School Committee tomorrow night

Yes, there was an election yesterday, but the calendar goes on as usual.
The agenda for tomorrow night is up.
A few items of interest:

• the administration is coming back with two reports, one on community partnerships and another on AVID students. There was some discussion, both in School Committee and in CPPAC, about the AVID students: were they in fact doing better than there peers? Did we have data to back that up? The report is in the backup. AVID does seem to be getting those kids through school and more of them are going to college (as compared to the whole of their graduating class; is that their peers, in fact?)
  
• several members of the School Committee are asking for a report on the number of 504 plan students in the district. A 504 plan (the number refers to the section of the ADA that deals with it) allows for modifications for a child who has a physical or mental impairment; it can include anything from physical accommodations to speech therapy. I'm guessing that this is a direct result of a question asked at the Special Education Parents Advisory Council forum a few weeks ago: members were directly asked how many kids on 504 plans we have, and the short answer that was no one knew. As 504's are handled through the principal, there is no central database of that information.
• Both the marketing of WPS and the family involvement plan are back on the agenda.
• And, yes, there will be an update on the budget. If I'm reading that first page right, the good news is that we have smart people on this who assumed that things would be even worse than we are, so we weren't planning on the money we lost, anyway.
  

There will be a liveblog!