HTC Early Childhood Centers
School Board Report – July 2010
Melissa Pieper, Director

Faith Development:

1. Religion curriculum was ordered for the preschool and pre-k classrooms. 

Instructional Leadership/Curriculum:

1. Teachers and staff are continuing to get their hours for continuing education so that we may again receive a level 4 rating when we reapply next summer.

Public Relations/Marketing & Development:

1. We have had about 2 people inquire about preschool and daycare that read the article “How to Pick a Preschool” that we put in the How To insert in the Daily Democrat.  

Building Updates-

1. The floor in the Roling Hall classroom was being waxed today so we are almost completely done with the use of the Roling Hall classroom.  Parents are very pleased that the school-aged program is now located in the same building as the daycare.  It has been very nice to have the school-aged classroom in the same building.  

Fort Madison :

1. The pre-K classroom now has 12 children enrolled and is FULL. 
2. Four year old A.M. preschool is full and there are about 5 spots left in the P.M. class. 
3. Three year old A.M. and P.M preschool are both full.  
4. The lunch program through Fort Madison public ends on Thursday and we will be providing lunch as often as possible during the month of August.
5. Beginning next Monday, August 2^nd, the daycare will open at 6:30am.  This has generated some additional enrollment for the daycare room.
6. Thank you to the Pieper Family for helping to move the rest of Mrs. Knustrom’s tables to West Point .  Her classroom is now officially moved!!!

St. Paul :

1. We have seven enrolled in St. Paul for preschool and have at least 3 phone calls regarding enrollment.  These families have not committed, but I am hopeful that they will follow through and attend. 
2. There have been some flooding issues in St. Paul that have been taken care of.  Luckily they have not affected our classroom or the preschool section of the building much.  

HTC Board of Education Report, July 26, 2010

Doris S. Turner, Administrator

Faith Development-We welcome Father Hoffman and Father Wilkening!

-          Bishop Amos will say Mass for the Southern Catholic Schools Teacher In-service on Tuesday, August 17 at Sts. Mary and Joseph Church at  11:30 a.m.  You are welcome to attend.

Professional Development – The contract for Natalie Sandoval Ulloa will be approved at this board meeting.  This is for the professional training she is giving teachers during the first week of August on the Promethean board as well as individual help she will offer during the school year.

            Project Ask summer training is complete.  Several teachers are taking various types of courses for re-certification and/or to continue advanced degrees.

           Holy Trinity will be engaged in continued professional development for various initiatives sponsored through Great Prairie AEA.  The school pays the $50 fee as well as provides substitutes to allow teachers to attend these sessions.  We have ongoing math, reading, science programs and are doing a social studies and writing initiative this 2010 – 2011 school year.  Teachers trained in these various programs bring their expertise back to HTC and share with other teachers.  We appreciate the School Board’s willingness to provide the cost of these services to our teaching staff.   The teaching strategies they are learning will help with their ability to teach Common Core curricula and 21^st Century skills.

Instructional Leadership -I submitted the initial planning phases for the Iowa Core implementation on the DE website before the July 1 deadline.

          The State of Iowa certification visit will be March 8, 9, 10, 2010.  Initial documents are to be mailed to us in August.  The documents for certification visits are being adjusted by the Dept. of Ed. at this time.  We will be starting to meet for various committees, etc. in August.  Board members will serve on committees according to their assignments for the 2010 – 2011 school year.  The board president will make committee assignments after election of officers at the July meeting.    There will be some board responsibilities as a group and there will be tasks for specific board committees.  I will guide you through the process.  Several of you have already been involved in the process and many of the steps are similar to past experience.  “Wellness” is one area that is new since the last visit as well as there is much more specific attention to special needs identification and process.  We will be fine!

            Our first Diocesan principals meeting will be in Iowa City , August 9.

I will be presenting topics at the new teachers’ workshop at Burlington Notre Dame on August 12 on “Catholic Identity” and also on Diocesan curriculum and Iowa Core.  We host the all Catholic teachers in-service on August 17, Dr. Mike Carrotta will discuss “Sustaining the Spirit”.  Other  

topics included in the day are a discussion on Cyber bullying and Iowa Core.  Thanks ahead of time for all those people who make these in-services successful.

            I will be passing out a copy of a flier from the AEA for services offered to schools.  These will be available to parents/teachers, etc. in color from the AEA at the beginning of school activities.  I wanted you to have a copy so you could familiarize yourself once again with what is offered by the AEA’s in Iowa .   They are a very important link in our ability to provide all types of services to our students and it is important as Board members for you to show support for them with elected officials when it comes to State budget, etc.    Many of the larger school districts (Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, etc) are able to provide their own specialists, etc and do not want to have the AEA’s thrive in times of economic downturn. . . we NEED them for many, many reasons.

Building Upgrades – Reports from building and grounds, etc. will include updates.  The high school gym floor paint will be redone during this next week.  The paint at the ends of court will be redone.

Public Relations, Marketing, etc. – The insert for the paper has received a lot of positive feedback and several inquiries from potential families. Good job everyone!!!   Committee reports will give details of activity. 

FYI items – HTC has been selected by the Diocese to participate in the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) process.  There is no cost to the school, we have been selected to have seniors(Feb 11) and 8^th graders (Feb. 18) tested.  I will be bringing an informational flyer for you.  Testing representatives bring in laptops for each student for use during the assessment.