1. Opening Activities

2. Old Business

This is an update of Policy 10100. The suggested changes are in red. We had asked Attorney Byham to revise this policy to reflect the need for an excuse with an original parent/guardian signature as documentation of absence.

Three options for a second tier for alternative education are presented in the attachments. The updates to the Discipline Policy need to go to the Board for approval so that it can be included in the student handbooks.

3. New Business

See attachment.

The enclosure has the most current allocation numbers for these two grants. The dollar amounts do not contain any of the stimulus monies. The grants must be submitted by July 1, 2009. There will likely be a small change in the dollar amount (plus or minus a couple hundred) before the application is submitted.

4. Informational Items

Attached is a listing of the assignments that have been delegated to the administration and their status.

I have not done a complete study on the use of cell phone texting to respond to prompts within the classroom setting, but I have utilized a site, www.polleverywhere.com as a professional. The interface is quite simple, allowing a user / teacher to set up an account to ask a multiple choice question or an open ended question that would be displayed on a screen for students to see. Students can then text a response to the question with their cell phones or smart phones. Almost immediately, responses are tallied and visually represented to the class to provide some of the same feedback that we get from the "classroom clickers". By providing my name and email address, I can poll up to 30 people. I can poll again and again, as desired for no fee. Features that enhance the service are available to purchase for a monthly fee. I believe that it is fair to state that all of our administrators and schools are not in agreement over the utilization of cell phones at school, and if it is a desire of the district to begin to harness the power of the technology that our students are carrying around, then this application could have a very powerful impact on our learning environments. It is important to note that I was introduced to this software at our Pennsylvania technology conference through a professor at West Chester University, Dr. Chris Penny. I have talked about this with several principals, and there is some interest in utilizing it.

This item is included at the request of Mr. Stewart to determine if CIT would like to support some additional research by Mr. Byham to determine if distance learning classes can be delivered without a certificated teacher's being present at the receiving end.

The evaluation process will be posted on the June CIT agenda after the principals have had the opportunity to work on it in June.

5. Other

6. Closing Activities