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A school on its first day of classes is, ideally, a well oiled machine.

Before teachers report for duty Tuesday and students for class on Thursday, computers must be upgraded, textbooks distributed, and lunch schedules set. Staff must be hired, instruction planned, and services put in place for students with special needs.

To help principals stay on top of all of the moving pieces involved in planning for the first day of school, the Department of Education has distributed a checklist of start-of-school tasks, similar to the compliance checklist that principals use to make sure they have completed required management tasks over the course of the year.

The 50-plus tasks on the start-of-school list fall into broad categories of staffing, school organization, physical environment and security, technology, and instruction. Elementary and middle school principals must also oversee student enrollment. (High school enrollment is managed centrally.)

Most of the jobs on the list must be completed perennially, but one is unique to this year. The checklist asks, “Are plans in place and materials ready for the September 7th Professional Development day for teachers?” That’s when all schools are supposed to offer training for teachers on how to bring new Common Core curriculum standards into their classrooms. The start of classes was pushed back one day to make room for the planning.

The complete checklist is below. (more…)

Principals have to ask themselves a lot of questions during the school year, not all of them related to what goes on in classrooms.

Did I distribute and collect required Medicaid forms and conduct monthly safety committee meetings? Did I complete surveys on arts education and bilingual students on time? Did I create a recycling plan?

The Principal Compliance Checklist is the roadmap principals use to keep track of these questions. Test scores drive much of principals’ annual performance reviews, but items on the 50-item compliance checklist, regarding everything from conducting fire-drills to reporting school-related crime, count for a crucial 10 percent.

The checklist, published below, is mostly comprised of items that principals will accomplish over the normal course of running their schools, according to the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the principals’ union. But it also offers a peek at the administrative duties that keep principals busy and, according to some, take time away from classroom instruction, teacher evaluation and professional development.

“A lot of the stuff is just accounting,” a Bronx principal said. ”It’s not high-level critical thinking stuff, which is what I’d prefer to be working on.”

The list can be a challenge to get through without delegating to an assistant principal or other school staff, the principal said. “Have I signed stuff that I haven’t read fully? To be honest, yes.”  (more…)