It’s a new dawn for contract negotiations in the district. Traditionally, negotiations take some four to six sessions to hammer out an agreement. This year things are different, and our new superintendent’s leadership style is what’s making the difference. Dr. Hanson is a collaborator, and has the trust and the respect of the school board, as well as, I sense, the teachers. I suspect we’ll have an agreement put together in record time this year.
Obviously, to retain and attract great teachers requires money. The economics of education isn’t any different than the economics of the business world — if you want great employees, you have to pay them. That’s the dilemma in our state — we’re told we don’t have a lot of money. As I write this, our legislature is haggling over whether we can afford a $7.5 million dollar increase in educational funding next year, while our neighbor state to the north is planning to increase state aid to k-12 by $300 million, on top of a $90 million increase provided last year. That’s quite a disparity between the two Dakotas.
All this impacts our ability locally. But good things are in the works. Stay tuned …
I just listened to an excellent recording about poverty. The podcast is by Michael Butts, the principal at Watertown High School. It’s from the book If She Only Knew Me, by Jeff Gray and Heather Thomas. It only takes a minute and is well worth the listen.
This is really GREAT STUFF from Ian Jukes’ site. I’m quoting the first few paragraphs of ”21st Century Fluency Skills.”
The primary task of the educational system must be to give learners the right tools and provide them with a critical mind, so that they can ask the right questions and make the right connections. The problem is that the world is not the stable, static place it once was. The world has changed and continues to change. Today as Thomas Friedman notes in The World is Flat we are preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, using technologies that haven’t been in vented, to solve problems we haven’t begun to think about. As a result, the definition of what it means to be educated in the light of the modern world has changed and continues to change.
In his book The Third Wave futurist Alvin Toffler noted that, “the illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
In the information age, citizens will need to work with information in all forms to fashion content products that have value, that entertain and teach.
But if all learners do is learn the traditional literacies — to read, write, speak. and calculate — they may be literate by 20th Century standards but certainly not by 21st Century standards.
Thanks Ian, for the great message.
As I predicted, SB 26, the latest attempt to develop pre-K standards in South Dakota, went down in flames. If we ever hope to gain any traction on this issue we need to start meaningful dialogue with pre-K opponents. Their concerns need to be addressed. Until that happens, I don’t see Pre-K as a political reality in our state. I’m sorry to say that, but I think that’s part of the reality of living in South Dakota.
As I write this, school funding politics is coming to a head. The democrats say we can do more. Heideprim says we can fund K-12 if we decide it’s a priority, and Hargens says more can be done if we have the political will. The republicans say we’re doing all that we can given the current tax base and revenue projections.
What does my crystal ball say? I’m going to ”guess” we see HB1124 totally trashed (that’s the bill I’ve written about before), and SB187 passing with a funding increase somewhere around 3.0%. When SB187 was originally introduced, the bill contained a 4.25% increase that was later dropped to 3.8% by its author, Dave Knudson. The Governor’s budget called for an increase of 2.5%. Let’s see how close I am when the final numbers are announced.
What does the future hold for educational funding? It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see tough choices lay ahead of us. To provide teachers competitive pay, as a state we have to decide if we’re going to either increase taxes or decrease schools. Tough choice — but read my lips — we ain’t gonna see taxes go up in South Dakota !
What’s going to happen? The writing is on the wall — we’re going to see further school consolidation. My crystal ball says we’ll see legislation passed that will affect progressively more and more school districts over the next few years. More districts will be required to consolidate.
When will the tipping point be reached? Watch for changes to occur after the next census data is released. The legislature will be reorganized to reflect the shifting demographics of people moving to the larger cities. I see SF and RC becoming legislative power-houses, and I see the demise of the small school district in South Dakota. That’s not a very popular thing to say, but it’s what I see in my crystal ball.
President Bush’s FY2009 budget eliminates Perkins money for Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs. This directly impacts Lake Area Multi-District (LAMD) to the tune of some $51,000, or roughly 36% of our capital outlay budget. This story isn’t new. In both FY2006 and FY2007 funding for CTE was eliminated, and in FY2008 it was cut in half. Continue reading “Perkins takes it in the Shorts”
I couldn’t stay away any longer. Monday night the Associated School Boards of South Dakota held a legislative briefing, and Tuesday a number of education bills I’m passionate about were being heard — so I headed to Pierre.
