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Next Meeting Previous Meetings
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May 24, 2004 Meeting |
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The Sevier County Special Education Parent Advisory Committee (SC SpEd PAC) held its eleventh meeting on May 24, 2004. Three members attended. Ongoing Stuff Linda Ogle and Samantha Ensley agreed to work the transition subcommittee with any other parents who may be interested. The subcommittee will look into all aspects of transition at all levels: home to school, primary to intermediate, intermediate to middle, middle to high school, and high school to adult/work life. However, at the May meeting, Jeff Romanczuk gave Samantha some materials, mainly on high school to work transition, and asked that they start with this transition area focus. Linda and Samantha will check at the four high schools to see both what good programs are in place already and what programs could be better. They will make recommendations to Dr. Sandy Enloe about what to keep, add, or change. Results of this year's parent survey are at CIMPrnt.pdf. With 283 parent surveys returned, among the “no” replies that jump out are questions 8 (about how involved they are in the school) and 12 (about the need for special transportation). Last year more so than this time, many parents said that they would like to be more involved, but have too many other obligations pulling at them. The transportation question will be clarified next year to separate those who don’t use school buses. Similarly, the early childhood questions will be more clearly directed at the parents of current 3 to 5 year olds only. New Stuff In addition to the parent survey results given above, other Continuous Improvement Monitoring Process results sent to State include:
Although Dan Deremer and Sevier County raise the most money for Area 10, we still have to come up with money each year for our athletes’ school-based t-shirts and travel costs. Dr. Enloe plans for us to do a Sevier County only golf tournament in the fall to offset these costs. (We can’t use IDEA or General Purpose funds for Special Olympics support.) John will set a date with Eagles Landing, but needs volunteers to plan and work the event. If you are interested, e-mail him at johnenloe@sevier.org. We sent 26 Sevier County students to the statewide Special Olympics on May 21-23, mostly from the high schools and some from middle schools. Since Area 10 was the first to have all systems get their paperwork in, we led off the opening ceremony parade and got to sit right up by the stage. We brought back a lot of bronze and silver, even some gold. More importantly, we brought back 26 athletes uninjured (except for some sunburn). The Trula Lawson Center, Pigeon Forge Middle, and Parkway Academy will be the three ESY sites this summer. It is June 21 to July 15 for students going up to four weeks, or until July 29 for students attending the whole six weeks. The first four weeks at the TLC for 3-5 year olds and Pigeon Forge Middle for all others, from 8:30 to 11:30 for goal work (with afternoon time at PFM for one-to-one tutoring). The 6-week one will run from 8:30 to 1:30 for goal work. Place to be determined. July 16 is a clean and pack day for the staff ending that day. Only 6-week students will attend. July 30 is the clean/pack up day for the longer program. They will be off Friday, July 2 for the July 4th holiday. The revised SY04-05 calendar was distributed and is at the top of the “calendar” link on the site. The only change is that the April 25 inservice day was moved two weeks to May 9 because April 25-29 will be TCAP testing week next year. Jeff attended the statewide standards setting session for the TCAP Alt ASA with 17 other teachers from across Tennessee. We looked at the current kindergarten, first grade, and second grade Terra Nova tests to separate the questions that would determine proficiency from those that were too advanced. We recommended deleting 30 to 40% of the questions on each test. We had to do it this way this year, though next year the ASA tests that will cover grade level content but be written at a lower reading level are supposed to be ready. If they aren’t ready, the ASA students will have to test out of grade level again. Contact Jeff by e-mail or phone (748-7711) if you would like more details. Next Meeting No date on our summer picnic yet. More to follow on this. The meeting schedule for the 2004-2005 school year will be posted by late June. |
Last school year our drop out rate for GenEd students in grades 9 to
12 was 2.2%; for SpEd it was 2.7%.