Building Southmoor Together

Thank you again to everyone for completing your BST survey.  We had nearly 170 people complete it, and the results will be extremely useful as we complete our planning process in the coming weeks to help Southmoor move toward its longer range vision.  You can view the initial summary of findings here:

finalsurveysummary5610 (PDF version)

finalsurveysummary5610 (MS Word version)

And for the full details of all the comments that helped form the over-aching themes, you can review the following appendices as well:

appendices

Special thanks to Leane Poate and Annie Leuthold for their heroic work in compiling the results from the survey.

Stay tuned for further results as the BST Task Force produces the final strategic planning document within the next few weeks.

The Building Southmoor Together survey is now available in three additional languages: Russian, Arabic, and Spanish.  If you need - or know of someone who needs - one or more of these versions, please use the appropriate link below to download a Word document (.doc) version of the file that you can print and fill out by hand.

southmoor-survey-spanish

southmoor-survey-russian

southmoor-survey-arabic

It is important to hear from a wide variety of families as we chart the course for Southmoor in the future.  If you have any feedback on the quality or nature of the translations, please provide that feedback here at this site.

Please remember that the English version of the survey is available online at http://surveys.verticalresponse.com/a/show/366154/39364e4939/0

Let your voice be heard!  Take the Building Southmoor Together survey, and help shape the vision of Southmoor for the next 3-5 years.  Follow this link to take the survey:

http://surveys.verticalresponse.com/a/show/366154/39364e4939/0
Be sure to complete the survey before noon on April 21st!

Agenda for Wednesday’s task force meeting includes:

• Check ins since last meeting–especially related to 4th/5th Grade planning
• Updates on survey outreach efforts
• Beginning brainstorm of vision/values discussion and potential strategy areas to come out of it
• Planning for April 21 Forum

Please join the Building Southmoor Together Task Force at its next meeting on Tuesday, March 16 from 6:00 - 8:00 PM in the school library.

The goals of the meeting are to:

• Review progress and challenges since the last meeting
• Clarify and agree upon the timeline of activities in the planning process
• Develop questions to use in a community survey
• Develop a plan for outreach to the community to ensure full participation in the survey

The full agenda can be found by clicking here: bst_agenda_0316101

The Task Force will be working on engaging the Southmoor community in an abbreviated long-range planning process over the next 6 weeks.  An overview of the planning process can be found here:  revised-southmoor-planning-process-map-316101

Hope to see you there.

At its February 23rd meeting, the Building Southmoor Together Task Force reached agreement on the principles it believes will best help to alleviate some of the perennial challenges around class size equity/parity, meeting individual student needs, and building a stronger community for all of Southmoor’s students, teachers, and families.   These principles strike an important balance of preserving a dedicated HGT program even while striving for better integration of all Southmoor students to the greatest degree possible, and designate specific targets and strategies for ensuring class size parity.  The full list of principles can be found by clicking here: bst-consensus-principles1

Because these principles show a deference to teacher expertise on the design of specific configurations in grades 4 and 5, which are under discussion and won’t be finalized until more specific enrollment numbers come in,  the Task Force will now turn its attention to more long range planning and visioning for the school.  Stay tuned for ways to get involved.

The Building Southmoor Together Task Force meeting will be a joint meeting with the CSC on Tuesday, February 23rd from 6:00 - 8:00 in the school library.

The purpose of the meeting will be to review the proposed models the Task Force has been discussing for how to best address class size, student needs, and space/budgetary constraints in the short term.  You can review the models and add comments by going to http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATNtiH3GpXQ7ZGNjcHo2eG1fMTBndm56eHpmNA&hl=en

The meeting is open to all and community input is most welcome.  It is a working meeting, however, so depending on the amount of participants,  community input may need to be limited and structured to best facilitate the decision-making process and efficient flow of the meeting.

Here are the January 19 Task Force Minutes

bst_minutes-119101

Click here for the agenda for the 1.19.10 Task Force meeting

Hi All,

Just wanted to share this school culture article that may have some relevant ideas for Southmoor:

www.smallschoolsproject.org/PDFS/culture.pdf

Leane