Some of you may have been at Monday night’s school board meeting, or may have seen the article in the paper Tuesday morning saying that QUEST was losing three full-time teaching positions. You might also have made the connection between the elimination of three full-time positions and the QUEST pull-out program. It’s true the pull-out is being eliminated for 2009-2010 and beyond, but what the District has been working on to replace it should give parents of highly capable students a lot to be excited about.
Beginning in 2009-2010, the District Proposes that 3rd through 6th graders will be able to participate in QUEST Regional classes, housed at seven schools throughout the district. The existing program had offered full-time self-contained classes for 3rd/4th and 5th/6th at Meeker and Zeiger. The redesigned program proposes to offer full-time opportunities to more students, and at more locations. Classes will remain as 3rd/4th and 5th/6th grade splits, but at seven regional locations instead of just two. The seven schools that may house QUEST Regional Classes have not yet been announced, and potential teachers are still being identified. Once identified, these teachers will receive specialized professional development to prepare them for the challenges of teaching highly capable students. Many details are still being finalized. Look for more information about these changes on the QUEST website at http://schools.puyallup.k12.wa.us/programs/quest/index.htm and in your mailbox soon.
Also changing next year will be how 2nd graders who would have been eligible to participate in pull-out classes will be served. The District proposes to use a clustering potential model, based on successful programs they’ve studied in other states. Under this model, students identified as highly capable will be clustered together in one classroom at each of the District’s 22 elementary schools. Their teachers will attend special professional development programs to prepare them for working with highly capable children. They will work to ensure that the identified students receive differentiated educations that are appropriate to their level. Rather than working with highly capable kids once a week, the clustering potential model hopes to provide additional enrichment opportunties for these children every day, and in their neighborhood schools. The District plans to apply the same model to first grade classes in the 2010-2011 school year.
With these changes, the District hopes to reduce the cost of serving the highly capable students in our district from the current cost of approximately $1,324 above the standard allotment per student/per year to a much more budget friendly cost of roughly $377 more than the standard per student/per year allotment. Most impressive is that the District hopes to realize those savings while serving more children in a full-time model.
Last year, when we started thinking about the serious financial stresses that were being put on the District, we hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst. What we’ve seen in this newly proposed model gives us a great deal to look forward to. ABC will work hard to support the new QUEST Regional schools, and to support the clustering potential teachers. We look forward to working with the parents and educators in our District to make the new program a success.
For additional information from the District, please check http://teacherweb.puyallup.k12.wa.us/quest/nvelazquez/index.php or see a frequently asked questions document that Coordinator Nancy Velazquez has made available at the Documents link on that site.
As we learn more about the details of the new program, we will share those details with you. If there’s anything else we can do to help during this transition, please let us know. You can comment on this post, or send us an email.