The Monday evening briefing was disappointing — the two invited dems showed, but the two republicans didn’t. Seems to me about 30 to 35 school board members attended the briefing. The two bills that caught most attention were HB 1124 and SB 187, the two funding bills. I’ve written about my concerns with HB 1124 before.
Interestingly, some school board members wondered aloud if HB 1124 was being offered by the house as “punishment” to school boards for the School Funding lawsuit. Continue reading “Pierre”
I’ve got a legislative burr under my saddle — it concerns funding. In particular, the provisions of HB 1124 are rubbing me the wrong way.
Some background: last Wednesday the Senate unanimously approved SB 187, which provides an additional $7.5 million in school aide above the small increase recommended by Governor Rounds. The Governor has promised to veto this bill.
On the other hand, the House passed its financial counter-part, HB 1124, on a more divided 39-29 vote. The Governor apparently likes this bill. I’m just a school board member, but I don’t think it’s a good bill — at least not yet. Continue reading “Legislative Burr under my Saddle”
Ian Jukes’ blog reports a great interview with one of my favorite authors, Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat). He’s interviewed by Danial Pink (author of A whole New Mind). The interview appeared in the February 2008 edition of The School Administrator.
To quote a portion of Ian’s summary:
Liberal arts are more important than ever. It’s not that math and science aren’t important. They still are. But more than ever our secret sauce comes from our ability to integrate art, science, music and literature with the hard sciences.
Left-brain thinking — rule-based, linear, SAT-style thinking — used to be enough. Now right-brain thinking artistry, empathy, narrative, synthesis — is the big differentiator.
If kids don’t know how to navigate — to know if something is really true and not just to grab the latest thing off Wikipedia — they’re going to have a problem in life. They need symphony, which is the ability to fit the pieces together.
Integration is the new speciality. Right now we frog-march kids from math to science to English — and too rarely make the connections among the disciplines.
CQ + PQ > IQ. Curiosity Quotient plus Passion Quotient is more important than Intelligence Quotient. Show me a curious, intrinsically motivated kid — and I’ll show you someone who’ll leave the kid who merely complies with the rules and studies for the SAT in the dust.
You can review Ian’s discussion of the article here and access the eight page interview here. If you haven’t read Friedman’s book, check out this article. Then go get his book — it’s THAT important.
As we discussed at the last school board meeting, Lake Area Technical Institute will be implementing a campus building project to help us keep up with the growth of new students and programs. One of the concepts I would like to see discussed by the architectural firms bidding for the job is the potential for “green school construction.” Essentially, this means the new buildings would include concepts that promote healthy learning and working environments for students and staff as well as incorporate strategies to save money, like using energy efficient technologies. For more information on green building concepts or the US Green Building Council, click here.
What a crazy tday his this had been with email and calls going back and forth to legislators in Pierre. HB1124 passed out of the house and goes next on to the Senate for consideration. The bill creates a three-tiered teacher classification system based on expereince, training, and accountability standards, and ties state-provided financial rewards to each tier. In addition, the bill mandates that all South Dakota school districts must provide an annual base salary for new teachers of no less than $30,000. While the bill provides an interesting framework, I don’t like it because it take control away from local school boards, and is just too much of a change, too fast. I’d rather see the Senate bill passed instead — providing an increase in funding to the districts — without the change in stucture. The house bill should be sent for summer study.
During session I’m in touch with many of our state legislators. One emailed me about how hard it is to get things done in Pierre due to a lack of trust between the legislature and school boards. Here is my response:
Thanks for your comments. Before I respond, let me say how appreciative I am for the work you’re doing serving our country – both in the guard and in the legislature. It’s nice to meet guys that are passionate about our country and pubic service.
Concerning your statements about the difficulty in funding public education – yes, I agree the numbers have climbed every year (albeit at a very low ratre) – but the absolute growth of dollars isn’t what’s important – what’s important is how our funding has grown relative to our surrounding states. These are the states we primarily compete with for educators – both in attracting new ones and in keeping the old ones. Continue reading “Letter to a Legislator”
The world of education is changing. From Watertown High School’s technology plan, to our state and school district’s progressively increasing focus on ”21st Century Literacy Skills,” it’s amazing to see how rapidly things are moving. New 21st century competencies such as information and technology skills, critical thinking skills, global awareness, collaboration skills, and civic and economic literacy will more and more become a standard part of our children’s educational foundation.When I think about how swiftly the winds of change are impacting the world of education, I’m reminded of the tornado from the movie, “The Wizard of Oz” that swept little Dorothy and Toto away to the other side of the rainbow, as well as her famous line, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
