Faculty Notes—December 3, 2010 you have to concentrate on this one. . . Dec 7 MEETING: Home Communication/Fac mtg postponed to 12/16 @ 11:1 10 TGIF: Special Education Inclusive Schools Day 13 Term 2 warnings/comments due 14 MEETING: Department 15 BGLAD Day 16 PD half day B3 7:50 - 9:00 (long) D4 9:05 - 10:00 (short) E3 10:05 -11:00 (short) 11:15 – Faculty meeting in auditorium (in place of 12/7 meeting) 12:00 - 1:00 – Lunch on your own 1:00 - Auditorium presentation on safe & healthy schools program, anti-bu 21 MEETING: PLC/4th Tues/Tech Training 23 Dismissal at 2:35 for holiday vacation ********************** Attachments: 1. Previous faculty notes for your reference 2. Faculty/staff absence procedures - Revised. ********************** Shout Outs: Rozanne Milner and NNHS health/nurse staff for a smooth, quick flu clinic All teachers/counselors for managing parent conferences and those still slogging Chris Murphy for getting TV monitors up and working - blasting notes to students. Antonette Perri for learning, managing, and revising the new google doc absence *********************** CORI updates– many staff have received a request to update their CORI report. Lisa Mazzola, executive secretary, will be happy to do this. In order to manage the numbers, she will do CORIs for staff at the following times only: 1 all lunches 1 from the end of the school day to 3:30pm Sickline & Google Doc absence form -- Remember to call or google doc your absence by 7am. Notifications after 7am can not be processed until the next day. If you miss the 7am deadline, call your department head to let them know. Faculty/Staff absence update -- Google docs sick-absence form is working pretty well. A few reminders/clarifications. There are 2 categories of absence: A) Illness (family or personal). All illnesses should be inputted on google docs http://tinyurl.com/2bzhxrq OR called into the sick line. Main office staff input these into the 'absence book'. • B) Everything else (workshops, bereavement, personal day, etc). Ahead of time, fill out a 'permission to be absent' form in the main office, have your supervisor sign, turn into main office. It goes into the 'absence book'. Hence doing a google doc input for these is redundant, so don't bother. Parking – (brace yourself, really good reading here….) We have arrived at the tipping point for on-campus parking. For those frustrated with parking, we hear and share the frustration. It is especially acute for those who are permitted in Walnut lot. Lisa Mazzola manages parking, and this summer she inherited a messy system that she’s working to fix. We are pedalling as fast as we can to get control. Here are a few important things that will help if everyone knows. If you work with interns/student teachers, consultants, visiting therapists, etc, PLEASE share this with them. 1 We know students are parking on campus without permits. I have personally extracted some from classes and socializing, escorted them to their cars, read the riot act, watched them as they drove away. (Slightly fun. Am I a bad person? Really am I? Counselors, advise?) 1 Tow signs will be installed in the upcoming weeks at the loading dock, Walnut lot, Tiger Drive. Once installed, if needed, we’re authorized to tow. Many problems likely solved when that happens, however we’d like to avoid towing anyone. 1 Communication of expectations and procedures to all community members is happening now. • Confusion exists because city parking bureau told us Tiger Drive and Walnut lot are our jurisdiction, yet their parking clerks recently ticketed due to a teacher call to police. It works best if main office personnel are the 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 only ones contacting police for parking problems like this since main office staff know all the pieces to the existing parking puzzle. This teacher call to police resulted in errant and improper tickets issued, and probably 3-4 hours of main office support staff time to rectify tickets and communicate with the city. We are meeting with police Capt. Mintz next week to clarify jurisdiction. Dave Mosca monitors parking and will increase his presence in the next few weeks. Park in your spot. Park in your spot. Park in your spot. Avoid visitor spots and Walnut lot if you are NOT permitted there. Many staff here work in multiple schools and travel during the school day--they have parking permits. There are so many who do so, unfortunately we cannot accomodate individual requests for closer parking spots at this point. If you have visitors to class, visitors may park in: • Visitor spots on Tiger Drive or vistor spots on Elm Rd near theater entrance. Dave Mosca will work over the next few weeks to keep visitor spots open for real visitors. • Austin lot – it’s not ideal. • On any neighboring side street where signage indicates it is allowed. i.e. there are some one hour, some two hour, some no parking signs. 1 Or make arrangements in advance with Lisa Mazzola for temporary parking in some of our permitted spaces not being utilized by staff. Lisa is working on how to open up more visitor spots if not for this year, then next. Sorry for any confusion. We've had to clarify parking policies in our new space as we go. Fin. Survey --The Newton North Guidance Department has two interns from Suffolk University who, as part of their Master's program, are required to conduct a research study at North. They will be polling students and staff in order to measure the degree to which they feel connected to the school community. The anonymous survey will be administered to faculty members and eleventh and twelth graders in an online format, and freshman and sophomores will be administered paper surveys during their lunch periods. The Guidance interns will share this data in order to assess and improve school connectedness. We will send you the survey link when it's available. ********************** Bookmark on your computer: Faculty Sick Line Website: http://tinyurl.com/2bzhxrq New Google Doc NNHS Issues/Problems: http://tinyurl.com/28kd8vv NNHS website & public calendar: http://nnhs.newton.k12.ma.us ***if you are reading this on the NNHS Staff folder, please email me so that I put you on my all-staff email list; you should receive my communications directly in your email box *** Deborah Holman Vice Principal & History Teacher Newton North High School 457 Walnut Street Newtonville, MA 02460 617-559-6202