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The Methacton Messenger
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The Methacton Messenger, now in its seventh year of distribution, has been revamped to provide our community with information in the digital age.
Since the 2009-2010 school year, the Messenger has been distributed online, with issues posted to the District's website, and no longer mailed to homes in an effort to save postage and printing costs.
Feedback has been largely positive, and plans were in place to modify the Messenger in order to make the online user experience more appealing. In addition, removing the costs and constraints of printing and mailing will allow for more frequent distribution of the Messenger - bringing District news to our readers while it develops.
"Maintaining frequent communication with all District stakeholders has long been a commitment of Methacton, and the revisiting of our primary newsletter is an important part of accomplishing that mission," Methacton Superintendent Dr. Timothy J. Quinn noted.
Readers are asked to share feedback with Methacton's Coordinator of School and Community Information, Angela Linch, at alinch@methacton.org or by phone at 610-489-5020.
The Methacton School District Athletic Office recently set important goals of centralizing all clubs and sports onto one attractive and user-friendly website in order to best promote the efforts and accomplishments of our students, and providing information about athletic events and activities to the Methacton community.
"This site should provide a forum for us to accomplish both of these goals, while still remaining user friendly for our coaches and club sponsors, who we all recognize are extremely busy," Methacton High School Assistant Principal for Athletics and Activities Paul Spiewak said.
The new site will feature up-to-date sports schedules, team and club news and events, photos of athletes in action and more. You can find the new Warrior website at www.methactonwarriors.org.
At Methacton High School, (MHS) these outreach efforts are primarily spearheaded through clubs and student organizations. Student leadership groups including Student Council, National Honor Society, Tri-M Music Honor Society, National Art Honor Society, Key Club and Leo Club have conducted separate and joint efforts for a number of years.
This year, the Tri-M Music Honor Society and Leo Club gathered food and other items for dinners, Student Council coordinated a building-wide food collection effort for the WYSP Camp Out for Hunger and the National Art Honor Society worked with the United States Marine Corps Toys for Tots campaign. In addition to these efforts, each class, Student Council and the high school faculty also adopt families in need and help provide them with supports including food, gifts and more.
This year, MHS students also organized a benefit concert and gift box sale for Kids Against Crisis, and students participated in "penny wars" to support the American Red Cross.
At Arcola Intermediate School, students collected new pajamas and books for Montgomery County foster children in cooperation with MHS student Chrissy Smith, who spearheaded the effort as her graduation project. Each year for the past six, students in Dave Mayan's technology education class have made handcrafted wooden toys to be contributed to the school-wide Toys for Tots collection. The Arcola NJHS has been collecting paper products and breakfast items; as well as a giving tree of hats, gloves and scarves to be donated to the Hospitality Center in Norristown, which provides assistance to the area's homeless. The school's faculty and students have also adopted 11 Methacton families and supported Caring Hearts for Children and Cell Phones for Soldiers.
Skyview Upper Elementary School counselors have organized a student group entitled, "Being Leaders and Serving Together," or "BLAST." The group has already organized two efforts for the season, including a collection for Toys for Tots and a food drive for the Jerusalem Lutheran Food Pantry.
Arrowhead Elementary School will be sending Christmas stockings filled with various supplies to soldiers in Afghanistan and taking care of Arrowhead families in need. The school's student council; lead by teachers Jamie Friedman, Sara Kehs, and Michelle Davis; went shopping for toys, clothing and other items for the families and soldiers. A building-wide food drive netted 1,000 canned goods donated to a local food bank with the assistance of Boy Scout Troop 119.
At Audubon Elementary School, the Home and School Association is collecting diapers, wipes and formula for the Visiting Nurses Association Children's Health Center in Norristown; the Audubon staff has contributed to a fund that is being used to give gifts to needy families in the Methacton community; and the third grade is collecting items and making toiletry kits for the Hospitality Center in Norristown.
Eagleville Elementary School students, faculty and staff are continuing their annual tradition of helping families during the holiday season by donating food, clothing, toys and more. The students bring in hats, gloves and scarves for the school's cherished "Mitten Tree" located in the front lobby each year. Woodland Elementary School conducts a building-wide community service project associated with the winter holidays. The Woodland faculty, home and school, support staff, students and Principal Reddish work together to provide for Woodland families in need. These collections include clothing, pantry staples, holiday meal items, toys and more. This year's effort will support 13 families.
Funds to purchase items come from various donations, but this year, two former Woodland students conducted fundraising events. MHS senior Allie Verna held a very successful used book sale and Michael Falco, student at North Montco Technical Career Center baked and collected contributions for a bake sale held during Woodland's holiday craft night. Several retired Woodland teachers will return to assist in boxing and wrapping presents. In another effort, Woodland students also collected over 200 pairs of pajamas that will be wrapped up with a book or stuffed toy and given to those less fortunate through the Salvation Army Pajama Drive!
The students, faculty and staff of Worcester Elementary School collected and donated several boxes of non-perishable food and household items to the Hospitality Center in Norristown. In addition, the Worcester student council took part in their annual Target shopping trip with teachers Stephanie Cohen and Regina Shanaman, and parent volunteers. The students purchased toys, clothing, food and other items for Methacton families using funds they raised themselves.
The faculty, staff and families of the Methacton School District are truly committed to fostering a sense of civic responsibility and generosity of spirit in our students.
The Methacton School District continues to commit to fostering the safest possible learning environment for our students. Maintaining up-to-date emergency procedures, conducting training and drills and researching best practices are several areas in which the Methacton has renewed efforts.
