Principal’s Report
November 1, 2006

Thanks for letting me miss this meeting tonight. Lesley is away, and it was important for one of us to attend an award ceremony at GSA for Ariel.

Budget: I don’t foresee any new extraordinary projects that will require a big bump in spending. So it’s mostly a question of keeping up with what we’re doing and making allowances for preventive maintenance and some building catch-up work. One item: We ought to have an outdoor tool shed of some kind to store our gasoline engine power broom and fuel; shovels and other materials. $1,000 or so, pre-fab. Painting needs to be considered. We took it out of the budget last year and had Denny do one side of the building. When that happens, things go undone inside.
    Kitchen equipment should stay at current level ($4,000) in case old things decide to break. Dishwasher broke Monday, for instance.
    Regarding staffing and budget: we’ll need to look once more at keeping the ed tech position, and what to do about counseling and health and gifted and talented. But overall, I’m thinking “cost of living” increases, rather than “new items” increases.

Homework Club: This innovation by Cheri Pelletier has been very popular over the last month. Lots of kids are staying to do homework for 45 minutes after school; parents like it too!

Target Grant: Deletra Schamle applied for and received a grant of $2,000 from Target to support her Readers Theater program. This will buy supplies, equipment, and a stipend for her time. This program attracts as many kids as team sports, and runs throughout the year. It’s popular and effective and takes a huge time commitment. So I think the stipend ought to be in the budget, and double a coaching stipend, given the time involved. In general, I would encourage teachers to come up with activities and clubs for after school—and I think we should set aside some money for stipends to make them work. It’s a small price to pay for enrichment of our program.

Foreign language:  I have no concrete news to report, except that a potential French teacher candidate is not available. Another potential candidate for teaching Spanish has appeared and is in the early stages of getting to know the school and the job.
Building and Grounds: We’re finally getting around to some electrical work that has been neglected: outside lighting at the side and rear of the school. We’re replacing old fixtures, replacing bulbs and cages on another, so that the playground can be lighted. On Open House night, I was cringing as kids ran around in the dark—with all that dark green playground equipment lurking at forehead height! Clunk!
    Matt Basile is due to repair a broken vent pipe in the kitchen wall outback. It gave us a smelly situation for a few hours until we figured out the source.

Technology…is flowing smoothely with kids getting involved in lots of new projects involving digital photography, publishing, web site creation, mapping the building with Sketch Up. We’re going to be getting Note Taker for the 6th grade laptops, bringing them up to the capability of the MLTI iBooks. Bernie and Cheryl came back from the two-day NoteShare workshop very enthusiastic for doing the things they saw demonstrated.

Camp Kieve: Parent feedback has been positive about the experience our kids had last week. I think for a small rural school like ours, it’s really a good experience to provide for social reasons, and they accomplished some terrific physical feats as well. Next year: just four kids. Smaller expense. Let’s keep it in the budget.

Halloween Parade: What a hoot! Lance and Lisa Burton put a lot of time and good humor into the Ghost Galleon contribution. Photos of the parade are on the web site now: www.adamsschool.com/halloween2006.html



Todd R. Nelson

Enclosures:

“Train Time,” Maine Public Radio, October 30, 2006
“The Winter Count,” Bangor Metro, November, 2006.