Big enough to deliver and small enough to care.

People often ask me why Whitko? What makes you special as a school system? I must respond that our caring atmosphere of high expectations separates us from the crowd. While we can’t offer the exact experiences you may receive at a larger school system, through the use of technology, we can offer about any course a student would want. AP, yes we have that. Dual Credit courses, we have those, too! Ag or career preparation, you bet. We have the highest graduation rate in the area, yes that’s Whitko. Up to date secondary facilities, you bet! Our middle school is just 17 years young and has state of the art technology infrastructure, large classrooms for problem-based learning and the best outdoor facilities in the conference. Our high school was renovated only 5 years ago and, likewise, has state of the art technology infrastructure and almost a one-to-one student computer ratio.


One of the greatest strengths is students get known here and grown here. We know our kids and love them all, even those that for some reason are unsuccessful. This atmosphere of caring allows us to design instruction tailored to meet the needs of each student. We do this by differentiating the instruction within and between classes. We believe you take students from where they are to where they need to be and for some that may mean more time or a variation in assignment. For others, it may mean grouping them with peers to master materials. Whatever the strategy, we strive to meet the needs of the individual. Beyond the striving academically, we also strive to make our students great people.

Whitko High School always has students in various clubs excel in community service. Last year, the SADD organization held huge drives and events to benefit the community. The National Honor Society has students active in community projects. Our middle school Clean World Association does more than monitor the environment, they also do food drives and community outreach. The Peacekeepers group trains students to intercede with their peers that may be having some type of problem. Our elementary schools have Bulldog and Cubs awards to encourage students caught doing good to continue that behavior in and out of school.

I could and will later go on and on about things like these. Truly, Whitko is big enough to deliver and small enough to care. Keep checking back to hear more examples of our schools’ success.

Whitko Studies Facilities

The Board of Education recently adopted the following Goal:

In order to provide the most appropriate, well maintained, and effective educational environment for our students, and do it in the most fiscally appropriate manner, the Board will, by the end of the 2011-2012 school year, have in place a 25 year Facilities Plan that includes the maintenance, renovations and anticipated new facilities that are necessary to carry out the instructional programs for our children.

A community and school committee of 25 members is working up a recommended plan to present to the Board for their review. The committee has met 3 times already reviewing the current status of our facilities and will meet at least a few more times to develop the plan. The idea is to have a short range 3-5 year part of the plan, a 5-15 year part of the plan and a long range part of the plan that may go beyond the 25 years. We want to make sure we proactively provide what our community needs for the education of the children.

Why the goal?

Schools have only 2 sources of funds for maintaining schools.

 One, like a home owner, is a mortgage or home equity loan. In the schools case it is called a bond sale. Those bonds are then paid off with property tax collections over a number of years. That is how large projects are funded like Whitko Middle School 17 years ago and the Whitko High School 4 years ago.

The other fund is called Capital Projects. This fund pays for maintaining the buildings but over the years as the state has provided less money to send to school for buying technology, or paying utilities, these costs have shifted to the Capital Projects fund and have decreased the funds available for maintenance. Capital Projects now is barely keeping up with roof replacement, driveway sealing and technology. We fear as the middle and high school begin to need more maintenance the fund will not be able to keep up.

Additionally our elementary buildings have not been substantially renovated since the 1980s and are showing their age.

Rather than wait the Board wants a plan to address the issue of keeping appropriate educational facilities for our kids.

Grading Changes at Grades 3-5

The change to assessing student work both by a standards based rubric of 1-4 and a letter grade has begun. This undoubtedly will be confusing for a little while as the two systems are not alike. The standards based score states if a student has mastered the work at a particular time. The grade letter score indicates the overall average work presented over time.

Okay that’s confusing and I wrote it. Here is an example.

Student 1 received a standard grade of "2" based on the rubric below.

1. The student’s work does not demonstrate mastery of the standards.

2. The student’s work demonstrates partial mastery of the standards.

3. The student’s work demonstrates adequate mastery of the standards.

4. The student’s work demonstrates superior mastery of the standards.



The same student received a "C" letter grade indicating their body of work on the assignment or course met between 70% and 80% of the criteria for that work based on the scale below.

