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By Megan Gildow
| Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 01:14 PM
Springfield City Schools will be testing its ALERTNOW notification service tonight, Feb. 17, according to a letter sent home to parents from Superintendent David Estrop.
The service will allow the school to notify parents and guardians about school delays or cancellations and emergencies, according to Estrop’s letter.
There will be a test call this evening. The schools need accurate, up-to-date information to reach families and will call up to two numbers. Information can be updated with your child’s school.
The district lists four things families should know about the system:
• Caller ID will display 411 if the message is an emergency or a weather issue.
• ALERTNOW will leave a message on any answering machine or voicemail.
• If the ALERTNOW message “;cuts off”halfway through, there is too much background noise. Utilize the mute button or cover the receiver and the message will begin playing again from the start.
• Press 1 to replay the message in its entirety.
The cost for the system is $17,325 annually and should make a noticeable difference to the school’s operations, said Treasurer Chris Mohr.
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By Megan Gildow
| Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 10:00 AM
Northwestern Local Schools will hold its first design committee meeting Thursday, Jan. 21, to make decisions about elements of the two new buildings the district will be constructing.
The district’s architecture firm, SHP Leading Design, will guide the committee through the design process, which Superintendent Tony Orr has said will include all sectors of the staff and community.
The community approved Nov. 3 a combined bond issue and income tax. The 1 percent income tax will fund operations but the bond issue portion will pay the local share of 45 percent of the cost of building two new schools: one for kindergarten through sixth grade and a second for 7th through 12th grade.
The district has been accepting names of interested residents for the committees but there is still time to sign up by calling (937) 964-1318.
The meeting begins at 7 p.m. Thursday in the choir lecture room at Northwestern High School, according to the district.
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By Megan Gildow
| Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 09:42 AM
SPRINGFIELD — Catholic Central Schools will celebrate its 80th anniversary with a community Mass Feb. 2 and invites the community to join them.
Admission is free however there are about 600 tickets available, said Kathy Sahle, director or development for the school. About 100 of the 600 available tickets have been reserved.
The Mass will be at 10 a.m. Feb. 2 at the Clark State Performing Arts Center. Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr will serve as celebrant for the Mass, said Sahle.
Special accommodations for seating will be available. Contact Mary Kelly at (937) 328-7427 Ext. 111 or mkelly@ccirish.org about tickets.
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By Megan Gildow
| Wednesday, December 16, 2009, 11:32 AM
Keifer Alternative Center and Springfield High School students are participating in a program that allows them to conduct the experiment simultaneously with a space-based mission.
The students are studying Monarch biology at the same time the first ever Monarch “butterflynauts” have launched orbit aboard the space shuttle Atlantis and taken up residence in an international space station.
Photographer Marshall Gorby and I visited Catherine Lestrud’s class at Keifer today to talk to the class about their project. The experiment has been an excellent way to teach the students about observation as part of science and the students have enjoyed the hands-on work, said Lestrud.
The class has six caterpillars in three environments around the room to test the effect of temperature on the process of becoming a butterfly. Find out more about the experiment in tomorrow’s News-Sun.
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By Megan Gildow
| Monday, December 7, 2009, 04:58 PM
In one corner, you have the Springfield native and boxing legend Davey Moore.
In the other, you have one of the founding fathers of public education in Springfield and school namesake of several decades, John Fulton.
Who will win in the battle over the name of Fulton Elementary School will be decided this week when Springfield City Schools board members meet for what will likely be the last time this year.
Fulton’s likely going to keep the naming honors regardless of the board’s decision; the group of citizens, led by former Mayor Dale Henry, seeking the name change isn’t disputing that. What they want is to add Moore’s name, christening the school “John Fulton-Davey Moore Elementary School.”
Henry’s been seeking the change actively for a couple months, citing Moore’s significance in the community and the ebbing of the park named for Moore to accommodate the new Fulton school.
Board members offered to name Fulton’s gymnasium for Moore but Henry rejected the offer. The board said at a Nov. 19 meeting it would make a final decision at the meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Clark Center on West Jefferson Street.
Do you think Moore’s name should be added to Fulton’s name or should the school continue as Fulton Elementary? If you want to talk about it, give me a call at (937) 328-0373.
