New Schedule for McMurray Students for 2014-15
Dear
McMurray Parents:
As we
continually work to achieve our goal of providing an outstanding educational
foundation for our students, we constantly evaluate our procedures and look for
ways to improve our instructional delivery. Looking ahead to the 2014-2015 school
year, McMurray students and staff follow a new improved schedule that increases
our daily time allotted to the vital core subjects –English/Language Arts,
math, social studies and science – and maintains time for our valued arts
programs.
Among the positive
changes that you will note are:
- Switching
from a 6 day schedule to a 5 day schedule rotation
- School will
begin at 8:55 a.m. daily (5 minutes earlier) making all classroom periods 39 or
40 minutes in length
- Student instrument
lessons will no longer take place during core classes, but will still take
place during the school day
- Spanish will
become part of the Specials rotation in 4th and 5th grade
(along with Art, Music and Phys Ed)
- 6th graders will receive 2 days
of World Language every 5 days
The changes
were made based on feedback from staff and parents, and reflect instructional
needs, not finances. There are no reductions in staff at McMurray with this new
schedule. The additional instructional time will be beneficial not only in the
depth of instruction, but it will provide more opportunities to integrate
projects across content areas.
These
changes were made while maintaining all current opportunities offered to
McMurray students. Student instrument
lessons will be longer than in the past, and will now take place once every
five days, instead of once every six days. In order to achieve our focus on the
core classes without losing programs, chorus for grades 4, 5 and 6 will meet
once each week after school and, 6th grade Ensemble Band and Orchestra will now
be offered after school twice each week.The schedule for these after school sessions will be set at the
beginning of each semester so that parents may plan and make any necessary
transportation arrangements.
More detail
on these changes was provided at the McMurray PTA Meeting on Tuesday, April 15 at 9:15 a.m. in the
LGI. The presentation from that meeting is below for your reference. If you have questions regarding the
new schedule, please contact me at your convenience.
Sincerely,
Mr. Blair
Stoehr
Principal
[email protected]