To that end, Methacton's Coordinator of District Services, Janeen Marzewski has secured a $49,975 COPS Secure Our Schools grant. The grant, a joint effort with the Lower Providence Township Police Department, will be used to help fund the purchase of bus cameras, digital radios and a repeater that will be utilized by the School Resource Officer (SRO), school administrators,staff members,emergency response team and the Lower Providence Township Police Department. The digital radios and repeater will assist with effective communication to plan and respond to incidents in the schools. A $2,500 grant was also secured for the purchase of 50 “Go Kits” from the Montgomery County Office of Emergency Preparedness. Go Kits are a self-contained and portable stockpile of emergency supplies, placed in a backpack and left in a readily accessible but secure location so that it is ready to “go.” This school year, analysts from SafePlans also conducted comprehensive assessments of three Methacton schools; Arcola Intermediate School, Skyview and the high school. The findings from these assessments serve as the backbone of all risk assessment reports. The analysts will conduct a safety inspection of the building's interior, perimeter and grounds, assessing area hazards. The process will also include a comprehensive review of the District's emergency response manual and procedures, staff and student training, health practices and school climate. The assessment is designed to provide a “snapshot” of a facility's security level at the time of the assessment. The scores associated with each site's physical security risk assessment reflect the analysts' observations during the assessment and may not be indicative of the site's typical security posture.
Beginning this past fall, Members of Methacton's administrative team began the process of gathering and submitting building and department budgets, marking the official start of preparations for the 2011-2012 school year budget.
Over the past two budget cycles, maintaining the Methacton education within the confines of Act 1, combined with the impact of the nation's financial crisis has become increasingly difficult. Each budget cycle brings with it new challenges.
The Methacton School District receives funding from federal, state and local sources. A reduction in funding is possible in all three areas. At the federal level, $537,443 in stimulus money will not be part of this year's government education subsidy. While the stimulus money provided a much needed boost in offsetting expenditures, the funding was never intended to become an annual part of the subsidy.
Much less is known about the potential for funding at the state level. The Commonwealth anticipates that state fiscal stabilization and enhanced "FMAP" funds will expire in 2011-2012. FMAP refers to the federal percentage of matching funds for state Medicaid expenditures. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 enhanced the FMAP contribution for states through December 2010. The expiration of these funds creates a $3.2 billion gap at the state level that will need to be closed.
What does all this mean for Methacton? While more than 80% of Methacton's budgetary dollars are raised at the local level, roughly 17-18% of the District's funding comes from the Commonwealth through various grants and subsidies. Any reduction in that funding will almost certainly have to be made up either through an increase in local taxes, or through cuts to Methacton's programs and services. Act 1 restricts the property tax increase that school board's can seek each year without a public referendum. The 2011-2012 Act 1 index is 1.4%, and it is expected that the index for 2012-2013 will remain low for the foreseen future.
Locally, the real estate collection rate, investment earnings and real estate transfer taxes have dropped precipitously since the 2006-2007 school year, reaching their lowest level when the 2010-2011 school year budget was prepared. The administration and Board will be working closely together, identifying any and all budget areas where expenditures can reduced.
Salaries and benefits continue to be the largest expenditure area, and while the District has made good progress in controlling costs through contract negotiations, that have produced savings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, these savings only offset annual healthcare cost increases that continue to outpace inflation and the index by a substantial average of 12.24% per year (over five years).
Members of the community are invited to monitor the progress of the 2011-2012 school year budget preparations by attending public meetings of the Board, and watching the website for updates. Click here to download a budget preparation schedule.
Late last year, members of the administrative team began working with Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, Dr. Jane Martin, to develop a student assessment plan.
Principals and administrators worked with faculty to review all assessments administered in Kindergarten through grade 12 in order to identify meaningful common tests in all four domains: summative, formative, benchmark, and diagnostic. Areas of focus for the review were measuring the value of the data that each test provides, determining whether or not the test contributes to informed instruction and learning, and eliminating redundancy in student assessments.
The result is an assessment map that summarizes which assessments are to be given for each grade level at specified times throughout the year, creating a uniform delivery of testing, District-wide. At the elementary level, the focus is primarily on nationally-normed universal screening tools. These screeners are designed to measure progress at each individual student's performance level in order to be reasonably assured that he or she is making appropriate progress in the curriculum area being measured.
The Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSAtesting, begins in third grade; and is administered to students in grades three, four, five, six, seven, eight and 11. In line with the introduction of the PSSA, 4Sight testing, which acts as a predictor for a student's performance on the PSSA, is introduced in third grade. The test continues to be administered to students in grades three through six for reading only, and is used for secondary student in grades seven through 12 in both reading and math. STAR testing, an online adaptive assessment designed to measure reading proficiency, is administered in grades two through eight. The STAR testing is an integral part of a comprehensive approach to measuring and increasing student's reading skills. Students can use their STAR results to help them choose reading material that will help them grow as readers through the use of a leveled reading system, indicated through labels placed in library books at Skyview and Arcola. At home, students can use the Accelerated Reader website at www.arbookfind.com to help guide families in choosing books. In the future, communication will be sent to families of students in grades two through eight, so that parents can monitor their students' progress in this all important area of the curriculum. Other assessments include curriculum based tests like the Everyday Math Inventory and Storytown theme tests. These assessments measure a student's progress specific to Methacton's curriculum resources. "These assessments provide us with data that speak to our students' relative strengths and weaknesses, helping us to make important instructional decisions that are designed to move each student forward," Dr. Martin explains, "Teachers can identify areas of targeted remediation and enrichment, tailored for each student."
Beginning at Arcola and throughout the high school years, 4Sight and STAR testing is combined with common exams, mid-terms and finals. "While measuring a student's progress on mastery of our curriculum is important, we continue to see real value in monitoring their progress toward proficiency in the Pennsylvania State Standards." Dr. Martin added.
Many of these tests take very little time to administer, and the result is real data that administrators and faculty can use to help all students reach their maximum potential.
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