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By Megan Gildow
| Monday, November 30, 2009, 11:34 AM
Greenon teachers have filed request for a writ of mandamus seeking reinstatement for two football coaches who were fired over allegations of harassing players, according to records filed with the Clark County Clerk of Courts.
The Greenon Local Schools Board of Education voted unanimously at a special meeting in June to begin termination proceedings of supplemental contracts for Head Coach Tim Hale and Assistant Coach Tad Steinbrink, according to meeting minutes. Hale and Steinbrink were accused of “engaging in a pattern of behavior designed to intimidate and humiliate certain students,” according to the resolution.
The Greenon Federation of Teachers filed an appeal Nov. 18 seeking reinstatement for both men, claiming that the termination is invalid because the board of education never finalized the proceedings in public session as stipulated in the June resolution, according to the complaint.
Greenon Local Schools argues that the terminations were finalized in an agreement signed by Superintendent Lori Lytle and federation President Barb Jenkins. The July 14 Memorandum of Understanding stipulates that the June 6 board vote would “be construed as terminating all of their supplemental contracts.”
UPDATE: The union withdrew the memorandum because it violated Ohio law regarding the employment of public school teachers, said Jenkins.
“It violates the… law and we cannot abide by that understanding,” she said, citing a teacher’s right for employment to be voted on in public session at a scheduled board meeting.
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By Megan Gildow
| Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 12:25 AM
President Barack Obama’s planned words for an address to the country’s students Tuesday, Sept. 8 is available for parents to check out before their kids may view the speech at school.
You can find the speech here.
I read through it and I saw a couple points that some may find objectionable but even those couple things are really very tame - it appears to be party neutral, as the administration has been saying.
What do you think? Does this change your plans about allowing your child to participate in viewing the speech if the class plans to watch it?
I’ve heard from a couple parents who didn’t know about the speech until this weekend and weren’t sure about their child’s class plans regarding it or how to find out over the long weekend: If you want to opt out, you should probably send a note with your child if you are sure it will get to the teacher; if your child is younger, an e-mail would probably be better or taking it in when you drop off your child. Having it in writing is always a good idea and the schools may be getting a lot of calls Tuesday morning.
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Politics
By Megan Gildow
| Friday, September 4, 2009, 07:03 AM
In a 15-20 minute address Tuesday, Sept. 8, President Barack Obama will speak to the nation’s students about the “importance of education, the importance of staying in school, how we want to improve our education system and why its so important for our country.”
The U.S. Department of Education describes the speech as:
During this special address, the president will speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.
The U.S.D.E. released suggested activities to go along with the speech; fairly basic stuff like discussing what the role of the president is for younger kids or discussing goals for yourself for older students. The activities all seemed pretty non-partisan to me but you can check them out for yourself here.
Of course the question of partisan or not will depend on what Obama actually says and it it supposed to be “party neutral,” from everything I have seen.
Some people are still upset about it though and in other parts of the country, it’s become a pretty big deal. I’m a member of a national group of education journalists, the Education Writers of America, and I’ve heard stories of protests outside of district offices and at board meetings. There’s concern that the speech and the suggested curriculum is a form of “political indoctrination.”
Some parents locally have asked that their child not be involved in anything related to the speech. I know the Greenon Local Schools district is planning to allow teachers to make decisions about how they will handle the speech and is not setting a district-wide stance; Superintendent Lori Lytle also said they have had some parents ask that their child not be part of listening to the speech and are treating it the same as any other objection to something in the curriculum. Lytle said she expects the speech to be inspirational and motivational and not to fall into party lines.
It looks like the White House is working to relieve some of the concerns. The text of the speech will be available prior to the actual event for review. The USDE made adjustments to its suggested activities in response to some of the criticism.
Obama isn’t the first president to speak directly to students and isn’t the first to cause controversy with it, as noted in the Education Week article. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both did it and the Bush one stirred the pot a bit. You can see the text of his address here.
I will be out at a school Tuesday during the speech talking to students and teachers about what they thought.
