Principal’s Report
October 4, 2006


Fire Drills and Lock Down practices: Our second fire drill of the year will be tomorrow. Yesterday we practiced a lock down: teachers responding to a PA system prompt to lock their rooms and stay in a safe spot. It worked quite well as far as a quick alert and safe student-positioning system. However, we did not have the ability to lock all rooms! No teachers had keys to their rooms! I spent a couple of hours tracking down all the mystery keys. We can now lock all but one classroom. It’s a balancing act, obviously, between feeling safe in a small town and being vigilant in uncertain times. Recent national tragedies are an obvious prompt. We can at least defend against the danger we see in time. Another fire drill with full response by CFD will occur on Tuesday, October 17. Chris Marzoff is coordinating on the FD side.

Keys: The locksmith will come on Tuesday to create keys for the doors we need to lock and can’t, master keys for the whole building, locks for doors that are not lockable, keys for the medical records fire safe, etc. This is long overdue! Note for budget season: We need to put a safety bar door closer on the fire exit by grade 2-3 classroom. Surprised we haven’t been cited for that.

Kieve for 7th graders: Information night on October 10 at Orland school. Our parents have been notified to come and learn from the program offered by Bob Grant of Kieve.

Soccer Round Robin: The only date that would work for rescheduling is Monday, October 16. 3:30-7:30…under the lights at MMA field.

Halloween Parade: The usual time and route. 1:00pm on Halloween, in costume, with fire truck and special guest float! I recommend Pirate costumes.

Grounds keeping and construction: Cedar chips now cover not just the new playground area, but the entire non-grass area of the grounds. Much more appealing to look at, safer for playing on, and hopefully even a deterrent to red ant infestations! We got a good deal, but it is a $2100.00 expense that we’ll need to accommodate in budget transfers later in the fiscal year. Nature center: We await cedar shingles from HOME. All other materials are on site and ready to go. Still looking for some windows, from Tim Sampson perhaps, so we can frame in and put boards up. No kids will work on roof, but we hope to have kids putting on boards and shingles from the ground soon.

Kitchen Equipment: We budgeted $4,000 for a new stove this year. Shall we proceed with this, or wait and see if we can stomach one more year with ol’ unreliable? We’re in good shape with our refrigeration equipment.
 
Time-Warner cable: The cable guy came today to pull cable through our new conduit. However, they assumed that the cable had been pulled. Furthermore, the cable needs to make its way back to the closet with the modems in it. Therefore, we need to get the cable through the conduit and all the way to the modem closet, and then call them to return.  Denny and I will work on it.

Ellsworth American article this week: Check the EA for a story on our African drumming days. Nick Gosling took photos and interviewed me and Kevin Campbell, also observed kids drumming.

Parent Open House date set: October 17. Open House is a little later this year—which gives us more to show. So classroom projects, artwork, and laptop demonstrations will be on tap. One hour long. Welcome upstairs in large classroom, a few slides and comments. Would the Board like to participate in a welcome, introduction, words re survey?

Foreign language: Just to be clear, one parent has registered dismay at the appearance that we are dropping foreign language. I’ve explained that this is not my sense. We are committed to replacing our foreign language, just unsuccessful for various obvious reasons in doing so. So the foreign language time, but not salary or supplies money, is being shifted to increased technology teaching. And that money is safe and sound pending use for allotted purpose. No one at Adams School is against teaching a foreign language—as soon as possible! Meanwhile, we are teaching as much technology as possible! One parent, leaving the laptop meeting for 6-8 parents, said that the technology training was a better use of time since kids get so little, if any, in high school.

New Nurse: Next week we will welcome Debbie Candage as our new school nurse. Debbie is very familiar with the schools in the union, having subbed for Lesley Johnson a few years ago.



Todd Nelson
Principal


Enclosures:

Train article in CSM from 8th grade trip last year