Sunday, January 4, 2015

Making history: Walking the walk

Well, we actually did it. We submitted our proposal to the Rochester City School Board on time. Shortly thereafter, they unanimously approved the full proposal and the budget! Can I get an "amen"?! We are currently awaiting approval from NYSED.

Here is the link to the proposal, the budget, and all appendices: http://www.warner.rochester.edu/researchprojects/projects/EastHigh

We have included all our meeting minutes and all collected documents in the interest of full disclosure and transparency. Take a look at let me know what you think in the comments.

It took me a while to post this information. One, I was busy working on the proposal for the past six months and; two, I needed a breather. I have spent the two weeks of "break" focusing on sleep and knitting. Now I am gearing up to start what Steve calls "the hard part". The hard part?! Geez. Running a high school ... what was I thinking?

All joking aside, I am really proud of what we have done. We worked our butts off the past six months meeting with over 1500 people to get input on what they want to see at the new East. We were able to talk to every student in attendance on September 22, well over 1300 youth. They were amazing. You can find the analysis of the data we gathered at the link above in one of the many appendices.

We are in the final stages of interviewing candidates for what we have called the Deputy EPO Director. This person will be right under Steve Uebbing as the Superintendent. Basically, we will be our own district and report directly to the Rochester City School Board. This way, we shed a lot of the bureaucracy of central office. A key to what makes our project unique is that we renegotiated contracts with all four unions: Rochester Teachers Association (teachers' union), BENTE (staff union), RAPP (paraprofessionals union), and ASAR (administrators union). These new contracts will make all the difference as we move to implementation (provided NYSED approves our proposal). All staff, everyone, will have to apply to work at East. This way, we can ensure that everyone is "all in, all the time" - our catch phrase. Only people who are inspired by the proposal and agree to the new contracts will end up working with us.

We are making history ... stay tuned.


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