As I've said in previous posts, I'm taking questions from a national Chamber school board questionnaire and addressing them as the election approaches. Today's questions are related to performance, outcomes, and equity.
What are opportunities and challenges in this district? I'm an optimistic, positive guy, but for us to be successful it is crucial to understand our challenges. Opportunities: In my short time (3 years) of living in Hallsville, I've been impressed by the many activities for our students. A few examples include the quiz bowl and speech team, band, and athletics, For a relatively small district, the faculty and student support for these extracurricular activities is something we should be proud of. These are opportunities for us to rally behind each other as a community. The amount of community interest in the last few weeks has proven that the Hallsville community is interested in providing a quality education for our students. By harnessing these opportunities in a collective way, we can improve our schools and come together as a community. As a community, an opportunity for us, collectively is our dedicated, fantastic faculty and staff. I've witnessed it at the high school levels, and heard great stories of our teachers and staff in the primary and intermediate levels. Our extracurricular options, teacher-staff buy-in, and community interest are all opportunities for us to be successful. Challenges: Similar to the opportunities, I'll highlight three challenges. The obvious challenge is our financial position as a district. The public still should know answers to questions about our financial situation as a district. However, the Board approved a budget last year (2015) with approximately a $1 million deficit. This didn't just happen over the last three weeks. In addition, I've noted that of the Boone County school districts, Hallsville has the lowest tax levy. This is great for taxpayers, but leads me to my next challenge: faculty/staff morale. I believe that our school board members haven't worked hard enough to support morale of our district. Little things like spending time in the buildings, outreaching to teachers, including participation in school board meetings, sending notice to staff prior to the Board announcement of Superintendent Robertson's resignation, among other things could go a long way to raise morale of our teachers, staff, and administrators. Lastly, a challenge of the district is trust among the citizens. Lack of trust is why the idea of a tax levy increase was pulled from the ballot. To what degree are students in this district on track for postsecondary readiness? How do you know? There is a variety of measured outcomes that DESE (Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) release that our district should use for postsecondary readiness. Our students have several options to chose from that fits a variety of needs. Examples of these include gifted programs, college preparation assistance, and career/technical options for students. It appears that secondary education is personalized and success is individualized. This is important. The success of these programs is measured by the dropout rate, for which Hallsville boasts a dropout rate that is 1/3 the state's average. This shows our variety of academic programs is successfully preparing students for postsecondary success. Against what metrics will you assess district leadership’s attainment of key goals? How will you know when a program or decision has been successful? This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on the situation and goal. Some are very simple. For example, if the goal is to increase the average ACT score of the district, That metric will be used to establish the base and growth plan of the ACT score. Other goals and metrics are more complicated. For example, as the district addresses student proficiency in mathematics at the primary level (in the strategic plan), this is a complicated and even a challenging goal. The strategic plan includes the proficiency scores, small groups, and individual math interventions. If these are completed but proficiency rates do not rise, then we need to tweak the strategies and metrics. Metrics are must-have tools to attain goals. They allow progress to be noted, but I believe we must be flexible. Metrics are the means to reaching the end. Selected metrics may not be the "golden ticket" solution. They likely need to be constantly addressed, so the Board and district need to be flexible. As I prepare for the PTO Candidate Forum on Monday, please let me know if there are any specific questions you may have. I look forward to meeting many of the members in our community. Happy Wednesday!
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AuthorHallsville resident. Foster Parent. School board member. Politico. Jesus Follower. Cardinals Fan #MizzouMade Archives
June 2020
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