Unit 4 releases the Fall 2011 Handbook

re: http://www.champaignschools.org/files/district_handbook.pdf

This thing weighs in at 73 pages. Going to take a while to read and digest the tome. Here are some observations gleaned simply by skimming:

• “Quality Two-Way Communication: Hundreds of volunteers work with Unit 4 students each year as mentors, tutors, and guest speakers, as well as providing classroom support. Ad hoc committees allow parents and community members to provide input into district-wide programs in areas like attendance and discipline. Each campus has a Building Council that includes parent representation, and strong PTA/PTSA groups offer support for students and staff. A Key Communicator Network (KCN) provides community members the opportunity for direct dialogue with the Superintendent about issues of interest.” (p 5)
• Listing of BOE members w/ contact information (pp 7-8)
• “Unit 4 is committed to transparency and responsiveness. News and information are posted and clearly labeled on our website for your convenience. We have over 10,000 pages of information for the community, parents, and staff members and strive each day to communicate effectively” (p 10)
• A mere two paragraphs for Schools of Choice (p 21)
• Educational goals – very ambitious (which is good) (pp 23-24)
• Almost 8 pages devoted to health information (pp 35-43)
• About 6 pages for discipline (pp 47-53)
• 3 paragraphs for the PTA, followed by 2 more paragraphs for other community engagement (pp 67-68)

 

I’ll have to come back to this later. A part of me is wondering what a “bottom-up” handbook would look like.

No Child Held Back

Victor Rivero recently wrote an EdTech article about moving away from NCLB. Interesting timing, eh?

 

So this is just a little strange for me. I feel like http://www.nochildheldback.com reflects a lot of the conversations that I have already been having. Except these guys take it to the next level and bring in people who know what they are talking about. The major downside is that I don’t see any conversations on the website. I see “Join the conversation”, but no conversation. It’s very much like walking into the Grand Opening of a store and all the shelves are bare. I see “Take action” but no actionable steps to be taken.

 

Here is another strange thing.

The Voice of the People

I stumbled on this concept about a year ago (I think) but never really put much thought into it. I saw it again today and it opened my eyes:

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petitions

 

 

I really like this idea. It is very similar to “See.Click.Fix” in nature. Obviously this is geared for an online audience, but in my opinion, this general idea is exactly what elected officials at all levels should be doing. Or rather, this should be an important of their daily duties; listening to constituents and providing feedback before, during and/or after taking action.

 

Browsing through the various petitions are interesting in and of themselves. A good read.

What’s wrong with this picture?

As a child (and even as an adult, truth be told), I rather enjoyed the “What’s wrong with this picture?” on the back of Highlights magazines. There is a picture with several humorous “impossibilities” or “extremely unlikely” nuances, for instance, a fish walking a dog. Or a car with a doughnut wheel. Or a fire hydrant spitting out grape juice.

When looking at the school district, there are several things that just seem wrong. Unfortunately, they are far more serious.

Dr. Wiegand (probably) stepping up as the next interim super

re: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2011-10-28/wiegand-will-be-champaign-schools-next-interim-superintendent.html

 

Kinda saw this coming, with much of the higher up Admins leaving and Dr. Malito’s 100 days coming to a close. The cynical side of me wonders exactly what is needed to run a school district – we are losing a lot of high-paying jobs, so I cannot help but wonder how they will be filled or if they even need to be filled. The NG article says that they will be interim positions.

 

Dr. Malito has some big shoes to fill. I know that Dr. Wiegand already wears several hats; my best wishes to her as she takes on this juggling act. Same thing for Logas who is stepping up as COO. I am looking forward to find out how we are going to make this work. And I really want to hear the Board’s take on this. Guess I’ll be making a couple phone calls this weekend.

 

 

Ideas on restructuring Unit 4

When I talked with Dr. Bob Malito back in September, one of things I did not mention in my summary was one of the big ideas he has about possibly restructuring how we do 7-12th grade. During our last Wednesdays at Houlihans, this idea came up again, so I figured it is past time for me to give it some space here. I can swear I read this elsewhere, but right not Google is not helping me out. NG? WILL? I am sure I’ll find it some time…..

So here is where we are at. Not too long ago, a bunch of folks wanted to create a brand-new 3rd highschool up near Olympian Drive. I am not exactly sure who the biggest pushers were, but once the public got involved in the discussions, the BOE was forced to take a step back from their aggressive planning. Which is probably a good thing. Granted, we need to do something about our aging buildings. But what?

BOE Meeting Minute crawling: Sept 26 – Oct 24

Sept 26 – Special Meeting

Lots of reports; Student Enrollment, Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Budget, School Recognition, FMLA for Occupational Therapist… Gene Logas brought his typical arsenal of documentation again – that guy is a machine!

Oct 3 – Special Meeting

Absolutely NOTHING! How do you have NOTHING on the Agenda, and NOTHING in the minutes 3 weeks later? Nothing?!?

Oct 17th – Regular Meeting

• Lots of Recognitions, mostly stuff (Good stuff!)

Wednesday Open Forums at Houlihans

Just another OPEN invitation to join us for some OPEN discussion concerning Unit 4. I have invited a few more folks (via personal invitations), but I have no idea if they are coming or not. I hope they do, but they are busy individuals. We have no set agenda for tomorrow (hence, OPEN), but I would like to talk about something other than WordPress, Facebook and PTA websites if possible.

