Newtonite ◆ Friday, Feb. 13, 2009 • Volume 88, Issue 2
Non-profit org. US postage paid Newton, Mass. Permit no. 55337
Newton North High School, 360 Lowell Ave., Newtonville, Mass. 02460
Young tells how he calls off school S
JAY KRIEGER uperintendent Jeff Young said he gets “all kinds of free meteorological advice” from his children as well as from their friends when it comes to calling snow days. His daughter graduated from Newton South and his son is a senior there now. Young said safety is his main concern, but that he tries to keep schools open. “Safety is far and away the major factor in making this decision,” he said. But Young also said he knows that parents have jobs they need to get to and would prefer their children at school. ci. Newton.ma.us “A l s o, ” h e Jeff Young said, “the state mandates that every school district have 180 days of school each year.” Young has made snow day decisions since 1992 when he became superintendent in Lexington. He became superintendent here in 1998. In Newton, the process of canceling school starts early in the morning, he said. “At about 4:30 a.m, I speak with Newton’s Parks and Recreation Department, the Department of Public Works and superintendents from neighboring communities—Brookline, Waltham, Watertown and Needham— to assess the situation,” he said. “City officials help decide if the streets in Newton are clear enough for safe passage for students. The other superintendents help me assess the regional situation, so I can determine if faculty and staff, many of whom do not live in Newton, will have a safe passage to work. “I have done the cancellation the night before a couple of times, but only when it’s very obvious that we are in the middle of a storm. “Otherwise, the weather in New England is so changeable that it pays to wait to make the best, most informed decision.” Young also commented on calling for delayed openings. “If the snow has stopped and the city officials tell me they can get the streets cleared and the parking lots open, I will go for a delayed opening,” he said. This year, Young has called one snow day: January 28. He also called a two-hour delay January 7. BY
Shira Bleicher
Main Street Event: Sophomores Tom DeStefano, Ben Rosenblatt, Rory O’Neil, Rafay Jafri, Nick Ventouris and Eddy Segal assemble a gas internal combustion engine while other students watch. See pages 8-9.
SFA, administration discuss ways to make scheduling work better MARENA COLE REBECCA HARRIS Both the Student Faculty Administration Board and the administration are looking at ways to streamline course selection and scheduling. Wednesday at the SFA meeting, senior Philip Engelke proposed dividing arena scheduling into two sessions based on students’ last names. “Every year, the order shall be switched so that people whose last names come early in the alphabet do not always have an advantage,” Engelke’s proposal says. Principal Jennifer Price told the board that the administration has already been considering changes to arena scheduling, BY
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but that it has focused more on sessions at the beginning of the year. She suggested that the administration follow through with its own plans for September, but that Engelke’s proposal apply to June sessions. At the faculty meeting Tuesday, Feb. 3, Price said the school needs to change how it builds the schedules. Too many singleton classes conflict across departments, limiting student choices, she said. “When creating the master schedule for the school, we want to minimize conflict and maximize opportunity for students,” Price said. Another priority, Price said, is to streamline course changes,
especially so new students won’t have to wait up to a week to get enrolled. “We want to have more arena scheduling sessions, a more centralized process for changes and registration after the first week of school, and clearer rules about when a department head needs to be notified.” Counseling department head Beth Swederskas explained the course changing process. “The current teacher must sign off on the sheet, and the department head has to sign it,” she said. “Then, the teacher for the second class has to sign, as does the second department head. “Then the parent has to sign and then the sheet has to be
brought back to the counselor. “The student can’t go to the new class until the signatures are complete.” Price said this system can leave teachers unsure of who is in their classes and create excess time between class changes where students have no class to go to. “We’ll focus on optimizing common planning times for teachers, minimizing conflict among singleton classes while taking into account traveling teachers, state mandates and part-time teacher needs,” Price said. Registration day will be Wednesday, March 11. See editorial page 2.
N-rule discussion focuses on follow-up MARENA COLE Detentions may be more frequent next year. At the faculty meeting Tuesday, Feb. 3, David Turcotte, a co-director of the Links program with Amie Harris, reported on the progress of the N-Rule Committee, of which he is a member. Turcotte said the committee discussed a policy whereby students who received unexcused absences would have to serve detentions as an official policy. “We want to distinguish beBY
tween students with excused absences and students who are cutting class,” he said. “Right now, the consequence—getting an N—is too far ahead to be effective. “This year, students have three days to get in a note excusing their absence. “In a new system, parents would have until 10 a.m. to call in a student as excused, or else the absence would be marked as unexcused. “Detention wouldn’t have to
look the same for every case. It could be before school, after school, or another time, but there would have to be some sort of a consequence.” The current computer system, MacSchool, will be replaced with a new system called Student Management Systems in the fall, assistant principal Deborah Holman said. “MacSchool is not very userfriendly,” Turcotte said. “Hopefully the new system will make entering attendance a less labori-
ous process.” Principal Jennifer Price said teachers would have to enter their attendance in the computer system in a timely manner in order for this new system to work. According to Holman, MCAS, special needs evaluations, exchange trips and IEP meetings will continue not to count towards the N. Meanwhile, the school has instituted a new grade of M for students who are medically excused from class, Price said.
See Deaf Culture Day stories pages 12 and 13