CCISD News

CCISD School Board Studies Small Learning Communities:
Part II. Comments by Board Members and More Information

By Marilyn Clark, League City Area News Online

Trustee David Juengel, Chief Financial Officer of Money Management International, said that his business has over 90,000 clients. He spoke of a need for increased financial literacy. He stated that students need more training in math basics for life such as balancing checkbooks. He thinks that the SUMMIT advisory curriculum and small learning communities (teams) like the Computer, Marketing and Business Academy could help students develop skills that would help them succeed in life and the business world.

Juengel said that the American Financial Services Association Education Foundation (AFSAEF) provides a free online Financial Literacy curriculum for high school at www.moneyskill.org

Juengel said that the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy has declared the month of April as Financial Literacy for Youth Month. In April, the Jump$tart Coalition draws attention to the need for students to "obtain training in such personal finance basics as money management, saving and investing and use of credit." (See http://www.jumpstart.org/)

Juengel also said that a link to the Merrill Lynch and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship curriculum "Investing Pays Off : It's never too early to start" is provided on the Jump$tart Coalition website. This curriculum is available in "three levels-for elementary, middle and high school ages-the curriculum, plus worksheets, answer keys and pre/post tests can be downloaded and printed free of charge at http://volunteer.ml.com   "

Trustee Ralph Parr said that one of the most important things shared in the workshop was that "kids are so different than they were last year, five years ago, ten years ago and their needs are so different that you can’t go on doing things the same way."

President Glenn Brown said that he attended a high school with 600 students with a graduating class of 123 students. He said that he did not appreciate the size of his high school at that time. He said that now he treasures his closeness to other students and teachers. He is pleased that the District is forming a plan to use small learning communities (teams) to help high school students in CCISD develop the same level of closeness or sense of belonging that he had in his smaller high school learning environment. He then told the Small Learning Committee members, "I really commend you for your efforts."

Trustee Bob Davee said, "It is important to let the public know what we are doing and why."

For more information

Links to small learning community presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint format are available at http://ccisd.net/committees/sl_faq.asp

To get to the Small Learning Communities section on the CCISD website
1. Go to the CCISD home page at http://ccisd.net/
2. Go to the Technology and Learning Section at the bottom middle of the home page.
3. Click on the hot text "Small Learning Communities" and go to
http://ccisd.net/committees/sl_home.asp
From the CCISD Small Learning Communities web page
Click on the FAQ button for a general overview of small learning communities.
- It is the leftmost button under the banner image at the top of the page. This takes you to http://ccisd.net/committees/sl_faq.asp

Click on the WHY button to learning more about the advantages and types of small learning communities and go to http://ccisd.net/committees/sl_why.asp

Click on the MEDIA button to go to links to PowerPoint presentations and pdf files about small learning communities at http://ccisd.net/committees/sl_media.asp

- A link to streaming video about small learning communities will soon be available on the CCISD Small Learning Communities Media page.

A free Powerpoint 97 Viewer which plays PowerPoint 95, 97, 2000 and 2002 presentations, "ppt" files, can be obtained from the Microsoft web site. Some advanced features in PowerPoint 2000 and 2002 files such as bullets that are pictures may not be available when these documents are played by the Powerpoint 97 Viewer. On your computer, you go to the next page by clicking on the page with your mouse. You can also go forwards and backwards in the presentation by using the left (for go back) and right (for go forward) arrow keys. For the free Powerpoint 97 Viewer, go to
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx

A free Adobe Acrobat Reader file that displays "pdf" files (personal document files) is available from Adobe Systems, Inc. Go to
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

CCISD School Board Studies Small Learning Communities: Part I. Workshop

Archived on July 16, 2004.
Online publication date is July 16, 2004.

CCISD Archive