Logan Board of Education accepts donation for LHS Art Department
October 29th, 2009 Posted in OpinionBy Chelsey Gensel
Logan’s ‘Art on the Lawn’ fundraiser donated $1,000 from this year’s event to the Logan High School art program, at a school board meeting Wednesday.
This amount is double what was donated last year, said Lucy Peterson Watkins. Watkins is the daughter of Dean F. & Bessie C. Peterson, who formed a foundation to support the arts in Cache Valley. “My parents had a great desire for young people in this valley to explore art and music,” Watkins said.
Foundation president Lee Burningham and some of his pottery students also held a chili bowl fundraiser in which the bowls they made could be purchased filled with chili from various valley vendors. Burningham said the event was very successful. He presented the school board with an additional $650 for the Logan High art program, and matched it with $650 for the food bank.
Also at the meeting, Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) President Lisa Budge addressed concerns of several valley schools, including the lack of a PTA president at Logan High.
“We are actively seeking someone, and we’re hopeful,” Budge said. “We’ll take any names we can to call and ask for help.”
Another issue Budge brought to the board was the concern from a particular elementary school that the PTA, administration and faculty were not working well together. Budge said the concern was brought to her by someone who felt like there was interference from the PTA in classrooms with activities facilitated by the PTA such as the Reflections contest.
“We want to work better with teachers,” Budge said. “After all, it is the Parent-Teacher Association.”
In addition, Logan City School District Superintendent Marshal Garrett and Data Assessment director Clark Ballard reported to the board on state and federal testing such as U-PASS and AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). A newer testing standard, Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives, or AMAO, measures not only how many students are proficient but also how many are progressing, Ballard said.
AMAO tests sub-groups as well as the school as a whole and has a category for ELL students, or English Language Learners. ELL enrollment is up by about 300 students from last year, but Garrett said the definitions of what qualifies an ELL student has changed, so those measurements may not be accurate. In the three years the AMAO test has been administered in the district, this year is the first year LCSD passed, although Ballard said every school in the state failed it in its first year.
“It’s another accountability piece from the federal government,” Ballard said, “but it shows that we’re doing some good things in closing achievement gaps.”
Ballard presented a single class report from one local elementary school to demonstrate the way the test measures and records results, including listing each standard and objective and the progress of that teacher’s class toward them. A current issue, Ballard said, is that the state is considering making those reports public, although they would include numbers assigned to each teacher in place of names and would not include the names of individual students.
The board moved into a closed session toward the end of their meeting to discuss collective bargaining and the purchase, exchange of lease of real property and act on those negotiations, according to the agenda.
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