90 – 100 A

80 - 89 B

70 - 79 C

60 - 69 D

59 or below F



It could be possible that over a grading period or project a student masters the standard at the very end but did not do well during the grading period or unit. In that case a student could see a final standard score of "3" and yet have a letter grade of "D" for the bulk of the work was not satisfactory. Likewise a student could grasp the standard early on in the grading period or unit and do well on all the assigned work. Their standard grade could also be a 3 but their letter grade could be a B or higher.



Again I realize this is a bit confusing, we are trying to indicate to everyone both does the student understand the standard and do they indicate appropriate work along the way to that understanding.

Assessment Program

The Assessment Committee met today and refined our district wide assessment program. The following assessments will be given with some questions remaining on the transition to these for some building from existing assessments.

Primary-


• Running Records – A measure of reading skills is an addition to SWES (PES end of September and end of May official collection, 4 data points per child per year) (SWES—materials, training and data collection done by February 2012, data collection May 2012, fully implemented by 2012-2013 school year)

• Primary MAP – Is an achievement test that measures growth this is an addition to PES (August 23 , January 9, May 14) – Kdg Winter/Spring only

• Writing Prompts – As named this is a writing assessment modeled after the state test and rubric based. This is an addition to SWES (need training to learn how to score them, need prompts and rubrics, training and data collection done by February 2012, data collection May 2012, fully implemented by 2012-2013 school year)

• DIBELS – A reading assessment will no long be administered

• COGAT – HA identification in K-2--October

• Coming IREAD (spring)

• Kingore – formerly used in HA identification will no long be administered
• Standford 10 — formerly used in HA identification will no long be administered
• SIGs – A HA identification test is given to the pool of nominated HA students –January

Intermediate

• ISTEP - Our State achievement test is given March 5-14, April 30-May 9

• MAP - Is an achievement test that measures growth given three times a year. August 23 , January 9, May 14

• Running Records – A measure of reading skills is an addition to SWES (SWES—materials, training and data collection done by February 2012, data collection May 2012, fully implemented by 2012-2013 school year)

• Writing Prompts – As named this is a writing assessment modeled after the state test and rubric based. This is an addition to SWES (need training to learn how to score them, need prompts and rubrics, training and data collection done by February 2012, data collection May 2012, fully implemented by 2012-2013 school year)

• OLSAT— HA identification - October

• SIGs – Administered to a pool of nominated HA students in 3rd and 5th –January

Middle School

• ISTEP — Our State achievement test is given March 5-14, April 30-May 9

• MAP — Is an achievement test that measures growth given three times a year. August 23 , January 9, May 9

• OLSAT— HA identification - October

• SIGs – Administered to a pool of nominated HA students in 7th –January



High School

• Practice SAT – An achievement test given to students in Grade 9 in October
• PSAT – An achievement test given to students in Grade10 & some 11 in October
• ASVAB – An aptitude test given to Grade 11 during October

• ECAs—Course specific achievement tests given the 2nd week of May to beginning of June

• Success Tracker with Math series is a formatitive assessment to assist instructional decisions given throughout the school year

Report Card Revisions

The Report Card Committee met July 7, 2011. The past year we have been discussing needed changes to help parents have better information about their student's progress. Our meeting today led to some changes in our report cards. There will be letter grades included with standards grades on the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade report cards. (New examples coming soon!) The Kindergarten will have the new core standards in place of the Indiana Academic Standards. We rewrote the four point teacher rubric to be clearer and the 4 point parent rubric on the report card to be friendly.

Our group also talked about how to communicate this well with parents and staff. We will launch a campaign to educate about grades and grading for the elementary groups as school starts in August. Look for more details soon.

