Closure Survey + No October Shuffle!

Hello, fellow Sacajaweans! I have two items to share this week:

First: Please Take the Closure Survey!

Please complete this short survey about what you would like to see happen to families and the building if this is Sac’s last year. 

I believe that closure announcements are coming very soon. I also believe that mergers are the district’s default plan, and, for Sac, I think that means merging into John Rogers. The conversations I’ve had with Sac families would indicate that this is not the preferred outcome for most.

I’d like to get concrete data in front of district staff before they make a merger-based closure announcement. My hope is to maximize the chances that that plan can be adapted to something that fits our community’s needs before an announcement starts to entrench different cohorts into fixed positions.

So, whatever your preferred outcome, please fill out the survey! At a minimum we should all be on the same page about what various members of the Sac community are looking for in a closure outcome.

Second: Effectively Zero October Shuffle!

I want to give a shout-out to Superintendent Shuldiner and district staff for the lack of an October shuffle this year. Shuldiner mentioned in yesterday’s “Sunday email” that only three gen ed teachers, and something close to 10 teachers total, were moved around this year.

This is a huge improvement from past years. It’s all due to the June adjustments.

Folks who’ve been at Sac for awhile will remember the October in which more than half of the gen ed classrooms had to be reconfigured in October because we gained two teachers in the shuffle. What a mess that was.

Sac’s enrollment is 22 students below what the district predicted for us in February, and down about 40 students from what we had at the end of last year. We were definitely going to lose two teachers between last year and this one. That was always going to be hard.

And it’s true that the timing of the communication of Ms. Cox’s displacement in particular*, coming in the last two days of the school year, felt unkind in a way that was avoidable. Let’s hope that next year’s iteration of the June adjustment is more compassionate.

But.

This year, Barry and his colleagues in the central office had all summer to plan for the actual classroom configurations that will be Sac’s reality this year. No toiling over master schedules that went up in smoke in October. No shifting of kids out of classrooms and away from teachers that they had already spent a month becoming familiar with. No teachers having to reconfigure their rooms and learning plans for a new set of kids.

That’s a huge improvement. And it’s one that doesn’t even take money out of the precarious operational budget!

I’ll take it, and with gratitude.

~

*Ms. Cox has been spotted subbing at Sac, which makes Sac very lucky indeed!