by gentrys | Jan 16, 2019 | Announcements, Archive
FSSD Five-Year Strategic Plan (2019 – 2024) REACH 2024: The five-year strategic plan, approved by the Board of Eduction in January 2019, has been developed over a period of 9 months. The goals and strategies take into consideration the previous plan, feedback from the AdvancED accreditation review team in 2018, input from the FSSD Leadership Team, the School Board, community members, faculty, staff, parents and students. This plan has a five-year outlook but will be reviewed and modified annually by the Board of...
by gentrys | Jan 15, 2019 | Announcements, Archive
The Board of Education approved the 2019-2020 School Calendar at its January 14, 2019, meeting. 2019 – 2020 School Calendar In developing the school calendar, the district takes the following into consideration: Input from School-Level Representatives: A large committee with representation from many stakeholder groups across the district provides general guidance to the Associate Director of Schools for Teaching and Learning, who coordinates the calendar work. The committee includes teachers, school administrator, paraprofessionals, representatives from the FSSD Education Association and PTO, as well as Central Office administrators and staff, who help to formulate a draft calendar, knowing there are some non-negotiable state requirements. The committee members focus all work through the calendar design process on two guiding concerns: What is best for teaching and learning and what is best for students and families. Once a working draft is created, the committee members gather to review it, offer feedback and/or make modifications. From this feedback, a final draft is formulated. The Director of Schools is engaged in this process throughout the various stages and ultimately recommends a final calendar to the School Board. Correlation to the Williamson County calendar: Because we have many families with children in both the FSSD and Williamson County Schools, the district tries to correlate its calendar, as much as possible, to the Williamson County Schools calendar. Uninterrupted Instruction: One of the primary considerations in developing the calendar is to purposefully create uninterrupted instructional periods between major holidays. ...
by gentrys | Jan 9, 2019 | Announcements, Archive
Parents of 4th-7th grade students who are interested in learning more about the Franklin Special School District Honors Program are invited to join us for an Honors Program Parent Information meeting on Thursday evening, January 31, at Freedom Intermediate School. The event will be split into two presentations. A question and answer session will follow each presentation. The first presentation is for families of current 4th grade students and will begin at 6:00 pm. The second presentation begins at 7:00 and is for parents of current 5th, 6th, and 7th graders. We encourage all families interested in the Honors program to attend the meeting. Information and presentations will be available on www.fssd.org under Announcements on February 4 for those unable to attend the...
by gentrys | Dec 12, 2018 | Announcements, Archive, Field Trip, Student Performance
Freedom Middle School students traveled to Purdue University on December 9 to compete against six other teams across the nation, including sister school Poplar Grove Middle, in a STEM-based competition called TECHFIT (Teaching Engineering Concepts to Harness Future Innovators and Technologists). On December 10, after presenting a powerpoint presentation and its original technology based fitness game, judges announced that the Freedom Middle team won the competition, now in its fifth year of funding through the Purdue University College of Engineering and the National Science Foundation. Only seven invitations were issued and, based on a video submission and an on-site judges’ review, Poplar Grove Middle and Freedom Middle were selected to move on to the national competition in West Lafayette, Indiana. Students have spent many months designing, coding and constructing the “exergame.” Competing teams presented their TECHFIT experience and demonstrated their exergame innovation at the Purdue Recreational Sports Facility. “After seeing all of the schools present their exergame, we knew we had a challenge,” said sponsoring teacher Patty Littlejohn. “We were on pins and needles! There were so many good aspects in every school’s game and presentation.” Littlejohn said that the judges were very complimentary of the work the students had put in. One judge said, “It is very obvious your team spent time and effort actually going through what you were doing in presentation and administration – it wasn’t off the cuff.” Another judge said, “You engaged the judges, you actually approached us and gave us handouts and group documentation of your process. That shows process and product documentation.” Other notables included compliments on the music and the actual physical construction...
by gentrys | Nov 28, 2018 | Announcements, Archive, District Event
Throughout the past six months, the Franklin Special School District School Board and Leadership Team have begun the process of designing a new long-range strategic plan. We have guided our discussion around goals using the extensive feedback we gathered during the AdvancED accreditation process this spring, academic data from state and local assessments, and planning documents that the district uses each year to design instruction, improve culture, develop technology goals and improve academic performance. We are excited to have enough information and feedback at this point to have put together a draft Five-Year Strategic Plan. Called Reach 2024, this one-page talking points flier is attached to this email and the more complete plan is now ready for public review and input. This is where you come in! We invite you to one of two public review and input sessions. The public review sessions are Tuesday, November 27 and Thursday, November 29. Both sessions will be 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. in the multipurpose room at Moore Elementary School, 1061 Lewisburg Pike. During public review, we will explain how we arrived at our broad goals and what strategic objectives we have developed to achieve the goals. Best practice in strategic planning is to keep goals broad and limited to 3-5 achievable targets. While we have discussed and refined the current goals in the Reach 2024 document many times, we are ready to hear your thoughts regarding possible revisions to these goals. Please consider attending one of the two sessions mentioned above. Thank you for helping us to “Reach 2024” with clear, thoughtful and well-defined goals that will strategically guide our school district over the next five...
by gentrys | Oct 31, 2018 | Announcements, Archive, Field Trip
The 17th Annual World of Possibilities Career Exploration Day will be held Thursday, November 8, 2018 at the Williamson County Agricultural Exposition Park. This comprehensive career day is being held to better inform eighth grade students about some of the career opportunities available in Middle Tennessee. Williamson County and Franklin Special School Districts recognize there are specific workforce needs for Williamson County and Middle Tennessee. We are taking an active role to introduce students to career opportunities and other emerging careers by offering more career education within the curriculum. As our 8th grade students prepare for the transition to high school and begin to think about post-high school career options, the World of Possibilities Career Quest is an excellent strategy for getting students authentically engaged in learning about careers. The 8th grade students will travel by school bus to the Williamson County Ag Expo Park and will be chaperoned by their teachers. Students will visit career exhibits based on their interests and ask questions to learn more about that particular career. We are proud to offer this opportunity to our eighth graders and appreciate the excellent participation of our exhibitors and...
