Superintendent’s Webcast

Superintendent of Schools Dr. John Fredericksen:
Welcome to our Wicomico County Public Schools’ webcast for November 2009. Thank you for listening and watching. I want to make sure we hit on a few really important things for the month of November.
The No. 1 thing at this point is American Education Week. It will be held November 15th- 21st. It’s a national week to recognize education and have people get involved with education, and we’re going to participate along with the national schedule. This will be an opportunity for moms, dads, guardians, grandma, grandpa, and other interested adults to come in and see our students, see your children, see everyone in action with the teachers and other staff in our schools. Please know that you are welcome to come in. Your child's school may have scheduled things that are more interesting than others, so check the school websites or call into our switchboard at 410-677-4400 and the switchboard will hook you up with the school that’s of interest to you.

During American Education Week, one of the most important things that we are going to be doing is installing one more building block in our linkage with families, our Family Portal. This will be a technological tool through the internet for parents and guardians to see what their child is doing in school. You’ll have a special password, and this will allow you to see grades, assignments, and other important documents. This is an early rollout, so it won’t have everything we are planning to have on it eventually, but this will be an opportunity to see those tools that will help you help us help your child succeed. That’s our goal. Later on we hope to be able to install pieces of it that will help you know what your child purchased for lunch, what the schedule is for various activities that are coming up, and most importantly, where your child is in terms of success for college and later life. Family Portal information will be available at the American Week activities at your child’s school. Please join us.

Please also note that when you look at materials on your Family Portal regarding your child, that grades, assignments, and quizzes and the like will be posted in two weeks for our regular teachers and slightly longer for our specialists. A regular teacher at the elementary level has possibly 20, 25 or 30 students. When we look at specialists and middle and high school teachers, they will be allowed extra time because commonly a specialist will have 120, 150, 160 students. They will grade all the papers on a timely basis, but we need to give them a little bit more time to handle those tasks. Please be patient and if there is any question at all, please give a shout to your school and they can help you work through the details in regards to timeliness for postings on your Family Portal.
Another critical piece for student success is family involvement. We have a policy regarding family involvement and information supporting family involvement online; please go to our website at www.wcboe.org to view it. We believe that the team between the parent or guardian, the student, and the teacher or the other appropriate adults who are in the schools working with your children can make the student succeed in a better manner than any one of us working by ourselves. So please join us with that work.
If you say, "You know I’d really like to get more involved in an organizational basis," please give us a shout we are always looking for volunteers to serve on various committees that make decisions on everything from books to transportation to other factors in school life.
We have a great parent teacher association (PTA) here in Wicomico County with chapters in all of our elementary and secondary schools. We also have a county-wide group that has a great Survivor game that they are playing for attendance at meetings and activities as well as for awards for their school at the end of the year. If you are interested in joining PTA, please call up your school and talk with them they can hook you up with the membership person who can also tell you what the dates and times and places of their various meetings will be. That’s a great opportunity to get involved with other people who are going through the same processes that you are going through with your child.

Finally, I want to really encourage moms and dads and guardians to get involved with school at the conferencing level. Conferencing means sitting down with your child’s teacher or group of teacher and finding out how they are doing. Report cards will be coming out on Nov. 12 and this will be an excellent opportunity to have something to talk about with them. Please give a jingle to your school, get involved in conferences, and participate in your child’s career at school.

Thank you very much for watching today. I’m John Fredericksen, superintendent of schools, Wicomico County Public School System.