Hello everyone!  Happy first day back from Spring Break. 


Please find below the minutes from our April General PTA meeting. Slides are linked below.  

All good things,

Hannah Lane, PTA Secretary and mom to Leo (1st grade). 

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Apr 11, 2025 | BNS - PTA General Meeting

Slides are here

Krystina - Treasurer Report 

• Income ($131,574.58) went up a lot in the last few months - stomping ground ($4,030.57), MakerFest. ($4,621.53)

• Expenses ($113,526) went up a bit (they always do) because this meeting is happening 5 weeks apart and we have made 2 BAX payments in that time. Still not spending as much as we bring in (though spending tends to pick up at the end of the year)

Committee updates:

Danielle - Merch

• We are replenishing merch.  $2000 being spend for remaining supply before end of June. 

• Vote on the Budget: Approved

• Should we order more than normal to account for Tariffs? 

Amy - BNS Spring Fling

• May 22nd at Littlefield - Tickets: www.aucteria.events/BNS2025

• Drinks, Mexican food

• Biggest part of funding on this event is Auction items. 

• Reach out to local businesses in your neighborhood (restaurants tend to make more than 100% back of their value; performing arts, services like architect assessment)

• Amy can provide language if you need help with how to reach out to businesses

• Website also have an advertising spot for businesses like dentist, lawyers, etc. 

• We are providing a list of businesses you can reach out to with a script (if you would like one, let us know!)

Volunteer needs

• Konstella notification was sent out to post volunteer needs

• Elections for next year’s executive board are coming up soon. Expect a reach out from one of the existing members to put your name in the hat. 

Teach appreciation week 

• May 5-9th

• Every teach will have a box or basket where you can shower your teacher with gifts

• Class parents will be asking teachers about their favorite things and will share 

Caitlin - ScreenAgers

• Parents getting together to discuss screentime, social media, etc. 

• Also wanting to engage community groups

• There is a Zoom call in May - we will send out a Google Group invite so you can join

• *** Families as learning partners meeting the Friday (April 25th) following break is covering screentime and social media, and we will be doing brainstorming to generate ideas about who to engage to help the school connect with existing orgs 

• We currently have a policy - we shouldn’t know that a child has a phone at the school.  If they do have one, we will remove it if it’s a problem, and return it at the end of the day. 

Solar panels - could generate income from net metering…? 

• We actually got a grant to do this a few years ago! 

• But... we did an assessment and they said our roof could not bear the weight of the panels

• We still have all the literature from the assessment. 

• But, maybe something has changed and panels are lighter now?

• If someone wants to take this on, we can provide the reports and we can start with that...

Diane School Updates

• Why were there fire trucks here this morning? The water pressure sensor in the basement triggered fire alarms, and we had to evacuate for safety.  There was no fire, no harm. It automatically calls the fire department.  All the things that are supposed to happen to keep us safe happened. They looked at the safety panel, and said everything is fine. 

Assessments at BNS (April 2025) 

• Assessments, standardized tests, and academic screeners (which are the latest to be rolled out) are all different types of measures that are implemented across the DOE.

Definitions:

• Assessment vs. standardized tests

• Assessment is happening all the time. It is the work of getting to know children.

• Standardized tests are usually designed by teachers and are more formal measures delivered at a set cadence.

• Assessments at BNS - we do assessments before and after units of study. For example, in 2nd grade, we talk about the idea of “half” and fractions, and then in third grade, we talk about fractions again. We then take our unit and build it around where kids are starting from. Then at the end of the year, we do an assessment and see where a third grader lands.

• Watched a video of an example of Assessment with a teacher and child showing reading fluency assessment. Lots of discussion about this video and the assessment that came along with it.  It’s super useful and it allows teachers to understand very quickly where and how a child is struggling and what kind of support they need.

• The assessment is called a “Running Record”. It’s an assessment that BNS does, not something that is required by the DOE. The running record is an amazing way for teachers to communicate with each other and help focus in on the areas that a child needs support.

