DISTRICT FINALLY POSTS EDUCATION SUMMIT INFO ONLINE WEEKS LATE

Just hours after Maplewood.com raised the issue of the district failing to post notes and links to information from the recent education summit two weeks after the event, Superintendent John Ramos issued a letter revealing that the information had been posted.

Although Ramos and the district did not respond to our requests today for why such information had not been released more than two weeks after the event, despite promises that it would be, this email was sent to residents within hours of our report Monday:

Dear SOMSD Community:

The discussions at the November 10th Education Summit were rich and insightful.  In the  29 different topic rooms, we heard creative ideas ranging from establishing “Maker Spaces” in every school, to moving from grade-level groupings based on age to multi-age classrooms based on interests and skills,  to providing MOOCS (online course) at CHS to provide opportunities for students to explore subjects or specialized courses not offered in our regular class schedules. 

We also saw some common themes thread their way through many diverse topics, including the need to refresh teaching approaches to be relevant to today's learners, to foster more partnerships with outside community members and organizations, and to communicate more thoroughly about the opportunities and pathways available to students.

We invite the community to continue participating in the discussion of these important topics through January 4th, so that we can incorporate all perspectives into the next phase of our Strategic Planning Process. 

Many thanks to the dozens of facilitators and scribes who captured the essence of the conversations at the Summit. The notes from each discussion group are available here.

If you would like to share your thoughts on one or more of these topics, please do so here.

We look forward to synthesizing all of the ideas, suggestions, and visions shared at the Summit and electronically in the next month as we create a blueprint for SOMSD’s future.  Thank you for being a part of this important process.

Sincerely,

Dr. John J. Ramos, Sr.

Superintendent

And, miraculously, the links to notes and info from the Nov. 10 summit were suddenly  online. But the link for residents to use to give their input still goes to an error message.