BoardDocs Agenda Item: F.04. Board Direction to Administration to Give High Priority to Alignment of School Improvement Officer Assignments with Geographic Cluster Communities (Evans)

			Agenda Item
F.04. Board Direction to Administration to Give High Priority to Alignment of School Improvement Officer Assignments with Geographic Cluster Communities (Evans)
Meeting:	08/04/2009
Category:	F. OPERATIONAL MATTERS RESERVED FOR THE BOARD
Agenda Type:	Action	Preferred Date:
Fiscal Impact:	No	Absolute Date:
Dollar Amount:	$0.00	Budgeted:
		Budget Source:

Agenda Item Content

RECOMMENDATION: Direct superintendent to give high priority to the alignment of School Improvement Officers’ (SIO) assignments with geographic cluster communities.

FISCAL IMPACT: None

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: On July 28, 2009, Board Member Evans brought forward, for board and superintendent discussion, a proposal on School Improvement Officers' school assignments. The role of School Improvement Officers is to provide support to school sites and their principals for the success of each school. Through the years this function of the central office has been organized in different ways.

It is proposed that the School Improvement Officers be assigned primarily on the basis of geographic clusters of schools in the community, so that they are supporting the schools that are feeding into one another. Under the current arrangement one cluster has five different School Improvement Officers: one for the high school, two different ones for the two middle schools and two persons for the six elementary schools. Another cluster has five schools and five SIOs, a different SIO for each school. It is very difficult to promote community involvement and cooperation between the community schools when they are supervised by different persons. One person needs to be accountable for an entire community of schools.

Other factors may be taken into consideration, including the SIO’s skills and background and the needs of particular schools (especially those with new principals). Work assignments for SIOs could be balanced without dividing up clusters in most cases. The goal is for the SIO to work more closely with the communities, not only the principal of the school. This needs to be a clearly identifiable person.

The board needs to set direction for administration in terms of whether it wants to support schools on a cluster/community basis or whether each school site is an individual entity that reports to a central office.

[Originator/Contact: John Lee Evans, Board Trustee, 619.725.5550, board@sandi.net]

Created on 07/30/2009 at 10:11 AM by Josefina Viorato. Last update on 08/03/2009 by Josefina Viorato.