CDOS MEETING

As a group we discussed possibilities for the regional spring conference day. Jack shared the conversation at last week’s Regional Instructional Council meeting regarding the task for Program Networks which involved looking at possibilities for design of workshops, speakers, etc. The issue of participation is turning out to be dependent on whether the local individual school district is participating in the regional conference day. Jack shared with the group that the School-To-Career conference is also being scheduled for the same day as the regional conference day. This was a recommendation made by the CDOS Program Networks group last year. Ideas were discussed about possible workshops. The primary link to developing the workshops will be occurring through the School-To-Career committee. It was determined that Frank Rosinski would share info from our meeting with the committee and if people wanted to propose a presentation, they should write up a blurb and send it to Karen VanCuren at BOCES.

The group discussed possibilities of including The group discussed possibilities of including a project in the new Title III grant. Jack shared how, in last year’s grant that was awarded to 10 school districts for $850,000, that included in that was a School-To-Career activity. However, it was put on hold due to the fact that funding in the award had been cut from $1.2 million back. The group discussed possibilities for including new CDOS related projects within the Title III proposal. Discussion initially centered around the issues of State Ed requirements and impacts on district counseling programs, the need to evaluate district counseling programs against the new Standards and Assessments and to develop a plan at each grade level. We discussed the possible proposal of trying to tie CDOS standards into counseling programs and are considering a project related to how counseling programs can address CDOS and state Standards. It was agreed that an item in the grant should include a curriculum development piece potentially related to a specific area like counseling and CDOS standards, but that has yet to be finalized.

Janie Hyland brought up the topic of providing Staff Development on project-based learning. This is a two-day course that Chris Kingsley has developed and presented with very positive results. We evolved this into the possibility of including in the grant a link with Chris Kingsley and Brandeis University to develop the project-based learning course in an on-line, interactive version available through the Internet. This is a strong and current consideration also for the Title III grant.

We discussed issues with attendance. Some of the members attending related that they had talked with other members that they had just found out the day before this meeting that they had this meeting. Jack indicated he would bring this feedback back to the Regional Instructional Council and to the members whose responsibility is to communicate the information that’s sent out from BOCES.

We had some additional discussion around direction and goals of the group. A simple and straight forward goal was stated by Frank Rosinski to have one person in the area of attendance from each participating school district attend. This of course then was broadened to the goal focused on the integration of CDOS standards into curriculum, Staff Development programs and dissemination of ideas for implementation.

Later in the meeting we were joined by Larry Dugan who asked the group whether they would be interested in linking on a project with the Computer Technology Program Networks group around creating a survey at a regional level to assess from businesses their needs in terms of technical skill sets from students exiting from our schools. The group agreed to respond to an initial draft of the survey that would be developed by the Computer Technology group and to consider additional ways of getting the word out and information to businesses to complete the survey.

Listed below are the meeting dates for the 1998-99 year. All meetings will be held from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at the BOCES campus in Newark.

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