Libraries in New Haven

 Only time will tell how New Haven will handle the media centers in New Haven School district. Since Measure H did not pass, California budget cuts will affect all schools in New Haven. One program that may be drastically effected is libraries, commonly known in New Haven as media. The media specialist at the high school will be retained, but the middle schools and elementary schools will have some cuts. The severity of these cuts remain to be decided.

We Will: Bust This Test

Teachers, Keith Guernsey and Jeff Pickering, made this amazing video. Great fun with an excellent message for student success in California Star Testing.

2012 Teacher and Staff of the Year

Roxanne Ramirez

Long time teacher at Alvarado, Roxanne Ramirez, has been chosen as the Teacher of the Year for 2012. For many years she taught 4th grade and is now a 5th grade teacher.  She is well loved for her spirit of cooperation between teachers and her excellent work with students. She has been the after school leader of the Spirit Squad and has long been an advocate of bay area sports teams. As a fluent Spanish speaker, her class is often full of English learners.

 Yurani Mancotte DePerez

Yurani Mancotte DePerez, Office Assistant, has been chosen as the classified staff person of the year 2012. She is known as a hard worker, always gets her work done, and is helpful to everyone. Yurani is good with the students and everyone loves her. According to Nancy Mumm, School Secretary, Yurani coming to Alvarado has been a blessing.

Measure H Parcel Tax

Parents, students, teachers and community members gathered Saturday morning to show their support for Measure H. It was a very wet, rainy Saturday when teachers, administrators, and families gave up the morning to encourage voters to pass the parcel tax. Marchers assembled in front of James Logan High School with umbrellas and signs. Supporters of Measure H walked from James Logan High School on Alavarado-Niles Road to Union Landing where a rally was held.

"Yes on H!" was the clarion call. The $180 per parcel tax measure would raise $12 million over a period of 4 years to preserve classrooms from the California state budget cuts.



Measure H did not pass. Hopefully Proposition 30 supported by Governor Jerry Brown will pass.

Grading on the Internet

In the past years Alvarado used CRX/carbon forms to produce report cards for students. Now Alvarado is finally up to date with the times with report card input being done on the internet by the teachers. However, it is a time consuming as teachers still have over literally 2000 little boxes to double check once you do the whole class. The classroom teacher also has to input the prep grades, such as media, physical education, music, and science. The prep teachers still just put the grades on a roster and give it to each teacher. Plus teachers still have to check over the grades after they are done to make sure the data is correct as there are still some hitches, as with all new things, with the computer. Once this process is clarified, the teachers will be happy not to get carpel tunnel syndrome as they once did with the old carbon process.

Family Nights

Alvarado will host a series of family night potlucks for each of the major ethnic groups at the school. Data pertaining to that particular group in comparison to the school will be shared. Everyone is invited to any and all of these evenings.

African-American Family Night- Feb. 22nd
Latino Family Night- Feb. 29th
European-American Family Night- March 28th
Asian American and Pacific Islander Family Night- April 11th

2012 Budget Crises

Financially this has been a tough year for education in California. New Haven Unified School district is no exception. The district weathered the storm of financial problems for the 2011-12 year by laying off teachers, furloughs, employees sacrificing a sixth day without pay on a non-student day, and increasing class size. With the year 2012-13 looming more cuts will be necessary. Teachers will be getting layoff notices as required by law on March 15th. The district already has notified teachers of the following cuts for the rest of the 2012 year. There will be no overtime for classified staff and any new positions will be frozen. There will be no new hires, no hires for vacancies, no Office Depot online print orders, nine furlough days in 2012-13, no more funds for travel and conference expenses unless they have already been approved, and no more funds for consultants. As of now, all non-salary accounts are frozen which means there will be no buying paper and cartridges for printers. These are just some of the cuts now put in place.

