Superintendent's Blog
Welcome to the Superintendent's Blog! This weekly blog was started in July 2007 as a way to communicate important events and happenings to our BVSD community. You can now subscribe to this blog via an RSS Feed by clicking the orange RSS logo on the left side of this page. If you have any questions or would like to suggest a topic for a future entry, please email me at superintendent@bvsd.org. I look forward to hearing from you!
Chris King, Superintendent of BVSD |
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4/21/2008
On April 18 I notified all BVSD staff about another phase of the reorganization we are implementing here at the district. This is a continuation of the instructional reorganization announced last month by Deputy Superintendent Ellen Miller-Brown. The current changes are mostly at my cabinet level in response to the departure of our Chief Operating Officer Robert Hammond, who has been appointed as Colorado’s new Deputy Education Commissioner.
As I noted in my Friday communication to staff, our main goal in making these changes is to better serve all students in the district by moving resources closer to student learning.
Here at Boulder Valley School District, it truly is all about the kids. 4/7/2008
April’s Alcohol Awareness Month focuses on underage drinking, a problem that calls for cooperative efforts. BVSD has replaced outdated prevention techniques such as scare tactics with best practices that teach skill-building and address the causes of underage drinking.
Here are a few ways that parents/caregivers can partner with the schools to help prevent underage drinking:
- Set limits.
- Discuss expectations and laws.
- Teach decision-making and communication skills.
- Learn about the factors that increase the risk of teen alcohol use.
- Be positive role models.Reach out to others when help is needed.
3/30/2008
Third through 12th grade BVSD students will take the district’s School Climate Survey in the first two weeks after spring break. The purpose of this survey is to understand student perceptions about each school’s climate as a safe, orderly and supportive environment where learning can take place.
Survey items cover a range of content including safety, bullying behavior, school rules, opportunities to learn about different cultures, and the availability of adults at school to help a student. Some schools add their own items to the survey to address a school-specific program.
Responses to survey questions give us a picture of how well schools and the district are meeting student needs. Because the same survey has been given for several years, we are able to study trends and patterns in responses to help determine what programs and processes are working and which ones need improvement.
Please let me know what your student says about his or her experience taking this survey. 3/24/2008BVSD students and school staff are on spring break this week, returning to school on Monday, March 31. The Ed Center at 6500 Arapahoe will still be open, so just give us a call at 303-447-1010 if you need assistance with something.
I hope everyone enjoys some quality family time during the break. One of the causes closest to my heart is supporting parents and guardians in their vital role of ensuring children’s health, safety and well-being. Toward that end, we have been providing parents with a national newsletter this year that contains information about drug prevention and other parenting tips. See the parent section for an archive of the 2007-08 issues thus far.
Additionally, we are creating a new handbook that will be distributed to BVSD parents in the fall. This handbook will include articles on everything from nutrition to self esteem to curfews. It will also have information on district and community resources for parents.
I believe that strengthening our partnership with parents is one of the best ways we can support our students. 3/17/2008
After the board and members of my cabinet worked through the TIES process to create three goals, it became obvious that we were not going to achieve these lofty goals without dramatic changes in support to schools. I believe that the responsibility of the district is to establish high expectations and provide guidance to schools to reach these goals while giving resources to schools to achieve them.
In the past few months, we collected feedback through focus groups and various meetings with more than 240 people on how to reorganize the Ed Center to provide better support. The result of these sessions is current reorganization plan. We will continue to look for ways to become more efficient and to place experts closer to students. We will also continue to seek your recommendations about how to improve learning for all students.
Please email me with your feedback on this plan for closing the achievement gap in BVSD.
3/11/2008
As one of the top performing districts in the state, BVSD enjoys a warm relationship with the Colorado Department of Education. Our ties with CDE are now getting even stronger with the move of our Chief Operations Officer Robert Hammond into their ranks. We learned last week that Commissioner Dwight Jones has appointed Robert to be the new Deputy Commissioner of CDE effective sometime this summer.
Robert’s accomplishments during his tenure here are too numerous to detail in this corner of our website and he wouldn’t want that anyway, because he is a humble guy. He told me the other day that every one of his accomplishments was the result of staff and not him alone. He said he has been fortunate to have a very talented staff throughout his tenure at BVSD.
I think I can speak for everyone who has had the honor of working with Robert Hammond – the good fortune was ours.
Many thanks, Robert. 3/3/2008
On several school days from March 3 through 18, BVSD students in grades 3-10 will take Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) tests in reading, writing, math and science. For an exact schedule of testing and makeup dates, please visit the assessment page of our website. These assessments are required by the State of Colorado in order to "provide a picture of how students in the state of Colorado are progressing toward meeting academic standards, and how schools are doing to ensure learning success of students." For more information about CSAPs and state law, please visit the Colorado Department of Education website.
