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Superintendent’s Coffee Talk for May, 2017



Superintendent’s Coffee Talk for May, 2017

Upcoming dates, events: May 10th Honors Convocation, final HS concerts 5-15, 5-16, commencement is Sunday, May 21st, last student day Mon. May 22nd. (Teachers are on contract for two days following the end of the student year). Seniors are finishing up May 10-11; seniors traditionally finish early.

Thursday, August 17th is the first day of school for the 2017-18 school year. The full calendar is available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzNNwJp2xvrKUTFaZ0RDQVNGY28/view

Commendations: Spring activities success has been tremendous - top-ranked baseball team, quiz bowl state champs, Skills USA and FFA national qualifiers, the list goes on!

Thanks: We are grateful for the tremendous parent volunteerism that made post-prom a huge success and is spearheading another great PTO Fun Run event scheduled for Friday, May 5th.

Foundation: The Norris Foundation will award more than 30K in scholarships to graduating seniors at the May 10th Honors Convocation to help them pursue their post-secondary dreams. The Foundation golf tournament raises funds for this and other Foundation initiatives including classroom innovation grants to teachers. The annual golf tournament is June 19th and is accepting registrations.

Recent events: First ever statewide ACT administration to all juniors was April 19th and went off without a hitch. We did not have class that day for freshman, sophomores, or seniors.

Strategic Plan areas:
21st Century Learning
Communications
Inclusiveness and Engagement
Transitions

Key Strategic Plan initiatives:

District mobile app: http://launch.customschoolapp.net/norris160/
1:1 deployment (Chromebooks) for 9-12 fall, 2017 (and more mobile cart deployment K-8)

New math curriculum is Pearson Envisions and will be used K-8, initial training on the new texts and materials will occur in May.

We have nine retirees this year, and a number of others leaving district for personal or career promotion reasons.

The Board is considering how to finance needed infrastructure projects and upkeep including HVAC, re-roofing, bus barn expansion, driveway expansion, parking lot resurfacing, kitchen renovations, etc. This discussion may factor into and include fields development discussion. The district will only be able to incrementally move forward on accomplishing these projects since special building fund levying capacity is limited under general fund restrictions. Thus a bond issue to address some of these may need to occur, deliberation and discussion on timing and sizing of it will be determined by board after lengthier needs analysis and detailed cost estimating.

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