Last week we talked about PTA websites a bit. And we had some really good discussions. We covered the pros and cons of Facebook (ease-of-use and ubiquity vs security and lack of certain features like tracking conversations and static content), as well as things we are looking for in a PTA website. Basically, we prioritize:

1. low maintenance and sustainable
2. central updates; the ability to update one thing and have it propagate to all appropriate outlets (ie, admin email to PTA website which automatically goes to Facebook)
3. Attractive look and feel
4. low cost

I realize this sounds rather Utopian. But

The train is leaving for St. Louis

First Culver, then Dorland Norris, and now Beth Shepperd.

 

While I have mixed feelings about this whole debacle, my biggest concern is working on being optimistic. I am glad that all three of these former Texans are looking forward to facing the challenges of a new school district. I am excited about the potential for change in our school district. And now, it seems to me that hiring a Superintendent has suddenly become a bit more complex, for we (specifically, the School Board) have to hire not only a top-notch Chief, but also one that will wisely decide how to fill in his/her support staff. It is entirely possible we will not need any more support staff. Maybe. Perhaps existing staff will be promoted?

 

As we bid adieu to these three, I choose to remember that they have all accomplished a lot while with Unit 4. And I turn to look at the future with hope and expectation. It is up to us, the residents, the parents, the business owners, the academics, the tax payers, to form a tight partnership with the Board and let them know what our will is, so that they can act and set in motion a new era.

My heart is warmed

This might be slightly atypical of me (to get all gushy and everything), but I was truly touched to read many of the stories behind the “40 under 40“. This reminded me that lots of good people are out there doing good things. Even if you never read about it anywhere else. I confess I spend a good bit of time complaining and griping – I hope to make up for that one day.

 

It is cool to know some of the people on that list as well. I am challenged to get to know more of them. Now I have to set aside time to read all those stories carefully. Shout out to Jamar Brown and Gavin Horn!

 

In similar news, Brian Nudelman emailed me information about the Parkland/Garden Hills homework club – they have some really cool stuff going on!! Lynn Peisker and Lauren Smith have talked about these in the past, but I finally got my radar tuned in. I am starting to think “Wouldn’t it be awesome if every school had a Homework Club?!” I know Stratton already started down that path, and a number of schools have Kids Plus (which is great, but I get the impression it is not quite the same thing).

Today’s Wednesday Forum at Houlihans

I started the ball rolling on getting an official “Tech Committee” up by sending out an email to those identified in each PTA as a “tech person”. Today at least two PTA members, possibly four, will be joining us at Houlihans. NOTE: We are meeting at 12:30 today to accommodate schedules. This is a special time change, but may become more regular if folks want.

 

Again, the gathering is open to the public. We will most likely talk about PTAs and websites today, but don’t let that discourage you. I am still on the look out for more teachers to join us. And in the back of my head, I am still chewing on ideas of going to other locations to attract different folks.

PTA Council

The PTA Council recently released the 2011-2012 version of their handbook. This is my first exposure to the PTA Council Handbook, so I had no pre-set expectations. Apparently, it gives a very decent snapshot of “Whos’s who”, all the way from the Unit 4 Administration down to each school’s PTA (note that not every single employee is listed, just key players). This is good information to have, especially given my earlier effort to contact all the PTAs. A couple other things stuck out to me.

For one, here is the stated Mission Statement (taken from the National PTA Handbook):

STEM and Technology in Education

I have been following EdTech, and a recent article caught my attention. When I dug deeper into the infographic, I started to wonder. Than to question. And finally I had to type up my thoughts. I’ll not repeat here what I wrote there. But basically, “Why the focus on STEM?” Is that really what we want?

I hear Dr. Bob Malito talk about the lack of competitiveness in our school district, and the “need” to introduce more rigor into our curriculum. I hear our BOE members saying the same thing (“Hi, Greg”). So now I want to toss this out for discussion. When folks like Bob and Greg talk like this, I start nodding my head in agreement – what they are saying sure sounds like it makes a lot of sense. But then I think about what is going on around me. I think about how folks have been trying to reform, reshape, remold and redo education for a lot longer than I have been alive. And if our goal is to produce money-making automatons for the corporate empire known as the USA, then yes, I totally agree, let’s bring on the STEM, let’s bring on the rigor.

Am I off my rocker? Am I being too dramatic? I am relatively knew to this sphere – I can spout my opinions left and right. But what do those who have been around the block a few times have to say?

Wednesday Open Forums

We still do not have an official name for whatever it is called when we gather together on Wednesdays over lunch at Houlihans. So for this hour, I am referring to it as “Wednesday Open Forums.” If it sticks, well… it is what it is.

Yesterday (two days ago for most of you reading this) we were honored to have a bona fide Unit 4 teacher with us. And I personally think this was one of our better discussions yet. The new perspective of a teacher, even just one, brought a new dimension to the table.

Prior to the Teacher’s arrival, we started off talking techy stuff; Grinnip is waiting on deliver of “carts” to get laptops to Jefferson and Stratton, but otherwise they are ready to go; Grinnip has already partitioned the BTW WAN (VLans), but has stated they simply do not have the resources to monitor and maintain such a setup for every single school building; and we didn’t really talk much more about what would be nice to put on a “teacher” website until The Teacher showed up.

With The Teacher there, our topics ranged a bit but I’ll highlight what I remember here:

The Kindergarten Lottery public database will be offline for a while

Gordy, who so graciously hosted my stuff on sacrophyte.com, is moving to a new server. The new hosting company (BlueHost) is a bit more strict in who gets to manage subdomains, so we mutually agreed that it would be good for me to move my stuff elsewhere. I have taken backups and I hope to resurrect sacrophyte.com somewhere. Some time. But the immediate future is unknown. I might hit up the IMC for this.

Not that anyone really cares…..