Weekly Message From Principal Joanne Bowers
9/27/07

“I assure you that you can pick up more information when you are listening than when you are talking..”

-The Trumpet of the Swan, E.B. White, 1970

With the nip in the air and the smell of autumn we are knee deep in school.  September has been busy for North Beach.  In addition to starting the year, we have had to make major decisions for the school.  At curriculum night, many of you heard about the proposal to suspend Spanish for at least this year and more if necessary.  I wanted to let you know that I looked far and wide over the summer for a good program that would work for us.  After the surveys came in last spring, AGC wanted to explore other options for Spanish as the survey from families and staff was unfavorable as a school program.  I spent time talking to other Principals who have Spanish in their schools. Most schools that have a program in the school have funded a full time certificated teacher to teach Spanish.  Since this is a residential Spanish program that was not a possibility.  I also talked to other programs and they too are basically a before or after school program.  I also inquired about what it takes to be an international school.  There is a process involved and steps to take.  Seattle Schools is looking for centralized schools however.

After a lot of searching and talking to our teachers and with PTA Board and AGC, our staff brought the information to the PTA board that Spanish was not the best use of their money and that they would prefer to have more time spent in the other enrichment areas if time were to be taken away from other curriculum areas.  With this information, the PTA Board made a proposal and AGC acted on it.  We will talk about it more at our Thursday PTA general meeting. 

Good news is that we are almost finished signing contracts with an artist, musician and journalist in residence.  These were/are difficult residencies to staff as the scheduling makes it difficult for anyone to have a “normal” job if their work with us is most of the afternoons.  Even though our PTA has graciously increased many of the stipends, it would not be enough for anyone to live on without another job.  With that in mind, I think we have found some very committed individuals to enrich our student’s lives.

North Beach classrooms are brimming with students and everyone is flexing and working to make the best of a crowded situation.  Our only overload is in Ms. Michel’s class.  We do have full classes in rooms 1,3,5, 9, 14 and 15 as well.  As a staff we talked about the best decision to help all the classrooms as well as fulfill the contractual obligations of room 4.  Hiring a .5 reading and .5 math teacher, helps all the overloaded classrooms with the least transitions for students.  Hiring a .5 Instructional Aid fulfills the contractual obligations of our teacher contract and we were able to this with our school baseline funds.

We also have had a tumultuous week last week with our childcare.  Those of you using the service have known that it has been operating as a volunteer site because licensing was in the works.  Last Thursday, we were told that on-site childcare would be suspended, as the licensing process had not been started.  Friday we met with the Unit Director, Traci Huse and we know that the process will be completed soon and childcare will be permanent here.  There will be no need to move it off site.  It took a lot of work and a lot of phone calls but we were able to sustain the service which I know is very important to all our families who are currently using it.

Lastly, I wanted to congratulate all our students who were nominated this month for the peaceful behavior.  It is always an honor I believe to possess and model such behavior and I am proud of all our students who were recognized at our assembly on the 24^th.  We will continue with our virtue assemblies each month.  Next month we are working on RESPECT.  We will introduce it early in the month and celebrate our students modeling Respect at the end of the month.   We will let you know the specifics.

Peace,

Joanne Bowers

Principal