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Williston Public School District No. 1

Superintendent’s Newsletter

April 8-12, 2013

AdvancEd

Williston Public School District No. 1 has begun work to prepare for our School Accreditation.  Below is information about the process.  

What is the AdvancEd Process and what does it have to do with the Williston Public School District No. 1?

1.    IT’S THE LAW!   The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction, by law, requires that school districts participate in an ongoing school improvement process.

2.    In order for our school district to be accredited, we must have a school improvement process in place. This process must be evaluated by a team from outside of our school district.  Being accredited means that the school district has met high quality standards of education.

Who decides if we are accredited? 

AdvancEd is the organization that WPSD No.1 uses to do their external evaluation.  AdvancEd gathers  a team of educators from across the state with a variety of strengths in education to visit our school district for three or four days and do an evaluation of how our school district is engaging in the school improvement process.

How do they decide if we have met the goal of accreditation? 

They look at AdvancEd Standards for Quality.  They will rate our school district and give commendations and recommendations.

Standard 1:  Purpose and Direction
Standard 2:  Governance and Leadership
Standard 3:  Teaching and Assessing for Learning
Standard 4:  Resources and Support Systems
Standard 5:  Using Results for Continuous Improvement

When was our last external review for accreditation and when is the next one?

Our last external review was done in April of 2009.  Our next external review will be done April 6-9, 2014.

March 18, 2013

Welcome to our new weekly update from the Superintendent’s office.  It is our goal to provide you with timely information about the things we are working on at the Superintendent’s office.  Please feel free to call or email us with questions, comments, and concerns.

Newsletter Title:

We are soliciting titles for this newsletter.  Please send your title name to:  Pam.Lambert@sendit.nodak.edu

Exposure Control Plan and Universal Precautions:

You recently viewed a Blood borne Pathogens lesson on SafeSchools. Below is the Exposure Control Plan for our district.  Additional information may be found in the

District Policy Manual:  ACBB:  Significant Contagious Diseases.

Please contact your building administrator or the district office, if you would like a copy of this policy.

UNIVERSAL PRECAUTIONS & SANITARY CLEANUP           

School personnel should practice hygienic procedures when disposing of all human secretions and excretions since they may contain infectious agents capable of spreading disease and since carriers of infectious or contagious diseases are often unknown.

The steps listed below should be followed in all such clean-up situations.  The procedures are not intended to replace basic common sense principles of health and hygiene.

Attending to the Victim

1.       Wear disposable gloves when cleaning up all secretions and excretions. 

2.       Have the victim apply a barrier to the affected area if possible.  Any secretions/excretions should be removed with disposable paper towels, gauze, or rags. 

3.       Secure all cleansing materials, gloves, and other soiled items (e.g., diapers) in plastic bags. Tie bags and dispose in a sanitary disposal site.

4.       Bag and send home soiled clothing and/or other personal items.  Do not clean or rinse these items at school.

Cleaning & Disinfecting Environment

1.       Wear disposable gloves when cleaning up the affected area. 

2.       Sprinkle the affected area with tuberculocidal agent, absorbent chlorine powder, or disinfectant appropriate to the surface as soon as possible.

3.       Clean affected area with disposable paper towels, rags, or with a scoop and brush. Scoops or implements to be reused should be washed and sprayed with disinfectant.

4.       Secure gloves and all waste in a plastic bag. Tie bag and dispose in a sanitary disposal site.

Cleanup for Attending Employee

1.    Using the following procedures, wash hands immediately after completing the cleaning and disinfecting process.

a.                                           Wet hands and apply antiseptic soap.

b.      Rub hands together vigorously for at least 15‑30 seconds, paying particular attention to fingertips, nails, and jewelry.

2.    Clean any exposed skin with an appropriate antiseptic (e.g., alcohol, iodine, etc.) and apply a leak proof dressing if appropriate.

AdvancEd Visitation:

Dr. Viola will be visiting the Jamestown Public School District on March 11-13 as a member of the AdvancEd visitation team.  Her participation will help our district better prepare for our visit in April, 2014.
 

