Wednesday's Internet Edition, December 03, 2008.
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News editor - Editor’s Note: During a four-hour meeting on Jan. 25, Copperas Cove Independent School District trustees heard findings on various school programs. Due to the amount of information covered in the meeting, three programs were presented in the Jan. 30 issue and the remainder are covered here. Action will be taken on the committee’s findings at a Feb. 11 school board meeting.
Sunset Review Committees for six Copperas Cove school programs presented their findings to the CCISD trustees on Jan. 25.
The Central Library Office provides a coordinating network for the district’s campus libraries, enabling them to work together, share ideas and responsibilities; and address concerns regarding library policies and procedures, maintaining a higher level of professionalism.
The CLO also provides support services enabling the librarians to utilize their time to address the needs of the students and the campus staff. Services include centralized ordering, purchasing, processing and cataloging.
An administrative office is provided by the CLO and handles district level library responsibilities such as maintenance of a union catalog, bid and specifications for library materials, district contact for vendors, district library advisor, Texas Library connection responsibilities and district-wide maintenance plans.
The committee found that the CLO frees librarians to work with students to provide guidance in research strategies and evaluation of data, exposure to literature and development of listening skills through oral reading, guidance in material selection, implementation of programs that create life-long readers and assistance and training in the use of technology.
The Sunset Review committee also found that the loss of the CLO would impact several groups in the CCISD system, such as students, teachers, school secretaries, business office personnel, librarians, library aides and libraries.
Deleting the CLO would mean that libraries have to limit student access, students will have to wait longer for materials to be shelved, student access to assistance from the librarian will diminish, while book selection help, exposure to literature and reference services will decrease.
The committee also felt that fewer new items would be purchased for student use because the cost of each item will increase to cover as much processing as available and the cost of each item will increase because of the loss of discounts for volume purchases.
Loss of the program will also have an impact on teachers, the committee found. Specifically, team-teaching partnerships with librarians will be difficult, there would be no access to the professional resources and assistance offered by the CLO, access to the library and librarian would be limited. There would also be less time for librarians to help teachers learn to integrate technology, provide professional resources and assistance with curriculum.
The committee found that a centralized system is the most efficient and effective way to accomplish clerical library functions. Retention of the program received strong support and was the action that the committee recommended.
Content mastery was established to provide a setting in which students were taught concepts in new and different ways. The program was intended to serve slow learners, at-risk and special education students, but was recently opened to any and all students.
However, the committee found that students were being sent to content mastery as a discipline measure, special education students were not sent as required, large groups were sent, thus diluting the small groups and one-to-one instruction, as well as little or no communication between classroom and content master class teachers.
The committee discussed targeted learning as an alternative to content mastery. Target learning would give certain students support so they can attain the knowledge needed in order to progress and be successful at their age appropriate grade level.
Students would be targeted through the ARD process and at-risk criteria, or students not making adequate progress or failing one or more core classes.
The committee recommended the elimination of content mastery as it is today and create a new continuum of services for targeted populations of students at all levels. The committee said the number of students helped by targeted services will increase significantly; therefore, academic success will increase.
Another committee studied academic teaming, which provides common planning time for teachers, improved student achievement and fewer discipline problems.
The committee found that academic teaming creates smaller learning communities, accessibility to teachers, continuity in the curriculum and the easier facilitation of student assemblies and rewards.
The elimination of the program would mean the loss of smaller learning communities on campus and time for curriculum coordination, planning, reading and writing integration. Parents would not have access to all teachers at one time and campus administrators would not be available before and after school for campus supervision and conferences.
The committee also found that the support for new or struggling teachers would be lost, as would the coordinated times for teachers to meet with district curriculum specialists. Teachers would also be unable to coordinate times for locer clean out, assemblies and award ceremonies. Office staff would have to assume there duties.
The committee recommended the retention of academic teaming on the campuses of Ledger Intermediate, C.R. Clements, Copperas Cove Junior High, and Lee Junior High. The district site-based district-making committee agreed with the recommendations.