District 109 Task Force Gets Ready To Work

A task force to study and improve middle school education for Deerfield Public Schools District 109 students created by Superintendent Michael Lubelfeld will get down to work at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Caruso Middle School.

The task force of more than 130 people including parents, students, teachers, administrators, other District personnel and community members at large will examine different aspects of middle school education and make recommendations to the Board of Education.

After an initial opening session, the group will break into its six subcommittees to take a closer look at fine arts, social and emotional aspects of learning, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), gifted education, world language and encore (elective classes). Some people are members at large.

Over the next few months, the task force will explore the current condition of each topic area and how it should look in the future. There will be two more meetings this fall with a goal of making a preliminary report to the Board in December.

The Task Force was the outgrowth of a promise made in June to take a detailed look at the world language program after an initial decision to drop French from the middle school curriculum. The District then decided to offer French but study its popularity.

“The District made a commitment to conduct a study of world language from (the decision to keep) French,” Lubelfeld said. “I decided to make it a bigger study.”

Get local news in a daily email from Patch. It's like getting a free newspaper. Learn more. Then "like" us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.