Budget Crisis

Last Friday I turned in my final order of the school year.  It was about a $1300.00 order.   I showed I still had $1394 and change.

 The school secratary returned my requistion request with a note that said, “Can’t enter this order, your account only has $1.17.”

 When I picked up my mail at lunch I was shocked.  I called central office and asked for an audit of my budget.  I compared it to my budget log.  I couldn’t figure it out. I shared this news with my principal and he couldn’t figure it out.  The only differences I could see was one item that I listed as being $125.00 and the audit showed it charged $$158.00.  A difference of $28.00…not $1200!!!  I also had a $194.00 deduction that they did not, so in all theories…I would be negative if that went through!

 I called central office and explained the dilema to the budget lady.  She said the best way she could help me would be for me to come on Monday and go through the budget line-by-line with her.

 I took the budget binder that weekend (where I keep track of all requisitions, invoices and P.O.’s) and the audit from CO, home to my husband.  He analyzed everything and it all came down to the very last item on the budget.  An encumbrance was not negative on a $1500.00 order.  They also clearly never had recorded the $194 item.  So it balanced out to right around $1290, exactly what I thought I should have. Whew.  Now all I had to do was prove it to CO.

 So this morning I drove down to Central Office.  I sat in the ladies office and explained to her where I thought the errors where.  We were right about the encumbrance.  Somehow it stayed positive when it should have been negative. 

Non-fiction vendors

Rainbow and Gumdrop 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.

Today my para (who will be the librarian at the new school next year) had two vendor visits. 

I’m choosing to journal about this because it was interesting to see what vendors will do to try and get a new school to choose them.

The two vendors that came today were smaller companies.  Rainbow books came at 9:00 a.m.  The man who represents the company is actually also a local author.  He showed us a variety of new books that came in sets.   At the end of his pitch he offered free MARC records and shelf-ready if we did a “large” order with him.  He also said he would do a free author visit from the new school.

Before the Rainbow representative had time to pack up, the second vendor from Gumdrop books arrived.   He had similar books to Rainbow, in fact many repeats.   At the end however, his quote was higher.  This was due to the fact that he was unable to offer free perks such as MARC records and shelf ready.  When we asked him about it, he said it would come out of his commission.   Not so impressive.   We actually felt sorry for the guy, but that is not a reason to purchase his books.

It’s getting down to the point of needing to make some decisions.   We still are meeting with one other vendor- Tandem based out of St. Louis.  Their representative is coming April 10th.    The Follet rep is coming one more time on April 4th.  

Literacy Meetings

Today we attended the district literacy meetings that are held once a month.

The first meeting is called the literacy leader’s meeting. This involves all literacy coaches, title 1 reading specialists and all librarians. We present to one another ideas about literacy. This past November I presented with the literacy coach and title 1 teacher about online resources for reading. We shared with the group information such as Reading A-Z (literacy coach), Reading Rockets.org, (title 1) and e-books (myself). I showed TumbleBooks and bookflix (by Scholastic).

Today’s presentor was another elementary librarian and one of the third grade teachers she works with. They presented on Accelarated Reader (AR). a software that children use to take quizzes on books they have read. The tests are supposed to indicate the students comprehension. There were a few questions raised at the meeting about the validity of some of the quizzes. Some questions give the answer away in the question and mostly focus on recall.
The presenting librarian had spent time at AR trainings this summer. She implemented some of the things she learned this school year, particularly with the teacher she brought along and they shared their successes with the group. Basically what they did was encourage student to read tons of books and take the tests. The librarian put posters all over the school advertising how many words students had read. One class read over 1 million words. As students passed the tests they moved up in reading levels, from ready reader to super ready, etc. The librarian reported that students were very excited to reach each new level. She found her year to be so successful that she is going to pay $2500 for the online verison so she will have a quiz for nearly 95% of her collection.
I have mixed feelings on AR. I see both benefiits and disadvantages. While it’s great that students read 1 million words, I’m not sure how this ties to helping them love reading for reading’s sake. What about poems with few words, what about picture books with no words? These type of books are wonderful, but students who hyped about AR might skip over them. I hate that students would not check out a library book just because it does not have an AR sticker attached to it.

On the other hand, I do have AR in my building. I purchase the quizzes for individual books. I have no plans to purchase the online verison. We do use AR to determine if students have read and understood Mark Twain books and I have individual teachers who use AR as part of their reading incentive program. This year I did a big reading incentive program encouraging students to read 15 minutes a night at home. Parents have to validate this and turn records in each month. Each month we recognize the students who make the goal. In May students who turned in mintues for 5/6 month get to have an overnight at school.
Because of this reading incentive program, I just do not see myself doing a big AR program in the future, although I am happy to hear it was successful for another building.

The new library

Meet with Director of Curriculum, new principal, new librarian and book vendor to discuss purchasing for the new library.

Children’s Literature Festival

Tuesday, March 11th

Today we took 12 students and 5 teachers to the Children’s Literature Festival in Warrensburg, MO.  This is the first time I have ever been to the festival even though I have heard about it since moving to Kansas City.  It was such an excellent experience that I am sad it was my first time, but I can say it will be the first of many!