With 2012-13 upcoming, the New Haven Board of Education voted to place a parcel tax measure on the June primary ballot. The parcel tax will be $180 per parcel and if it passes, will generate $3 million for 4 years. This measure requires a two-thirds majority vote and includes exemptions for disable residents and senior citizens.

The passing of the tax measure will not alleviate all of the district's budget problems. The district is also hoping voters will also approve Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative in November. If the tax measures do not pass, New Haven could lose up to $10.7 million in the 2012-13 school year.

The possible impact of non passage of these measures could be: nine budget reduction days for 2012-13, increasing K-2 class size to 30, eliminating the Community Day School, eliminating media specialists and library technicians, eliminating stipends for co-curricular and athletics programs, reducing elementary specialist, and reducing middle school elective positions.

If you know a teacher, give them a hug and vote yes on the parcel tax. It's hard on morale to work in such an environment. In the last few years teachers have had to deal with layoff notices or being bumped to a new position. This is particularly hard on teachers with less than nine years experience as they are the most vulnerable to layoffs. Teachers buy supplies, spend time getting grants for supplies and equipment, and sacrificed a day of pay. Teachers have gone the extra mile to provide the best education possible for their students even as they watch their class size rise. Beside losing their job, the rise in class size probably hurts the most as every teacher knows how small class size provides the best school experience while increasing student learning and ultimately test scores.

Gung Hay Fat Choy

AES - Chinese New Year Parade from Mr. Guernsey on Vimeo.

First graders and their teachers have a dragon parade for the whole school to celebrate Chinese New Years. Gung Hay Fat Choy means best wishes and congratulations for a prosperous New Year.

Alvarado vs Eastin: Staff Softball

Alvarado staff enjoyed a game of softball with the Eastin staff. Both teams are shown here. Alvarado won 5 to 3 but Eastin is going to ask for a rematch as soon as possible.

The AE Team 2012

Belkys Blackwell, Dave Trier, Maureen Tecson, Letty Munoz-Gonzales, Mistee Hightower-Guzman (Assistant Principal), Greg Snelling, Pam Ruley, Jeff Pickering, Clinton Puckett, Tracie Noriega (Principal, kneeling), Jessica Nunes (kneeling)

Photo by Keith Guernsey
who was also on the AE Team.

Friendly Letters

Students in Maureen Tecsons second grade class used techniques learned in their Writers Workshop lessons to write friendly letters to friends and relatives. They then took a short field trip across the street to mail them.

Winter Concert

Upcoming Furlough Days

This is a post on Facebook by the Alvarado Elementary PTC to notify parents and staff of upcoming changes in the school calendar. Yes, Social Media has come to AE.

Due to the budget cuts from the state of California for the year 2011-2012, schools were forced to reduced the school year from 181 days to 175 days.

In consideration of New Haven families and to align with the legal observance of the New Year's Day holiday, the District's employee groups tentatively have agreed to extend winter break by one day, through Monday, Jan 2. Schools, which will be closed starting Monday, Dec 19, will reopen Tuesday, Jan 3, pending final approval by the New Haven Teachers Association next Tuesday and ratification by the Board of Education on Tuesday night.

To maintain a 175-day school year, schools would be open Wednesday, March 21, which previously was designated as one of the six furlough days being forced upon the District because of state budget cuts.

The schedule is unchanged for the other furlough days: Feb. 10, March 5, April 20, May 21 and June 14. Employees also are sacrificing a sixth day without pay on a non-student day. The furlough days were scheduled for the second half of the school year to allow for the possibility some or all of the days could be reinstated if the budget situation improved.

5th grade Marine Boat Trip

Red Ribbon Week

Halloween 2011 Ninja Turtle Teachers
Clinton Puckett, Letty Munoz-Gonzales, Maureen Tecson, Vince Lindain

Typically Halloween is the end of Red Ribbon Week. This week is devoted to the "Say No To Drugs" campaign which was co-chaired by Nancy Reagan the wife of former President Ronald Reagan.