CSAP testing is an important tool for checking on the quality of education that BVSD provides for our students, so I hope parents will do everything within their power to help students be well fed and well rested for the CSAP testing days.
Spring break is right around the corner! 2/25/2008
Our Office of Planning and Assessment is sending out a Snapshot Survey to all parents in early March. Some elementary schools will distribute these surveys at parent-teacher conferences or in Friday folders. The rest of the surveys will be sent via U.S. mail.
Responses to the survey questions help us determine how well schools and the district are performing. Because the same survey has been given for several years, our school staff and School Improvement Team members are able to study trends and patterns in responses to help determine what programs and processes are working and which ones need improvement.
Parents: we need your feedback. It is important to have a high participation rate so that our survey data accurately reflects parents’ perceptions and opinions. We hope that you will take a few minutes to complete and return the survey. If you have any questions, please call 303-447-5147. 2/19/2008
If you’ve been reading this column since it debuted in July, you already know that BVSD is redesigning its website. IT is currently moving content over from our old site to the new one which is set to launch late March 2008.
The ultimate goal of this project which began in spring 2007 is to create a more user-friendly website for BVSD. After determining which software we would use and what the general timeline would be for the redesign, our IT division started gathering suggestions from the various groups who use the site: parents, students, community members, teachers and other staff. A survey was administered, focus groups met, and informal dialogues were conducted with people throughout the BVSD community. All the feedback IT received has been taken into account and as many of the ideas as possible have been incorporated into the new design.
Usability testing will be done March 10 and 12. If you would like to take part in this important final stage of the website redesign, please email our webmaster at webmaster@bvsd.org. 2/11/2008
Our third grade students will take the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) reading test on Feb. 20 and 21 next week. This test measures reading comprehension, one of the state's literacy standards, using questions that require written answers, as well as multiple choice items. The test is administered in English and Spanish. Parents of third graders will receive a report describing their child's reading achievement in early May.
Beyond identifying students who may need additional support, CSAP test results are used for our state’s school accountability reports, federally required adequate yearly progress measures, and as the cornerstone of our district continuous improvement efforts known as Tools of Inquiry for Equitable Schools. Despite their usefulness in offering us information about our progress over time and ideas of areas to improve, CSAP tests are one of several ways we measure our students' achievement and the success of our schools.
I encourage you to ask a teacher about the progress your child is making. | Edit in Browser | /_layouts/images/icxddoc.gif | /superintendent/blog/_layouts/formserver.aspx?XsnLocation={ItemUrl}&OpenIn=Browser | 0x0 | 0x1 | FileType | xsn | 255 | | Edit in Browser | /_layouts/images/icxddoc.gif | /superintendent/blog/_layouts/formserver.aspx?XmlLocation={ItemUrl}&OpenIn=Browser | 0x0 | 0x1 | ProgId | InfoPath.Document | 255 | | Edit in Browser | /_layouts/images/icxddoc.gif | /superintendent/blog/_layouts/formserver.aspx?XmlLocation={ItemUrl}&OpenIn=Browser | 0x0 | 0x1 | ProgId | InfoPath.Document.2 | 255 | | Edit in Browser | /_layouts/images/icxddoc.gif | /superintendent/blog/_layouts/formserver.aspx?XmlLocation={ItemUrl}&OpenIn=Browser | 0x0 | 0x1 | ProgId | InfoPath.Document.3 | 255 | | Edit in Browser | /_layouts/images/icxddoc.gif | /superintendent/blog/_layouts/formserver.aspx?XmlLocation={ItemUrl}&OpenIn=Browser | 0x0 | 0x1 | ProgId | InfoPath.Document.4 | 255 | | View in Web Browser | /_layouts/images/ichtmxls.gif | /superintendent/blog/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?listguid={ListId}&itemid={ItemId}&DefaultItemOpen=1 | 0x0 | 0x1 | FileType | xlsx | 255 | | View in Web Browser | /_layouts/images/ichtmxls.gif | /superintendent/blog/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?listguid={ListId}&itemid={ItemId}&DefaultItemOpen=1 | 0x0 | 0x1 | FileType | xlsb | 255 | | Snapshot in Excel | /_layouts/images/ewr134.gif | /superintendent/blog/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?listguid={ListId}&itemid={ItemId}&Snapshot=1 | 0x0 | 0x1 | FileType | xlsx | 256 | | Snapshot in Excel | /_layouts/images/ewr134.gif | /superintendent/blog/_layouts/xlviewer.aspx?listguid={ListId}&itemid={ItemId}&Snapshot=1 | 0x0 | 0x1 | FileType | xlsb | 256 |
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