Before I explain about the day, let me first say that I hope to bring more than 12 students next year!! It is one of those collaboration situations that I chose not to fight this year.  The teachers wanted the students to read 10 of the 20 Mark Twain books and prove they had read them by passing an AR test.  I disagreed with for many reasons.  Here are two: 1) 10 books seemed like a few too many and 2)AR tests aren’t always the best way to determine if a student read and understood a book. 

Next year I am planning on introducing discussion boards about the Mark Twain books through a free online discussion board system called Moodle.  Students will be able to log-on and discuss questions related to the book as they read it.   Myself and other teachers can also jump in and add our thoughts. 

Enough about next year…on to the fun day we just had!!

The first thing we did when we arrived was go down to the student union to pick up our pre-ordered books.  That place was very busy and I am so thankful we pre-ordered.   I pushed pre-orders really hard with the students, so that they could have their very own books to get signed by the authors.  We had all but 2 students order books.   For the two who didn’t order, I did not want them to be left out, so I had them get books from my own library signed.  I think they enjoyed this.

We were scheduled to see four authors.  Teri Sloat, Claudia Mills, Herm & MJ Auch and Cheryl Harness.  We actuallty saw five, because our first author session wasn’t scheduled until 10, so we snuck into a session at 9.    At 9 we sat and watched RW Alley, who is the illustratpr of one of the Show-Me nominees, Ziggy’s Blue Ribbon Day.   Mr. Alley did a great job of talking to students about what it is like to be an illustrator.  He talked about where he works and showed how he starts his drawings.  One of the most interesting things he talked about in my opinion was how difficult it is to draw the same character over and over and keep it looking the same.   I had never thought about this before, but it makes sense that it would be difficult.

The next author we saw was Teri Sloat.  She talked about her time living in Alaska.  She has written and illustrated books about stories people told her when she lived there.   She had pictures of Alaska that she showed us. 

After Ms. Sloat we were scheduled for lunch.  We took the students down to order food.  I need to work with some of the teachers in my school!!! There were about three choices of places to eat, a few teachers wanted them to all go to one place.  It was only 12 kids and we had 5 adults!! Couldn’t we split up???  Me oh my.   I took 25 inner city kindergarteners to the zoo for goodness sake with 2 parents.  Let’s let fourth graders pick their own lunch choice.  Okay stepping off my box.  So I made a decision that students could eat where they liked and everyone made it back to the table in one piece.

After lunch we saw Claudia Mills.  She was very humerous.  She told us stories about her own childhood and explained how those experiences show up in her books from time to time.  She was so soft spoken, yet not shy like I had expected. 

I think my favorite session was the one with Herm & MJ Auch.   MJ Auch wrote WingNut, one of the Mark Twain nominees for this year.  Several students had purchased a copy of this book and were able to get it signed.    What was even more interesting however, was learning about the books they make that have to do with chickens!!! It was fascinating.  What happens is that MJ makes the chickens out of clay and then Herm fancies them up using photoshop.    They showed us how the chicken in the book Souper Chicken was made from clay to photoshop.   I never would have guessed.  It was really neat. 

Our final author to see was Cheryl Harness.  We were only able to stay with her for a half hour.  She talked about how she went to teacher school but found out she did not want to be a teacher, so she became an author.   

When we left Ms. Harness, we had trouble finding the bus.  We had rode with another school in our district and we could not find any teachers or students from that school either.  It took us over a half hour to find the bus.  So it turns out that we could have stayed and finished with Ms. Harness.   Darn.

I was very impressed with the students behavior today.  They were polite and good listeners.  I was nervous that they might have a hard time sitting still for as long as they did, but they did a great job. 

Again, I’m sad that I didn’t go before now.  I have lived my whole life in St. Louis.  Some of the teachers shared that they remembered going to the literature festival as a child.  Oh how I would have loved that!!! I’m so happy my students and my own children will have an opprotunity to participate in a day like this.  I think St. Louis schools should take a long trip down, it would be sooooo worth it!

Can’t wait for next year!

Dr. Suess Bingo

We had our March open library evening last night.  I think it was a huge success.   We advertised the program about two weeks prior and had students sign up a week before.  In the PR stuff that went home we told parents about free green eggs and ham to eat and also fun playing Bingo together.

We had about 75 children and their parents attend last night, which was our biggest turn out of the year so far. 

When families arrived they were given a blank bingo boards and a list of Dr. Suess characters/books that we would be reading as “Bingo numbers”.     We encouraged parents to help their children make several Bingo cards together. 

While families we making their Bingo cards we were also serving green eggs and ham.  What we did was add small pieces of ham into an egg mixture and added green food coloring.  We scrambled all of that together and produced our meal.  We also served green sprite. 

After everyone made their Bingo cards and as they were finishing up eating, I read Green Eggs and Ham aloud.  I asked the students to help me.

Then we started playing Bingo.  The winners won books.   We had about 50 hard bound copies of Green Eggs and Ham and about 200 other paper back books from Scholastic.  These book give aways are thanks to Caring Communities/LINC.   The LINC rep that works in our buildling is so supportive of the library and reading.  She wants to help kids build their home libraries and will do anything to support that. 

So the winners did not just receive one book- no the winners recieved Green Eggs and Ham, plus 5 paperback books of their choice.   It was a very exciting evening.  Some children left with upwards of 10 books each.   Parents were engaged in activities with their children.  It was a very postive event.