With the Instructional Components comprising nearly 65 percent of the proposed school budget for 2000-2001, the Garden City Board of Education and administration took a good deal of time last week discussing that area during recent budget work sessions.

Dr. Stephen Leitman, superintendent of schools, went into greater detail about several program initiatives he introduced during the first budget work session. The proposed new program initiatives are: the Columbia University/Teacher's College partnership, a writing center in the high school, summer school and curriculum and professional development.

The first initiative discussed was the partnership with Columbia University's Teacher's College. Dr. Leitman noted that this partnership would be a benefit to the district because the district would use student teachers from Teacher's College, thus getting the student teachers acquainted with the district and allowing the staff to evaluate their performance. According to Leitman this would also be good for the student teachers in that they would have the benefit of working in a quality school district. Leitman noted that it is getting harder to find quality teachers and this partnership would be a plus for the Garden City School District because it would allow the district to recruit some of these student teachers as vacancies occur.

Teacher's College would also be working with the district in the area of technology. Leitman noted that the Teacher's College Technology Department would work with the Garden City staff and help the district's teachers to incorporate computers into the everyday aspects of the classroom.

Another area in which Teacher's College is expected to assist the district is in staff development. Included in this area are graduate level courses, leadership training and a new teacher program. Leitman said that under this partnership consultants from Teacher's College would come to the district, for much less than if the district were to hire a consultant for a day, and teach graduate level courses in Garden City so the teachers would not have to go all the way to Manhattan for these classes. "It is very important, if we are going to continue to remain the outstanding school district that we are that we train, retrain and continually upgrade all of us, not only teachers but administrators, directors, everybody in our school system," said the superintendent. Leadership training is another aspect of the staff development. According to Leitman, finding quality administrators is very difficult and he is hoping to entice some of the district's quality teachers to train to be administrators. New teacher training is another aspect of this initiative. As the district hires new staff, Teacher's College would work with them, not only in their first year teaching but for their second and third years as well, getting them used to working in the schools, working with the students, working toward the new standards and working on achieving high quality and excellence in the schools.

With regard to the new standards, Leitman stated, "We need to improve all of our student skills so they meet these standards." According to the superintendent critical thinking is an important aspect of helping the students to meet these new state standards. He explained that Teachers College submitted a plan for working in the area of critical thinking skills, teaching students to do research, to be able to deduct information, to be able to explain the information and be able to reinforce the information. These are skills, said Leitman, that will not only help the students reach the state standards but will help them succeed in their post secondary school education. Another important aspect in reaching the state standards, according to Leitman is working with the district's teaching staff in the area of differential instruction. He explained that it is important for teachers to understand that not all students learn in the same way and for them to be trained to help the students in the ways that the individual student can best learn.

Something else that is new in this year's budget is the plans for a writing center in the high school. According to the district, "The writing center will offer a non-threatening environment in which writers will be encouraged to seek support for the writing process. The center will be available to serve teachers, students, (and eventually) the community at large in their respective desires to improve writing. Our goal is essentially to help writers identify, understand, and refine their personal writing skills." It was stressed that this center would not only be for remedial services. In the first year of the writing center, the district plans to attempt to: improve student writing; individualize writing assistance; provide writers with an audience; offer writers feedback; provide a special time and place for writing; promote a writing, reading and thinking community within the school; provide assistance for statewide testing; develop and maintain a web site with resource links and student publishing; provide assistance for the preparation of college entrance essays; act as a clearinghouse for writing contests.

Summer School is another new aspect included in this year's proposed budget. Through this the district hopes to identify the students who had trouble in the grade they were in, in grades 3-8 and 9-12, and through a four-week program help prepare them for the next year's work. For the first year of the program, the summer school will focus on preparing students in ELA and math.

Curriculum and professional development is another aspect focused on in this year's budget. The goal of this would be to enhance the staff's skills while not pulling them out of the classroom, causing the students to lose instructional time. Through this curriculum development the administration would be looking for any gaps or duplications in teaching and help align the curriculum both horizontally and vertically. This would ensure that not only will the students progress in what they are learning from grade to grade but each class within the grade level would work off the other classes so a student may be using math skills in a science class and writing skills in a history class. An important aspect of this curriculum development is having the staff to monitor the curriculum and teaching of the curriculum. For this role, proposed in the budget are new assistant principals for Stewart and Stratford Schools and the middle school.

Discussed at the budget work session 3 were the athletic teams and coaches, pupil personnel services and special education, including teacher aide assignments. This year's proposed budget includes the addition of three special education aides and one technology aide.

As of press time, the budget work session focusing on the non-instructional components of the budget had not yet taken place.