PEF shares Giving Campaign news, DBFL donation
“I wanted to announce that Havens Parents Club became the first parent club board to reach 100 participation in the Giving Campaign,” Heather Frank, executive director of the Piedmont Education Foundation (PEF) told trustees at the Thursday, October 10 meeting of the PUSD School Board. “This board has shown real leadership in working to support teachers and students.”
Frank said the Giving Campaign had raised $1.8 million to date, but that there was still a long way to go to meet their goal. “We’re trying to go for another $1 million minimum,” she said.
Dress Best for Less (DBFL) board president Linda Smith Munyan presented a check for $30,000 to PEF. “PEF gets help from lots of community partners but none more so than Dress Best for Less, which has for decades been working very hard to support our schools,” said Frank.
PHS/MHS workshop, Green Club, Financial literacy
ASB President Jace Porter shared news of a workshop exploring intersectionality co-facilitated by PHS and MHS students on Monday, Oct. 28. PHS English teacher Aaron Barlin will be leading the workshops. “The great thing is that students will be the ones facilitating the workshop in nine different junior English classes simultaneously,” Barlin told the Exedra.
PHS’ Green Club is working with Nancy Deming, an environmental educator and sustainability consultant for schools in Alameda County to get labels for campus trash bins to help students separate waste. Porter stated that the Green Club is also working on reducing campus-wide plastic use.
The Green Club will be working closely with the Piedmont Community Service Crew to canvass the neighborhood on the City’s Climate Action Plan 2.0.
Upcoming: A lesson on financial literacy for women taught by Maria Guillen, the financial literacy program director of Berkeley/Oakland’s YWCA on November 6. (Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article listed the wrong date for the class.)
District data tells PUSD story
Stefanie Griffin, director of instructional technology for secondary curriculum, gave a presentation on the California School Dashboard. The Dashboard is an online tool that is part of the accountability system that was rolled out with the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), which established funding for oversight activities and instructional programs.
The information, which “contains multiple measures about our schools that tell a Piedmont story” will be published on the site and available for the public this December. The five local “indicators” to note are: Basic Conditions (teacher mis-assignments/vacancies, student access to instructional materials and conditions of school facilities), Parent Engagement, Access to a Broad Course of Study, Implementation of Academic Standards and School Climate. Reporting on these categories will help show an overall indicator of the District and its schools’ success.
“What we might want to pay attention to is this teacher vacancies and mis-assignments because for years we did not have any of these,” said Griffin. “Now it’s becoming part of our Piedmont story. One of our struggles and challenges is teacher retention and interaction.”
The 2018 PUSD performance overview can be viewed here.