Standard Five

I was able to get my first action in Standard 5 when I attend a

Board of Patrol meeting Thursday morning. The meeting did not last

long but I was unaware that so many people at my school weighed in

how the approvals of money. I was also glad to see that my school had

a very diverse group of staff members from many different

departments on the team.

2/13/2017: Met with Office Manager to discuss parts of the budget as it relates to

departments and Title I funding. What I learned was that Title I funds have to be used for

specific items and cannot be used on anything that is not directly related to instruction.

Out of the math departments Title I money we were able to get three new resource books

to use in order to better prepare our students for the STAAR Exam. These hours went

under Standard 5 because it is operational.

2/25/2017: I spent a few hours today creating a way to study the loss

of instructional time as it relates to our morning procedures. I will have

people time the process of how long it takes them to get from their

morning duty post to the classroom and actually begin instruction.

Once I have this data I am going to see where the school can cut

corners and present is the SBDM team. I placed the hours in standard 5

because these are procedures that are being tested and changed.

2/27/2017: Today I looked at how long it took kids to get completely

settled in to their classrooms and started learning from the time we

opened up the doors (8:10) until the time in which most of the building
was quiet. In order to do this, I had a few teachers help me on their

respective floors and hallways. What I learned from this experience is

that it takes too long for most of the building to start the school day. As

a principal, I have to have an efficient system in place for the morning

to ensure instruction is not lost for the first class period. I place these

hours in standard 5 because it has to do with procedural aspects of the

school.

2/28/2017 3/2/2017: This week I looked at how each grade level at

my school (6th, 7th, 8th) conduct their morning procedures. I took notes

on how long it takes a teacher to get to his morning duty spot and how

long it takes most teachers to leave with their students from their

morning duty post. Systematically, I learned that the school needs a

larger area for the 6th and 7th graders to meet. The current system is

using both gyms, however with one way in and one way out, it gets t0o

clustered with people. I place the hours in standard 5 because it is a

morning procedure.

3/5/2017: I spent a few hours working on research on how Atwell can

improve its morning procedures and get rid of lost instructional time. I

decided to request to visit some schools with similar demographics to

see how they conduct their morning procedures. From reading online

materials, it may be best for us to allow students to go immediately to

class. This would cut teacher errors down and allow for us to position

people to funnel the students into the school. This would require bus
routes to be altered to come later to that students would not have

much wait time. I placed the hours in standard 5 because its

procedures and strategies.

3/6/2017 and 3/29/2017: On March 6th, I reviewed my finding from

monitoring our morning procedures with my campus administrative
team and we discussed a few solutions in order to improve our
morning procedures. One solution was to use the first 5 minutes of the
social studies departments PLC in order to have more help at the
different morning post. I learned that having a team to brainstorm
ideas is critical for the success of new programs. I also learned that
having all stakeholders involved in decisions is critical. On March 29 th, I
met with all the staff that has morning duty and went over the changes
that were made at the administrative meeting. I placed the hours in
standard 5 because this is procedures.