According to the United States National Drug Enforcement Administration the National Red Ribbon program is the oldest drug prevention campaign in the United States in which young people pledge to live a drug free life. Millions of students and teachers plan daily activities to remind students of this pledge.

Here is Alvarado's Red Ribbon schedule.
Tuesday--Sock it to Drugs. Wear crazy or mismatched socks
Wednesday--Stay in the Game. Wear your favorite sports team apparel.
Thursday--I Can, You Can, We Can say NO to drugs. Canned food drive.
Friday--These Paws Don't Touch Drugs. Wear AES Spirit Wear.
Monday, the 31st, Halloween--Say BOO to drugs. Wear your costume.

Welcome to AE 2011

We are AES from Mr. Guernsey on Vimeo.

State Test Scores Go UP! UP! UP!

Alvarado Elementary made double-digit gains on the 2011 API, State of California Academic Performance Index. Alvarado improved by 17 points, to 852 and is up 111 points since 2004-05. Alvarado is the second highest performing elementary school in the New Haven School District only behind Delaine Eastin.

In the last few years Alvarado has implemented programs such as Writer's Workship, Balanced Literacy, and Leveled Literacy Intervention to improve scores. The focus for 2011 was on Comprehension Strategies. These along with the teamwork of the staff have helped to get these scores up.

Unfortunately, Alvarado did not meet the federally mandated AYP, Adaquate Yearly Progress, target for English & Language Arts from No Child Left Behind so they will be in the second year of program improvement.

Staff Summer Fun

Maureen Tecson, Vince Lindain, Sonia Wong loving it in the Bahamas.

Good News, Bad News 2011-2012

Good News should always come first. Principal Tracie Noriega of Alvarado Elementary has been selected for a pilot test of National Board Certification for principals. She is among 240 principals selected from more than 700 applicants from 19 states. The program hopes to establish leadership research-based standards, identify effective school leaders, and elevate the profession. Congratulations Tracie!

Due to the state of California's budget problems, New Haven was required to lay off 70 teachers at the end of the 2011 school year. However, many of the Alvarado teachers who were laid off at the end of the year have been able to be rehired. Alvarado also added a part-time Assistant Principal, Mistee Hightower-Guzman, to the staff.

Mistee Hightower-Guzman

Pat Pedroze is the new Resource Specialist and Yurani Maycotte DePerez is the new office Assistant, For a while, the plan was to lay of the media specialists at the middle schools but that plan was ultimately scrapped.

Now for the Bad News. The instructional year has been reduced from 180 days to 175 days. Students will receive five fewer days of instruction this year. This means all employees will be making less money because they will be taking six unpaid furlough days. This also means that parents who have their children in day care may have to pay for more days in day care as their children will not be in school as many days. There are still fewer teachers, so the class size reduction ratio in grades kinder through third grade took a big hit. Class sizes will increase. Kindergarten will increase 25 to 1. First and second grades will be 25 to 1. Third grade will increase 30 to 1. Last year third grade was 25 to 1. There is no limit on class size for fourth or fifth grade.

The Good News is as the new year begins, your child's teacher will do everything possible to make the school experience the best for each child. The changes discussed above mean that the teacher will revamp their program to meet each child's needs academically and socially. This is a challenge Alvarado teachers are very capable of meeting.

Program Improvement AYP/API 2010-2011

In the 2010-2011 school year, Alvarado Elementary was placed in Program Improvement. Although increasing our API (Academic Performance Index) score from 816 in 2008, to 826 in 2009, we missed meeting our 2009 goal for our Socio-economically disadvantaged population AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). Again, in 2010, although increasing our overall score to 835, AES did not make our Latino student goal. Since goals were missed two years in a row, we were placed in Program Improvement. Letters were sent out to our Alvarado Families informing them of this and, as per law, offered these families a transfer to another school in the district. Less than .025% opted to transfer while the remaining families stayed at AES.

