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Show Proposal for New System at Moab School Explained to School Board, Large Crowd Around twenty residents cf Moab attended a special meeting of the. Grand District Board of Education Monday to hear a discussion relative to proposed changes in the instructional program at Helen Hel-en M. Knight ' Elementary School. The meeting, one of a ser ies fo meetings called by the Board to review proposed and existing new and special programs, totally filled the small board room at the District Office building on 4th East Street. . Principal of Helen M. Knight School, John Olearain, toid the Board and visitors that the program proposal was designed de-signed to eliminate deficiencies deficien-cies in the existing program. In the first year of operation, opera-tion, he said, it woulc involve only the bottom level of his school. Implementation of the modified continuous progress plan . would be done over a period of three years, to give teachers the opportunity of ironing out problems as they arise, and to allow any costs of changing the program to b.- spread over a period of several sev-eral years. Costs involved, however, will be minimal, as no increase in staff is anticipated, antici-pated, and only minor remodeling re-modeling to the building is being planned. According to the proposal, the school would be .divided into four basic sections wbich would be primary I (kindergarten), (kinder-garten), primary II, intermediate inter-mediate I, asd intedmediate II. The primaryl section would include all of the five year olds. The primary II section would include all of the six and seven year olds. The intermediate in-termediate I section would include all of the eight and nine year olds. The intermed iate II section would include all of the ten and eleven year olds. With the exception of the kindergarten level, all of the sections would be divided into, subsections. The primary I section would be staffed by one teacher who would be responsible for all of the instruction in that section. The primary II section sec-tion would be staffed by fiv? teachers not including the special units such as remedial remed-ial reading, Title I, or special education. Subsection A and C are large double rooms utilizing two teachers in each subsection. Subsection B will be a smaller section utilizing one teacher. Mr. Olearian pointed ; out that the student teacher ratie in the larger subsections will be approximately thirty-two to one if the program is adopted. ad-opted. The teacher in the smaller section, subsection B, will have a smaller, student-teacher student-teacher ratio as that position will be a very demanding and critical one. The teacher holding this position will bz . responsible for coordinating all special services for the entire section as she will have all the Title I, remedial reading, read-ing, and special education students stu-dents in her room. She will also be responsible for the majority of enrichment activities ac-tivities for the section as she will have the most advanced students in her classroom. Mr. Olearain outlined a list of nine deficiencies in the traditional classroom . operation opera-tion that hopefully would be better dealt with under this new approach. Hopefully, he said, the school would be better bet-ter able to educate students to their fullest potential. Discussion of the program, with questions from board members and parents alike, lasted for two hours. The group was told by Board president, pre-sident, Sam Taylor, that before be-fore any formal action was taken on the change, a public meeting would be scheduled at Helen M. Knight School, and all parents of children attending that institution would be invited by letter to attend. Time for the meeting wiS be announced following the Easter Eas-ter break, Mr. Taylor said. |