It would be fairly easy for Obama to make a speech to the nation’s students that most people would agree with: The majority of Republicans, Democrats and everyone in between agree that education is important and children should stay in school. Even the theme Obama is said to be highlighting, “personal responsibility,” is something most people agree with. It’s when we dig a little deeper into the specifics that we start to see disagreements. It’s also fairly easy to see where this could go bad.
What do you think of Obama’s speech to students? Teachers, will you be tuning in?
Check Saturday’s News-Sun to see what local districts are doing about Obama’s speech.
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By Megan Gildow
| Tuesday, August 25, 2009, 06:00 PM
Later tonight/early tomorrow we’ll have capsules on each district up on springfieldnewssun.com and I’ll link to them but for now I’ll go over some highlights on the blog.
Springfield City Schools kept its “Continuous Improvement” rating for the 2008-09 school year.
Early word indicated that Springfield would drop back down to the “Academic Watch” category, making the district’s boundaries eligible for charter school start ups again. Under Ohio law, charter schools can be built in the really big urban areas (Columbus and Dayton for example) any time but not in other districts if they are ranked “Continuous Improvement” or higher.
Springfield picked up one more indicator this year than last (indicators are standards for Ohio Achievement Test proficiency, Ohio Graduation Test proficiency, graduation rate and attendance) for a total of 4 and didn’t meet the Adequate Yearly Progress standards for subgroups of student populations (for racial, economic and ability differences).
Springfield owes its “Continuous Improvement” rating once again to the value-added measure, lobbied for by urban districts and those that serve special populations in higher numbers. Value-added measures a student’s growth of a particular year, with no regard to proficiency.
Prior to value-added, if a student came in already behind it didn’t matter how much they learned unless they were caught up by test time.
So say a student comes to a 4th grade class at a 2nd grade level in reading and at test time, the student is reading on a 3rd grade level. Without value-added, that progress wouldn’t be reflected anywhere on the report card.
With value-added, however, the district is rewarded for making a full year’s progress during the course of the year, even though the student doesn’t end up on grade level.
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By Megan Gildow
| Tuesday, August 25, 2009, 12:29 PM
The state released district report cards today, Aug. 25, and all but one local district maintained or improved its rating over last year.
Check out more detailed information for your district or school building.
I’ll be posting more on each district throughout the afternoon but I’m going to focus on Northeastern for now.
Northeastern is one of only eight districts across the state to receive a lower rating than last school year. There are 610 districts statewide, so we are talking about 1 percent.
The district was penalized for missing Adequate Yearly Progress goals, a standard established by No Child Left Behind. Northeastern didn’t meet the benchmark for students with disabilities or black students.
This is actually the first year that Northeastern had enough students to measure the progress of the black students sub-group for the report card. Ohio requires that there be at least 40 students in a given group, to create statistically significant data and protect the identities of the students in smaller populations.
There’s a bit of confusion about Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP. It’s essentially a measure of improvement from one year to the next for sub-groups of students. There are six sub-groups based on ethnicity and one each for economically disadvantaged, English language learners and students with disabilities.
The basis for these sub-groups is that typically these groups do not perform as well on achievement tests as their peers. AYP holds districts accountable for the progress of these sub-groups.
Take for example, Northeastern. The district met every single reading standard for all students (3-8th grade Ohio Achievement Test and 10th grade Ohio Graduation Test). That means more than 75 percent of students tested proficient or higher. Actually Northeastern has pretty strong reading scores, and most were 80 percent or higher.
But when you separate the scores by sub-groups, only about 51 percent of students with disabilities and 60 percent of black students tested proficient or higher in reading.
NCLB, however hated it may be, aims to force schools to pay attention to how those sub-groups are performing.
If a school district does not meet AYP for all groups for three consecutive years and in two or more groups for the most recent year, the district cannot be rated higher than “Continuous Improvement.” That’s how Northeastern ended up here.
And from what I’ve heard, AYP was a factor in most of the eight districts that received a lower rating. At least five of the eight are Southwest Ohio schools: Northeastern, Kettering, Lebanon, New Miami and Hamilton.
I haven’t heard back from Superintendent Rick Broderick yet but will update as soon as I do. If anyone has questions about AYP, leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them as quickly as I can.
And watch for updates on other districts throughout the day,
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This system should be an efficient way to inform parents about cancellations and other events. The