Cuts take center stage tonight

The proposed budget cuts are high on tonight's agenda when the Gang of 11 meet during this month's regular Board meeting (click here for the agenda).

Click here for a GCS statement from yesterday's Board Work session.

Click here for today's News & Record coverage.

What's interesting is that the spin machine contends the effects on students and staff will be minimal. But will it? The supply budget is being cut. If teachers do not have supplies, instruction is negatively affected in some way.

It was good to see Board member Deena Hayes at yesterday's work session. And she said this during the meeting:

“There’s a lot of places in there I wish we didn’t have to make (cuts) but they’ve done the best they can.”

Have they? I'm not convinced yet. Again, prove me wrong.
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Other items of interest on the agenda, including the recent incident at High Point Central. See this statement from Central's student body president and head of the school's human relations club, Leigh Fairley.

(Guilford School Watch continues to receive very good comments on this issue--thank you).

Also, what to do about Kirkman Park Elementary School in High Point.

Because this is the fifth year in a row that the school failed to make federal benchmarks in reading, drastic countermeasures must be taken.

An excerpt from the Kirkman Park agenda item (very interesting reading here, folks):

If a Title I school does not make AYP in the same subject for five years, the school must continue taking corrective action measures, offering public school choice and supplemental educational services and develop an alternate governance (restructuring) plan, which must include one of the following:

1. Reopen the school as a public charter school.
2. Replace all or most of the staff responsible for the lack of progress.
3. Enter into a contract with a private company to operate the school.
4. Turn over operation and management of the school to the state.
5. Implement other fundamental reforms approved by the state.

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GCS staff is recommending option #5; to create a school within a school. The school wants to keep the Spanish Immersion magnet program, and refine it, similar to the Spanish Immersion program at Jones Elementary.

E.C. :)