hard deadlines

Tonight's Portsmouth School Committee meeting was a delightful grace note, an evening devoted almost entirely to education, and a wonderful respite from the grinding budget process. The audience of about 12 citizens and parents heard a PHS senior project, learned about the project tracking software supporting this graduation requirement, and heard from the district literacy coordinator about ongoing projects.

The evening started on a light note, as Portsmouth Design Review Board chairman John Borden poked his head into the council chambers. "Anybody have a key to the planning board room?" Without missing a beat, Michael Buddemeyer hooked his thumb at Larry Fitzmorris who was fiddling with the sound system. "Larry will be with you in a minute," he said, to general laughter.

PHS Senior Savannah Geasey presents to the School Committee.

Portsmouth High School senior Savannah Geasey, one of the 267 students in the first class where senior projects are a graduation requirement, walked the School Committee through her presentation and described the process. She had spent time with a nonprofit, Flying Kites Kenya, working in an orphanage outside Nairobi.

"I knew when I got back from Kenya that was going to be my senior project," said Geasey. She worked with her project mentor, Rev. Pamela Mott of St. Mary's Episcopal to deliver a series of talks about her work — for kids at the Sunday School, a sermon at the church, a conference presentation in Providence.

Of all those, she said, the sermon was toughest, said Geasey. "It was the most difficult presentation, since it was without any visual aid, and I talked for 15 mintues. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be." But she said Rev. Mott had given her excellent guidance and she found the whole experience to be a "learning stretch."

School Committee Chair Sylvia Wedge presents Geasey with commendation.

She even made the decision to present her senior project to the judges without PowerPoint to "show it was a skill I had mastered." As someone who has had to sit through more than a few interminable PowerPoint shows, I have to applaud her; so too, I suspect, would Edward Tufte. She got a warm round of applause from the audience, and the School Committee moved to commend her for her work.

"If this is indicative of the calibre of students that PHS is producing," said Dick Carpender, "Then all the grief we take sitting here is worth it."

On hand to talk about the senior project process were two of the coordinators, Julie Bisbano and Patty McCarthy. McCarthy showed the committee the portfolio software used to track all the senior projects, providing web-based access from anywhere, making it easy for mentors and judges from outside the schools to log in and read the materials.

Then Denise Dvorak, the district literacy coordinator, provided the committee with a look at the 6 main initiatives she manages across all the schools. Assessment, co-teaching, differentiated instruction, curriculum design, professional development, and electronic tools.

It sounds like a lot, and Dvorak does it all: "I coordinate local assessment, supervise and mentor reading specialists, provide professional development to teachers, support staff in developing Personal Literacy Plans (PLPs), integrate technology into literacy, and currently work with PHS students."

Dvorak talked a bit about reading scores in the district, and showed an example of the data she tracks, using the PHS class of 2009. When they entered PHS, she said, 55 had been on PLPs (assistance plans for students performing below grade level) but after two years, 14 of them had become proficient, with another 19 nearly there. Total PLPs had dropped from 55 to 26, which reflects the data across the district which have shown a decrease of about 10% per year in PLPs since they began their 6-initiative drive.

"We are building capacity in the district," said Dvorak, "Enabling teachers to have conversations among themselves about best practices." She noted that one success metric was that change no longer had to be driven top down: "The teachers are coming to us saying, 'Here's what my students need, and here's the evidence we have to prove it.'"

The meeting adjourned, pleasantly, at the shockingly early hour of 8:30.

p.s. Okay, okay, I was trying really, really hard to let this just be about education for a change. But the committee also reviewed the numbers from the school funding formula proposed in general assembly bill H7957 (pdf). Under this draconian legislation, Portsmouth would lose ALL school funding over the next three years. Yeah, you read that right. No state aid at all. Just for 2009, we would lose $1.5M, which exceeds the total allowable increase under the S3050 tax cap.

Senate Majority Leader Teresa Paiva-Weed and our Senator Chuck Levesque have both spoken out against this bill, as has Rep. Amy Rice. But it never hurts to send a note or give a call to our delegation, just so that they can say confidently that their constituents oppose it.

There is at least one other funding bill in the hopper, S2650 (pdf), and this seems to be an attempt at a more fair solution, judging by the discussion going on over at Kmareka.com. I've skimmed the bill, but as with most of these things, it takes time to figure out just what the bottom line would be for any given community, so I'll defer on any recommendation.