Sequestration Update:

The sequestration will result in a 5.1% cut in federal funding beginning in July, 2013, if Congress does not make changes before the end of March.  Federal funding is based on the free/reduced count from the previous October count, foster care numbers and enrollment.  The district F/R count is down 10% this past year.  Although we do not know the exact amount of the federal funding reduction for the 2013-14 school year, we anticipate a loss of up to $90,000.  We have been fiscally conservative with our federal dollars over the years and we will use carryover funds to continue to fund our Title I teacher positions.

 
Kindergarten Enrollment: 

We have 175 students registered for the 2013-14 school year.  This is about the same number as we had registered last year at this time.  If you know of someone with a student attending kindergarten next year, please encourage them to come to the district office to enroll.

 
Del Easton School Graduates:

DEAS has graduated 10 students this year. A total of 184 semester hours of credit have been earned by DEAS students.


Modular Classrooms:

On March 13, Gerry Fisher, Assistant Director of the Energy Infrastructure & Impact Office of the North Dakota Department of Trust Lands, will visit Williston to tour the modular classrooms at McVay and WMS.  Our district received grant funding from the Department of Trust Lands to lease the modulars.

 

Superintendent’s Newsletter

December 2011

Growth of the School District

A meeting was held with oil industry representatives to share with them the growth of the Williston Public School District for the 2012-13 school year.  Our hope is to obtain financial help from the oil industry.  In addition, I will be meeting with the Governor next week to discuss the same concerns of the rapid growth of student enrollment for the fall and seek solutions from him.

 

The current enrollment for the Williston Public School District at this time is 2650 students.  Below is a list of the potential additional students expected for the fall of 2012.  

 

POTENTIAL ADDITIONAL STUDENTS

Apartments (760 units completed by Fall 2012) = 300 students

Homes (405 homes completed by Fall 2012) = 600 students

Homeless (1000 additional campers by Fall 2012) = 300 students

TOTAL POTENTIAL NEW STUDENTS BY FALL 2012 = 1200 students

 

TOTAL STUDENT ENROLLMENT BY FALL 2012 = 3850 STUDENTS

At the next school board meeting, the school board will be considering selling bonds with a portion of the oil and gas impact funds we receive from the state of North Dakota.  This will provide us with 9.8 million dollars.  We could probably build one elementary school with this funding.  However, this is not enough to deal with the 1200 students who will be coming.   I will continue to work, plan and problem solve for our future.    I have requested a meeting with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to discuss our concerns.  

 

ESEA Flexibility Waiver
It is still undecided whether or not North Dakota will choose to apply for an ESEA Flexibility Waiver in February 2012 or at a later date. The advisory group that the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI) established to address this issue meets again in December to review the progress made on Principle III (Principal/Teacher Education Guidelines), as well as discuss the issue of submitting an application in February, 2012.

 

The U.S. Department of Education (USDE) has posted the applications for the ESEA flexibility requests for the 11 states that applied by the November 14, 2011 deadline. You can access them at www.ed.gov/esea/flexibility.

 

Super Committee Fails to Reach Agreement

Last week, the Super Committee announced that they were unable to reach a budget agreement which will mean automatic across the board cuts to many programs, including education, for fiscal year 2013 which will impact the 2013-2014 school year. In addition, there is a strong likelihood that we will also see cuts in education for the 2012-2013 school year.  All school districts will need to prepare for further cuts in educational funding for the next two years.

 

Continuing Resolution

On Friday, November 18, 2011, President Obama signed the 2012 Continuing Appropriations Act which funds the USDE through December 16, 2011. The Act maintains the 1.5 percent across the board cut for several fiscal year 2011 federally funded programs. These cuts were released to districts on October 20, 2011. There are no new cuts at this time.

 

North Dakota State Influenza Report

As of December 5th, 2011, there are only 6 reported / lab identified influenza cases.  School absenteeism has not yet been affected with 0.53% absenteeism.  There have been zero hospitalizations and no deaths due to influenza reported. The most recent data can be found at North Dakota Surveillance Report.

 

  
Williston Public School District #1 started school on August 24th.  We had a great start to the new school year.   Every student was assigned a classroom and teacher.  We added 280 more students this year to our school enrollment.  We have students from 23 states in the nation and students from Canada.  We are becoming a culturally rich district.  In addition to the new students to our district we hired 29 staff.  Some of the staff have transfered within the district, but 12 teachers are new to the school district.  We welcome all the new staff to our Williston Public School District family.