestions, and or any topics you would like to see for this newsletter.
