Next Steps in Magnet Proposal Process

The School Council met on Tuesday, November 13th from approximately 5 p.m. to approximately 7 p.m. in the Evansdale Media Center.

Minutes from this meeting will be posted on the School Council bulletin board within 20 days of the meeting. These minutes will be available via the web following approval at the next meeting.

A portion of the meeting is captured here but this is an unofficial account of the meeting and has not been reviewed and approved by all School Council members.

The majority of the meeting focused on revision of the Magnet proposal in response to feedback through the focus groups and emails sent to School Council members or the edaleschoolcouncil@gmail.com email address.

Changes to the 5 points of the proposal were made after lengthy discussion.  The basic format of the discussion was: 1) all council members reviewed all feedback prior to the meeting, 2) teams of two were assigned at the October 16th meeting to each of the 5 points and were charged with presenting their point, feedback pertinent to their point, and then making a recommendation, 3) the Council members then discussed each point and the presented options for alternate possibilities, 4) a vote was taken on the language of the point as originally stated or amended language as presented.

The points of the proposal now read as follows:

Current Magnet Program	Proposed Magnet Program
One magnet homeroom per grade level (except PreK).	Dissolve the magnet homerooms and distribute resident and non-resident Magnet students among all homerooms.
Every K-5 homeroom has science lab once a week for 45 minutes.	No Change
All Magnet homerooms receive French once a day for 30 minutes. Non-Magnet homerooms receive French once a week starting in second grade for 30 minutes.	Offer French or other world language instruction as funding allows.
Magnet homerooms (one per grade) are comprised of 50% resident and 50% non-resident students. (For example, Kindergarten currently contains 13 resident and 13 non-resident students.)	Each grade will contain a minimum of 5 non-resident students with a variable option to increase that number as determined by the principal based solely on enrollment, class size, and grade size.  Students will be selected via the existing DCSD School Choice Lottery.  All current students will remain enrolled.
Students must maintain a “B” average to stay in the Magnet program.	Out of district students must maintain a B average to remain enrolled at Evansdale Elementary.

What is the next step?  The School Council has provided the Principal with the amended proposal.  The proposal will be reviewed by DCSD employees in the School Choice office, and the School Council will meet with Pat Copeland to discuss the feasibility of the proposal at a date and time that is yet to be determined.  This meeting will hopefully occur prior to the next School Council meeting which has been scheduled for Tuesday, December 4th at 5 pm in the Media Center of Evansdale Elementary. Following any additional changes subsequent to feedback from the School Choice office, the proposal will begin to move through the DCSD Superintendent's office.