Orcas Public School Site Council Forming

As organizations become larger, the input of those it serves seems smaller – that’s the logic behind the formation of school “site councils,” particularly in larger school districts.

The Orcas Island School District (OISD) serves 461 students within five sites: Waldron, Orcas Elementary, Orcas Middle School, OASIS High School and Orcas High School.

“Waldron Island and the OASIS group already have their own site councils, so this one will be specifically for the Eastsound public school,” says Orcas Elementary School parent Bob Connell.

Connell, who is spearheading the organization of the Public School Site Council, says that basically, site councils deal with school improvement plans and issues.. Examples of such issues, taken from another Washington State site council, are:
1) expanding teachers’ ability to integrate technology to support curriculum
2) forming decisions on instruction in each classroom
3) supporting teachers as a professional learning community
4) supporting parental and community involvement
5) supporting a respectful learning environment;
6) increasing academic achievement for all students
7) developing learning systems with clear and compelling standards for students.

A site council differs from the Parent-Teacher-Student Association (PTSA) in that it is more oriented towards improvement within the school, rather than school events, appreciation or information outflow, says Connell.

He began promoting the site council concept as a positive response to concerns from parents and other community members who were looking for improvement in school issues.

“Enough so, that you want to address this and have the school be a place where people can get together and talk about things,” said Connell.

“Typically, there are a lot of personal issues, and generally the site councils won’t get into that – teacher performance is a school board issue.

“But, more generically, we’re really looking to improvement in general, not solve ‘one parent, one teacher, one kid’ issues,” said Connell.

The first meeting will be Tuesday, May 5 at 3:30 p.m. at the Orcas Public School Library.

At this meeting, the site council bylaws will be finalized and then the process of specifying projects people are interested in will begin and these projects will be added to the improvement plan tables.

Connell planned deliberately to keep the framework loose, “with a lot of it unformed; we want people to come and contribute ideas without a lot of pre-conceived rules. We’re really an exploratory stage and will let the solutions morph.”

The council will meet about once a month to track plan progress and be a public forum for people to discuss their ideas and get new programs added to the improvement plan. Ideas can come from anybody and there will be multiple ways to communicate them to the site council.

The PTSA will be working to help coordinate the parent part of the council and will be generating an email to its members before the first session containing sample bylaws and school improvement forms so the group formation can be as quick and efficient as possible.

For more information, contact Bob Connell by email at bobbconnell@yahoo.com or by phone: 376-3930.