Madison Alder This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. School Information System: January 2006 Archives

   www.schoolinfosystem.org/archi - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/1/2006   Last Visited: 5/16/2006

   Paul Soglin notes recent discussion on further school district consolidation (Milwaukee & Suburbs) and mentions that Madison did this
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   According to the report, Madison High Schools (along with Verona, Middleton-Cross Plains, Wisconsin Heights, Monticello, Monona Grove and Waunakee) were in the top 10% based on 1996-1997 WKCE results in. However, they (Madison) were no longer present in the top 10% based on 2003/2004 results (Deerfield, Dodgeville, Middleton-Cross Plains, McFarland, Waunakee and Verona were in the top 10% based on the 2003/2004 data).
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   Madison Alder and MMSD employee Larry Palm attended a $100 budget session.
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   The key architect behind that transformation was the tough young executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., John Matthews, who had come to Madison eight years earlier from Montana.
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   Thirty years later, Matthews is still tough and, more than ever, still casts a powerful shadow across the public education landscape of Madison as a tireless and relentless advocate for teachers.
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   What does the community want Madison's public education to look like in five year (ten years), what do we need to do, and what do we need to do differently.
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   Madison has excellent teachers (my daughter has been the beneficiary of our teachers' excellence even if they don't always have the curriculum they need), and Madison strongly supports public education. I feel we need to have public discussions and to develop longer-term strategies, we need these discussions now and we need them to be ongoing, dynamic and broad based.
   
   Lastly, by not looking longer term, discussing these issues throughout the year, admin positions end up being on a School Board agenda at the front of the budget process, because of the January deadline. The School Board is putting our school district's administrators (inadvertently, I'm sure) in an unfavorable light publicly and subject to "attack," which is unfair, unnecessary and preventable. I would think an alternative, longer-term approach would be viewed favorably by Madison.
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   These questions are not unique to Madison.
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   In Madison's case, school spending has increased from $200M in 1994/1995 to $329M in 05/06.
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   Instead, we work hard to support and assist those members and families navigate through the complexities of Madison's health care system.
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   This huge expansive slice of Madison and the entire city of Fitchburg attendance area has somehow become one elementary school.
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   6:00 p.m. at the Overture Center's Capitol Theater located at 201 State Street in Madison.
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   Monday January 16, 8th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Youth Service Day: Madison will join hundreds of communities across the country in celebrating the national holiday by making it "a day ON, not a day off."