• Parent comment: “The DOE is trying to convince us that teachers shouldn’t sit next to our kids and assess them, but the kids should be using a standardized test on a computer and just get a spreadsheet report. But the problem is that the teacher doesn’t even see the questions that were given to the child or the answers and they don’t know what the child’s strengths are. And the questions require answers on these tests that are extremely specific and simplistic and do not measure whether you can actually do the skill, but rather whether you can answer the question in the narrow singular way they have decided you should answer it.”

Questions and answers

• Q: Do you assess individual students or are you looking for just a general classroom competency?

  • A: “Teaching is a whole body thinking feeling thing and every teacher has a different way of assessing it. I will go around and watch and note as I go. Or if I give children a specific pencil/paper thing then I will assess that specific activity. Sometimes I will teach something and see that it falls flat, so then I assess myself and say, "I introduced that too early and have to go back and teach something else first. I do a running record 3 times a year with all kids.”

  • A: “The other form of assessment is speaking with previous teachers.  There is time for 4th grade teachers to talk with 5th grade teachers, and see how it carries over. Sometimes we have other teachers come into the classroom to help assess each other’s children.”

• Q: “Does the school do a good job of letting parents know if kids are performing at grade level?”

  • A: "There is an ongoing conversation with parents - if there is an alarm that goes off that a child is relying heavily on others or is struggling - then teachers will let parents know and say - I don’t know what this means yet, but it’s an early sign.”

  • A: “That progress report that you get twice a year from the school is what the DOE is asking you about in that school survey… It’s a standardized set of expectations that every student is measured on.  But we have way more complex set of assessments and we are always paying attention.  We give you way more information than that standardized survey requires.”

• Q: “What do you do when you notice that a child needs “more” or is “bored”?

  • A: “The first thing I ask a child is “what is the more you are seeking?”  Sometimes kids ask this because they don’t want to do the work anymore, or because they like the algorithm, but don’t want to go deeper.”  

  • Answer from a parent: “Our second grade teacher showed us at our parent teacher conference that there are three worksheets for doing math that she puts out every time there is a lesson, and they are at three different levels of complexity and I realized that there is this whole infrastructure to ensure kids are getting material that is appropriate and challenging for them.”

  • A: “Sometimes when kids are particularly advanced for their grade, like reading above their grade level, differentiating instruction and helping them go deeper doesn’t mean that I teach 3rd grade content in 2nd grader. There is brain development that is required to do more abstract concepts.  I may take 2nd grade content and rearrange it to help the 2nd grader.

  • A: “These standardized tests are not assessing students. They don’t let you know what a kid knows. They don’t let you derive learnings from it that can inform your lessons to teach them more.”

• Q: If kids don’t take the standardized tests, is there a time when they have to sit quietly and take a test?

  • A: "Yes, they do. The biggest problem is the time that is used for these standardized tests, and the information that you *don’t* get from these tests. And there is probably a more appropriate age to do these things. Of course, we all had to take teaching exams, but I do not know the purpose of these standardized exams for 3rd graders. They haven’t told us what they do with information. We don’t get the details of the test, just the report.  They don’t give the assessment details in time for the results to be incorporated back into teaching."

• Screeners

  • "In addition to state tests, there are academic screeners that happen 3x a year. For kids with IEPs, there are no special accommodations (like time). They want to know what you can do in 1 minute."

• Q: "Acadience? I have heard teachers talk about it being useful. "

  • A: "They are screeners and we are required to do it after covid as a way to see how far behind everyone is. The purpose of the screeners has shifted. There is good and bad. In K-2 reading screeners, there is a lot of actual 1:1 and the teacher talks with the kids and you get lots of information from it. I have found that going through these passages is useful for about 75% of kids. However, all of that information is being collected in other ways at other times. I already have all that information on kids. Every kid who was flagged was already getting intervention services. It’s not bad data, and it often corroborates what you already know.  But it takes a lot of time."