November 23, 2010

Study session

Steve Holmes, executive director of secondary, presented information and the Governing Board discussed options for high school facilities expansion being funded by $9.9 from the state School Facilities Board (SFB). The district is looking at opportunities for providing a smaller school within a school for freshmen and at opportunities for Career & Technical Education (CTE) programs and partnerships with the Pima County Joint Technological Education District (JTED).

Desert View High School has had freshman houses for three years. It has two Digital Scholars houses, each of which has 90 students who are enrolled in Honors courses.

Equally important as looking at the concept of smaller learning environments is having to look at maximizing school facilities dollars, possibly through partnerships. CTE/JTED program expansion offers not only programmatic advantages but possible funding partnership. There may be opportunities to equip classrooms with CTE/JTED funds.

SFB funding will provide roughly 60,000 square feet of space. Classroom space is estimated at 900 square feet, and science labs are estimated at 1,200 square feet. Options for using some of the space are student centers or teacher centers. The Board discussed the option of not adding classrooms at STAR Academic Center to maximize the construction dollars for adding space at Desert View and Sunnyside high schools.

The Board will hold a follow-up study session Dec. 14.

Regular meeting

Superintendent's Report (see Powerpoint)

General consent agenda

EdJobs funds
SUSD received almost $3.2 million from the federal Education Jobs Fund Program, which was created to save and/or create jobs. The funding is being provided for 1.5 years and must be spent by September 2012. The district is proposing to use these funds for teaching positions as well as some school office positions. Executive Director of Information Technologies Javier Baca presented a proposal to use some of the EdJobs funds to provide sufficient technology support at school sites to ensure the success of the district’s technology initiatives.

Being proposed is the creation of 21 positions for teacher technology facilitators. These positions would be filled by teachers already at the schools, who would return to their classrooms when funding for the positions would end. The district could recruit current student teachers to step into teaching positions.

This proposal will be brought back to the Governing Board on December 14 after being presented to the Interest-Based Bargaining (IBB) group. At the Dec. 14 meeting, the agenda may contain both a request for approval of the positions as well as approval of hires for second semester.