I.S. 206B families will need support with displacement as a result to COVID-19, understanding how to meet the socio-emotional needs of their children (i.e. access to counseling), meeting their own socio-emotional needs (i.e. access to parental groups, family counseling, etc.), training in school applications, and understanding academic expectations for the upcoming school year.
Next year, staff will need socio-emotional supports with grieving.  We lost a member of our school due to COVID-19 and the following year will be the first time all staff members will be back in the school building.  Staff will also need training in Leader In Me and Restorative Practices to support the socio-emotional needs of each other and the children they serve.  Also, staff will need training in the Next Generation Standards, Expeditionary Learning curriculum, Amplify Science curriculum, and implementation of other discussion techniques.

Ensuring that all students have access to the internet and a working device. 

Providing students with resources to use at home.

Additionally, funding would be used to work with our partner organizations to successfully transitioned students and families in the post-Covid-19 era.

These choices in spending will benefit students by supporting them with the socio-emotional supports needed to be successful in a potentially stressful academic environment.

The challenges this year continue to be navigating the reality of COVID and the social emotional toll this pandemic has taken on me, my family, my staff, my students, my parents and my school community.   It is hard to lead when you are leading through loss.   

The Instructional Leadership Team took control of the PPT on small-group work and made it their own. 

The facilitators for Continuous Learning also took on the role and decided on how they wanted to work with their students on SEL.

The positive aspect, this is the year our communications with families have increased by using emails, googgle phone, Knivo, etc. Our next step is having them become accountable to checking and monitoring those communication trails. 

I would love to be able to fund extra teachers just for AIS.

-Navigating expectations which are still very unclear 

-Maintaining the positive aspects of this year, including teacher learning time, dedicated SEL time,  use of Microsoft Teams and Google Meet for video meets rather than in-person or phone calls,

-Continuing to build upon the work of the blended learning model, even with all students and staff back in the building.   Though there have been issues to navigate including access to brick and mortar spaces, device and wi-fi issue,  blended learning has brought overall added value to the lives all students and teachers including student and teacher flexibility in learning, for teachers in how they present material and for students in the pace and variety of the learning approaches they experience; improved time management for tailored groups through the use of collaborative live streaming, breakout rooms which allows additional time for teachers to work 1:1 or in small groups; increased student engagement with the use of multimodal literacies being incorporated into all lessons; strategic and impactful differentiation due to the manner in which blended learning incorporates a variety of instructional approaches and high-quality digital educational tools allow teachers to have a clear formative measure of each student’s individual learning level and provide activities and instruction that meet the child where they are; the overall increase in the confidence and feeling of empowerment experienced by students as they have exponentially expanded their technological skills and competencies over the course of one year

-Physical and mental wellness affiliations for EVERY school to access and utilize in order ot support the variety of needs that all stakeholders will have in the years to follow based on their experiences this past year. 

-Principals being provided with expectations with enough advance notice to ensure that all stakeholders including families, students and staff to feel comfortable and are able to rebuild some of the trust that was impacted due to lack of systemic timely and respectful communication. 

2. Additional funding for maintaining quality partnerships (especially the Arts), and funding for providing coverage for teacher learning time with these partnerships.

3. Funding for ongoing quality learning partnerships for Parent Coordinators such as Harvard’s Family Engagement in Education: Creating Effective Home and School Partnerships for Student Success for PCs to learn more about community outreach, community resources, marketing, understand what the latest research on family engagement means for our school, understand what systemic, integrated family engagement looks like (as opposed to random acts of engagement, explore the infrastructure, roles, and skills required to sustain an effective engagement strategy, and learn how to define and measure outcomes and to evaluate practice.

3. Funding for dedicated Tier 3 programs and training for teachers.  In order to impact Tier 3 students, those providing the service must be highly qualified in the area that the student is struggling and utilize a program which embeds skills and strategies tailored to ach individual student’s needs.  For example, this year, we partnered with Great Leaps with a focus on 23 of our Grade 3 and 4 Tier 3 students.  Great Leaps will provide 15 min a day of direct 1:1 tutoring for each child for about 8 weeks.  Our gaol is to move the students from Tier 3 to Tier 2 in the 8 weeks.  In addition, Great Leaps is training 39 staff members so that we can provide this support in-house throughout the school year.  The funding needed for Great Leaps to provide the 1:1 service is approximately 350.00 per child.  Having staff trained will be helpful, however, providing time for staff to provide the Tier 3 intervention is also costly.  Either way, to sustain QUALITY 1:1 Tier 3 supports,  there is a tremendous cost and additional funding would be helpful.

IF FUNDING WAS LIMITLESS…

We would make use of our rooftop space!  Our thoughts have ben a greenhouse, a tennis court, a handball court, a mediation station, and a sensory space. 

-How do we maintain and continue to build upon the intimate relationships developed between families and staff while our students were learning from home? -How can we deepen our understanding of blended learning as an instructional delivery model that gives students more control over their learning and leveraging the opportunity of personalization that blended learning can provide, to enable us o move the practice of blended learning forward?  

-How can we creatively build blended learning into our schedule to provide space/time in the classroom to allow teachers to do things they currently need more time to do lime individual and small group instruction tailored to individual needs of each student AND to embed continued teacher learning time each day?  

-How can we continue to build trusting relationships with families and students with the goal of increasing comfortability of being back in our building together.