Sunday, May 17, 2015

Week of May 18th

UAI High School Staff News

Volume II
Issue 38
Week of May 18th, 2015


Announcements



Crunch Time is Here.  This is the last full, five-day week of classes this year.  Next Monday is Memorial Day (happy upcoming 3-day weekend), and the following week is June!  With only 15 classes remaining, it's critical for you to make time to have emergency conferences with students who are currently not passing your class.  Please make sure that you call the homes of all students who are failing your class to let their families know.  Please make sure that you also log this call into Skedula, indicating the specific steps students should take to prevent course failure.  During grade teams this week, please review the PID list I sent out earlier.  Students who fail three or more classes are potentially PID.  As a reminder, here are some highlights from the UAI grading policy.

  • The UAI grading scale is 50-100.  There are NO grades lower than 50.  Zeros are not to be entered for missing assignments.  Only a grade of 50.
  • UAI courses are annualized (except for Poly courses).   Final credits are awarded in June.  The June grade is the grade for the year*.  However, students cannot lose credits.  If students were passing in January (end of the fall term), they are guaranteed at least one credit. *Junior and senior course codes are a little bit different this year.




Grade Analysis.  Like language, math is another tool humans use to communicate and describe the world.  As such, concepts like a Normal Curve (or normal distribution) arose out of observations of natural phenomena and the math used to define the curve is the numeric language of describing this phenomena.  In short, when looking at the characteristics of a large set of data (e.g. DRP levels of the nation), it all tends to be similar - e.g. the Normal Curve.  Another large set of data are your grades. Looking at the PID list, I know that our failing grades are falling outside predicted norms.

  • 14% (12/87) of 9th graders are failing more than three classes and will likely repeat
  • 28% (29/87) of 9th graders are failing at least one class and will have summer school
  • 9% (6/68) of 10th graders are failing more than three classes and will likely repeat
  • 29% (20/68) of 10th graders are failing at least one class and will have summer school
  • 0% (0/56) of 11th graders are failing more than three classes
  • 23% (13/56) of 11th graders are failing at least one class and will have summer school
  • 0% (0/65) of 12th graders are failing more than three classes
  • 11% (12/65) of 12th graders need additional credits and/or regents exams to graduate and may end up in summer school
If your team has a red percentage, that indicates that at least twice the number of students are failing than is to be expected in a normal situation.  Bottom line, it is indicative of the teams' need to troubleshoot to identify and address causes of student failure.  Please make this analysis a priority in this week's meetings.  As always, please reach out to Jen, Colleen, or myself for any assistance.



Honor Roll & Perfect Attendance Breakfast.  Our 9th annual Honor Roll and Perfect Attendance Breakfast was another wonderful and special event!  Thanks to all the teachers who were able to make it up on their preps to join in with the girls. Many thanks to Carol for her organizational skills and support!  Congrats to all of our honorees!!





Changes with Carrera.  The Children's Aid Society has chosen to no longer support our Carrera Treasure Academy because we fall outside of the geographic priorities of the organization's mission.  As such, we are currently in the midst of a multi-year phase out with our partnership with Carrera.  As we all know, the Carrera partnership has been a integral component to our school and a vital support for our girls and their families.  I am currently in the midst of planning with a variety of other partners and resources to hold onto as many Carrera components as I can as we transition through the next few years.  One of these moves is to begin working to develop our own external support organization that could fund positions and partnerships like Carrera in the future.  One of the main things I am looking for now is people who may be interested in supporting and or becoming a founding member of this organization.  We are working with another UA schools' foundation to help build this out.  So if you know of anyone in your lives who either is very interested in our school's mission and can support (fiscally or otherwise), please send me their contact information so that I can connect them to the people who are helping us build this.


Important Dates

  • Wednesday 20MAY15 - Senior Awards Night
  • Monday, 25MAY15 - Memorial Day, NO SCHOOL
  • Thursday, 28MAY15 - Springfest, our 2nd Parent Outreach night (the 2nd of 2 that were added with the new UFT contract) - Teachers report at 6PM (Springfest is 6-7PMish)
  • Friday, 29MAY15 - Last Period Celebration of College Assembly
  • Tuesday, 02JUN15 - Common Core Regents - NO CLASSES
  • Thursday, 04JUN15 - Brooklyn Queens Day at UAI - Just UAI HS at UAI HS
  • Wednesday, 10JUN15 - Tech Carts are due to Allan by the end of the day
  • Thursday 11JUN15 and Friday 12JUN15 - Final Benchmark Exams
  • Friday, 12JUN15 - End of the 6th Marking Period
  • Friday, 12JUN15 - Tentative Date for end of the year Staff Party at Commonwealth Bar
  • Monday, 15JUN15 - High School Field Day (Details TBD)
  • Tuesday, 16JUN15 - Regents Week Begins
  • Wednesday, 17JUN15 - Final Grades are Due
  • Wednesday, 24JUN15 - Plato Training
  • Thursday, 25JUN15 - High School Graduation at Kumbel Theater
  • Friday, 26JUN15 - Last Day of School

Per Session
No updates

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