Legislative Actions

Well the legislature is creating to a flurry of activity during these last days as you might expect. Several bills are very disappointing and it feels like we in public education are the whipping boys once again. Great news about increased funding is overshadowed by the stripping of teacher rights in bargaining, the transfers of public funds to cover vouchers, teacher evaluation processes changing and more red tape for our business offices and administrators. All these well intentioned efforts to help us restructure public education and improve student achievement really miss the Whitko mark of “Excellence for All.”


Remember most of these things are only aimed at teachers and administrators. How support staff salaries and benefits are determined has not changed. The attempt from down state is to have us tie negotiations, evaluation and student achievement into one package. I have told many people if education knew how to do this they would have done it 100 years ago.

SB575

I’ll start my reflections around SB 575 the teacher bargaining bill. This bill was intended to help corporations that had complex teacher contracts get flexibility from their agreements. I guess there must be places these changes need made but not at Whitko Community Schools. I reviewed our contract in light of the legislation and can say there are only a few items that are not already state law. Changing what we can print in the book won’t change how we do business. The recall language and the hours as discussable rather than negotiable are two somewhat big issues. The other big issue is evaluation and it has a bill of its own.

We are now restricted to salary, insurance, leaves, and retirement. The other items will still need to be discussed but can’t be in future contracts. (Depending on who says that it means after July1, after it passes the Senate or after the current contract expires) This either gives administration greater flexibility, greater accountability or greater confusion depending on the issue. I am glad we are a group that talks things through and we will continue those efforts as we move forward.

SB001

Then there is this new teacher preparation, licensing and evaluation bill. It starts by adding a part to the business office that requires us to get trained in operational efficiencies and that be reported on the state website.

This bill makes everyone either a probationary or professional teacher rather than the non-permanent, semi-permanent or permanent. The intent is to get away from perceived tenure rulings from the courts and IEERB in the past. Again this won’t really impact how we do business. What does is the new evaluation language.

The new evaluation language ties student achievement and to salary adjustments. The idea was taken from business that if your students perform well you get more money! The problem is the lack of clear definitions of performs. The greater issue is linking that to the teacher evaluation. The bill is clear if you teach a subject tested by a state test that must impact your evaluation. Beyond that it is up to us to figure out what rubric to rate folks on and how that translates to pay increases. Again like business we have flexibility to reward the best performing teachers. Unlike business we work with people not widgets. I am sure working together we can form a plan that will be manageable and fair to all involved. The state will be developing their model but based on what we’ve seen thus far it will need a good deal of revising to work for us.

So where do we go from here? Like we do every day we go to work. We make the education and the lives of our children the top priority. We continue to work through the details of the requirements set upon us by the state and do what is best for kids. Most importantly we strive for “Excellence for All” by improving our practice and working like the Whitko family always does. Like any family we will come through this stronger and better. It just feels real messy now and downright annoying that we can’t just be left to do the good work we do every day for our kids.

Snow Days

We have certainly had an unusual winter. Earlier today, I closed school for the 8th time this year on top of several 2-hour delays. Today, we closed because of near blizzard conditions during the early morning. Other days we closed because the county had not plowed the roads in time for the buses to run. I firmly believe that if the roads had been treated before 8:00 a.m. that we could have attended school on some days this week after a two-hour delay. I believe the same would have been true about 4 other closing days this year. After speaking with county officials, I was notified that the county budgets, primarily strained due to property tax caps, could not afford the overtime it would take to treat roads beyond normal work hours. As a result, we have lost two school attendance days this week and I can remember at least two other time this winter where clearing and treatment of the county roads could have resulted in a different decision regarding the closing of school. This is a major concern given that another winter storm is set to arrive Sunday, and based on forecasts, we will likely delay or closed again Monday. Additionally, Monday's forecast indicates that we may receive more rain, snow, ice, or all of the above.


Since budget solutions to help the county's ability to prepare roads cannot be implemented to change the results that have occurred thus far, would you please consider contacting your legislator regarding this? School budgets are certainly strained but so our are counties. Contacting our state and local officials will help.

I like you hope we do not need to have further delays or cancellations but the safety of our students may make those things necessary.

Come on Spring!