Day 2

Alright, I don't exactly know why I am writing at 1:20 AM, but I am.  I guess it's commitment.

Disappointing end to a very successful CRB baseball season this evening.  The Crusaders fell to Earlham 2-0 in an 11 inning pitchers dual.  CRB managed only one hit the entire evening and were stymied at the plate the entire night.  Our senior, stud pitcher scattered five hits during his nine innings of shut-out baseball.  Unfortunately for us, and Earlham 8th grader hit a two out "bomb" to left to end the game with two outs in the 11th.  But, our kids played extremely hard, turning multiple double plays early in the game to get out of jams, and battled the entire night - but it just wasn't meant to be.  So the 2011-12 school year officially comes to a close!

At school today I was unable to review the student/parent handbook as I had planned, yet another day of meetings.  Somewhat unforseen today, but good information none-the-less.  The honeymoon is not over yet, but the work is most definitely starting to pile up.  Happy to be off to such a good start with the Sup.  Feel like we're building good re pore with one another, and hope to take the lead a few items we discussed today.  Also met with the Curriculum Director (CD) for nearly two hours today.  A lot of planning for back to school discussed, going to focus a lot on tech - something that I'm happy to facilitate.  Now it's just a matter of getting the REACT servers and computers on site, up and running.  Which might be a stretch, we'll have to see.  With the Sup. out of the office tomorrow, I will be trying to track down some timeline items to help facilitate the speedy arrival of those items.  But there are most definitely some challenges that we must overcome in order to get everything done by Aug. 16.

Also very happy to meet the district's IT Consultant today.  Tempered a lot of my expectations, but also very optimistic as to where we will be by Christmas and the end of the year!  The meeting itself was unplanned and last nearly two hours as well, but I felt that it was very productive and got me up to speed on the conversations that have been occurring during the past year.  Likewise, I'm very much looking forward to a meeting scheduled for Friday in which we will be interviewing candidates for a part-time IT Director.  We will be moving away from a "patch-work" IT support system that requires teacher leaders to double as trouble shooters/IT specialists/"jack-of-alls-masters-of-none" system to one that is much more responsive to teacher's.  But there are a lot of things to be determined in regards to that position between now and Monday, when the board will vote to hire/not hire this individual.

I also met with the Athletic Director (AD) this afternoon and was shocked to find out that we do not have an athletic booster club.  That is very strange to me, but he has some good ideas as to how the athletic department can serve itself in a traditional "booster club" capacity.  There are a lot of items on the athletics side that will need to be determined and I think the Sup, AD, and I will need to iron those out before football and volleyball start in a couple weeks.  This meeting with the AD also included an overview of the school's website redesign.  Very happy, excited about the possibilities that will afford our students, staff, and community.  My hope is that the redesign drives people to the website and we are able to generate some traffic and keep them coming back.  Now I have to devise a plan as to how to get teachers to build their own pages/website/etc.  I can hear them now, I have enough to do already, why do I have to create a website?  But we'll see.

Another meeting I had today was in regards to Infinite Campus.  One of the districts administrative assistants came in today and got my username and password established and showed me around Infinite Campus.  Not really going to mean much until school starts, and then I'll have the questions - but glad to know that I'll be able to access student data when I want it.

Most interesting part of today - my AA fielded a phone call (which is actually the 10th or 11th phone call) from a graduate of the class of 1957.  This individual is applying for enrollment at an online university and needs a copy of a high school transcript.  Unfortunately our staff has been unable to locate it.  And it is my understanding that this individual has been persisting, and been backed up by the online university, to the point where our staff may need to recreate a diploma in order to satisfy the online university.  We know that she graduated, as her picture has been located in the 1957 yearbook - and a "twin" sister's diploma/transcript has been located, but for one reason or another our staff has been unable to produce this individual's diploma/transcript.  So stay tuned for more on the mystery of the missing '57 transcript.

Tomorrow - it could just be me in the office, as the Sup and Business Manager are at a finance meeting in Ames all day, and my AA will not be back until Aug. 1.  So, cross your fingers, I might get something checked off my "to-do" list, which only seems to be growing.  Likewise, Amanda is in Des Moines for work, which means I'll need to check out earlier than normal to relieve the nanny/baby-sitter.  But in any event, a very successful second day as Principal Jorth, and very much looking forward to Day 3.