Recommendations of actions for Goals 3 and 4:

 

Substantially reduce class sizes in schools that are consistently challenged with poor academic achievement, high disciplinary issues, high drop out rates, etc.

 

Hire additional para-professional/educational assistants  from the minority communities and assign them to schools with high concentrations of students from that culture.

 

Provide a multi-year contract to new teachers and to para-professionals who work in schools with challenges, along with higher wages, additional inservice/professional development training, and mentoring by experienced, successful, "master" teachers.

 

Provide a financially suppported "career track" for para-professionals that could lead to teaching certificates. Have a generous professional development benefit for paraprofesional staff and instructional aides to  obtain formal educational degrees/certificates/knowledge.

 

Using interns from colleges and universities, students from communitiy colleges, informal community leaders and networks of community volunteers from both public and private organizations, set a goal of 1 adult for every 2 students in each school with academic and/or "social" deficencies so that each student has at least one adult to whom he/she can relate.

 

Provide for in-school suspensions at all locations, with tutoring and/or counseling by qualified staff during suspensions.

 

Require formal progessive in-school intervention with a student prior to invoking suspension or expulsion actions, with the exception of emergency expulsions for behavior that is dangerous for the student or others. This intervention could range from required counseling or participation in intervention classes for chemical dependency, to medical and/or mental health evaluations, to periodic monitoring by intervention staff during each class, brief timeouts with intervention staff during crises, and escorts between classes, to consistent one-one presence of an aide while at school.

 

Create supervised "expulsion centers" in each region of the city for students with major disciplinary problems. Include such programs as anger management, drug and alcohol abuse, or personal counseling for students serving an "expulsion."

 

When a student has a disciplinary problem, assign a one on one aide to that student before he/she gets to the IEP or spec. ed stage for behavior.

 

Create a system of "reading buddies" for all beginning readers--older students, community volunteers, aides, etc--through 3rd grade to simply read to and for each other as skills develop.

 

Use  diagnostic reading test and language arts test at  the beginning of grades 4 and 6 to determine specific reading skills that a student has mastered or still needs to work on. These tests should include at least: vocabulary, word attack skills, sentence and paragraph comprehension, basic spelling, and conventions of capitalization and punctuation. 

 

Provide access to a reading specialist to all 4th graders who do not read at or above grade level by November. Students who reach 6th grade and do not read at or above grade level should be enrolled in a  program with intensive work on reading.

 

All students not reading at grade level or above by 4th grade should be monitored for mastery of academic content areas and reinforcement provided via tutors,  teaching assistants in the classroom, and the adaptation of curriculum and instructional/learning methods materials.

 

Each student who is not succeeding in any academic content area, should be provided with tutoring and/or reinforcement by an instructional assistant in the classroom until he/she masters the subject area and related skills.

 

Instructors who have any students who are not achieving academic success in their classroom should have a peer mentor to assist them in developing or using instructional methods and materials that can address each student's learning style and needs.