I hope your 2019 is off to a great start!
MEET AND GREET! Please come out on Friday, Jan 18th to Don Quijote in PATCHOGUE, 507 W Main St Patchogue NY 11772. 2:30 - 5:30! Come after school, have a drink and fabulous food, come out and hang with your MITA team. We want to say HELLO and get to know you!
Some topics recently discussed with Central Office:
MENTORS: Anyone interested in becoming a Mentor for a new teacher? Please send us your name! There will be paid training for new Mentors going on over the summer.
Attendance Update: We spoke about attendance at our last Central Office meeting. Year to date, 92% of MITA members have used less than 5 days which is improved from last year. It is important to continue to use our days appropriately.
High School AM Drop Off Safety Issues UPDATE: The district is commissioning a new feasibility study! The objective is to determine options for a second entrance. More info. as this develops. Added guards continue to help out with traffic control in the AMs.
Power School: This has come up recently as well in our meetings with Central Office. While we have no contractual obligations to Power School specifically, it is the district mechanism for grade reporting. It includes a portal for parents to check student grades, attendance, progress reports, etc. If you know me, you know that I have come full circle about the portal. I was not a fan when it was initially proposed and subsequently opened. I was concerned that parents would not understand what they were seeing and that it would cause more confusion than it would be a benefit. I have evolved in my thought process to the degree that I rely on the portal to communicate so that when parents ask for that follow-up, I can refer them there as opposed to having them emailing ME on a regular basis for updates. But, this is a tool that is only as effective as we are in keeping it current. So if you have not been using it, or have not really endorsed the portal, I would simply ask you to give it another try. I see a collective benefit here which is why I bring it up. We object, and rightly so when we are asked to spend a disproportionate amount of time contacting parents. Or, we have those parents who ask for time-consuming daily reports. The portal solves both of these problems if we use it. No one hated it more than me when it was new to us, but I have come to see the benefit of keeping it reasonably updated.