Teachers and staff took the PI rating hard, especially with a 9 point increase in API. Staff morale took a hit, especially with the grim economic environment, and, given little or no help from the District office, Alvarado Elementary staff formed a cohesive group to address these issues and provide staff development. Our focus has been on the seven comprehension strategies: Connections, Questioning, Inferring, Visualizing, Determining Importance, Monitoring Meaning, and Synthesizing, and in the year 2011-2012 staff will be trained on "Critical Literacy".

The 2011 data is due out in a few weeks and we are anxiously waiting to hear the results. This post was written by Laurie Koehler, a respected third grade teacher and former Literature Leader at Alvarado. Keep in mind that API is the State of California Index. AYP is the No Child Left Behind federally mandated standard.

No Child Left Behind

The Learning Walk

"Through the talking about goals, and reflecting on observations I think we can improve our craft. We can't be afraid to look at ourselves critically."

Carmen Jorgenson

Learning walks were developed from a business model at Hewlet Packard where management walked around and observed the company workers. The Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh developed and coined the term "Learning Walks" which is one of the new buzz words in education today. Principals, teachers, and superintendents visit classrooms as a team in order to see what students are experiencing at any given time. Some visits can be the whole class time or as brief as 5 to 10 minutes. Learning walks are about observation, reflection and growth, how teachers teach, how students learn, what gets taught to whom and why. NHUSD has adopted this format to develop improvements to instruction by assisting teachers with PLC's (Professional Learning Community). Alvarado has been doing Learning Walks since 2008. This practice also helps to identify best practices and future teacher leaders.

However, the business model presents some challenges for the school environment. If teachers leave the classroom to participate in the walk, then substitute teachers are teaching their students. Substitutes cost money and do not always provide the same quality of instruction as the regular classroom teacher. Team members are not supposed to talk during the visit unless they ask a question of a student and are to be unobtrusive in the classroom. Students are sometimes overwhelmed by having a group of teachers in their classrooms. In March of 2012, fifty teachers and administrators visited Alvarado in one day. Most classrooms in California are already overcrowded with barely enough room for the students. In some cases there may be as many as 6 or 7 teachers in the classroom possibly disrupting the focus of students.

School environments are very complex. Principals and teachers are being pulled in a million directions every day. Often there may not be the time to prepare and debrief teachers as the model requires. This can be very frustrating for the staff. Often teachers are told their class will be visited and then the team runs out of time for all the visits. This leaves the teachers on edge and wondering the age old question, "Am I not good enough for the team to observe?" Also the teams seldom visit the library, the science room, physical education, or the music class making those teachers feel like second class citizens.

For those being visited, Learning Walks can be stressful for teachers especially if they do not know the focus of the observation. For those schools in Program Improvement, the Walkers also look to see if the daily objectives of lessons are posted. Some of the time each teacher in each group is given a specific focus to observe. Before moving to the next classroom the teachers meet for about 5 minutes to debrief by each reporting their observations. Often the classroom teachers being observed are told to do a guided reading lesson during the visit which could mean the focus is reading instruction, but the team could be looking for interactions between students and teachers, classroom organization, independence in student learning, evidence of deep and rigorous thinking, displays, or all the above.

There are a set of steps for the walkers which includes orientation of the staff, instructional focus of the walk, the actual classroom visitation, brief outside the classroom talk, debriefing, and communication with teachers, either oral or written. The walkers may not make judgement statements about what the teachers and students are doing or not doing. Usually schools use a recording sheet for team members to jot down their observations. The teams often look at the walls to see how they support learning and examine student work on those walls. Some team members ask questions of students. The team looks to see what individual help is given to students. After all classrooms have been visited, then the team meets for general debriefing where each person shares what they saw in the classroom citing specific evidence. Then team members make inferences about how they can use their learnings in their own classroom or in the case of best practices the entire school. It is important to communicate the learnings to staff members not on the team and to thank the teachers who have been visited.