Urbana's School Board has passed a restructuring plan for Urbana High School:
Several members of the board voiced approval with the bulk of the plan, including extra time in the school day to create a study session where freshmen and sophomores could meet with teachers in subject areas in which they wanted extra help.
"It's a scheduling nightmare, but we are going to do it," said UHS Principal Laura Taylor of the extra time. She said initiatives in the high school improvement plan included staff serving as personal academic supports for students, attendance initiatives, parent access to grades and the elimination of remedial classes.
The restructuring also included two full-time teachers to cover the extra instruction time of the daily study sessions.
The sticking point came when looking at creating an administrative position for evaluation and accountability – a person responsible for analyzing and reporting what programs are working within the district.
The position would cost $70,000 – a figure board members Cope Cumpston and Brenda Carter said they felt could be better used for direct work with students.
Cumpston also took issue with the time the board had to evaluate the plan, saying she wished there had been more collaboration in its creation. "The board is often consulted very late in this process," she said.
Discuss.
Maybe the board has little time to consider this for a reason. In the past, the City of Champaign often sought public input on matters that affected various segments of the public. That either isn't done today, or is done so late in the process, that the staff has already talked to the council one-on-one, resulting in the infamous 9-0 votes.
In other education-related news:
Three of the ten "downstate" Golden Apple teachers are from C-U.
It might be wise to keep in mind that districts with failing schools often have excellent teachers and excellent schools.
Have a great day!
Urbana District 116 has had plenty of public input for 5 straight years. In each of those years Urbana was satisfied with trying to get a passing grade instead of striving for excellence. Excellence in NCLB means that you need to make progress with disadvantaged students. I like both Gene Amberg and Preston Williams, but at some point you have to look for different answers. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again when you know it is not working. It involves thinking outside of the box. It involves new ideas not just a new union representative on the compliance committee.
They have made up their mind with a plan. I hope it works. I think that what they should do is to ask the Center for Excellence at Parkland to take the proposal and all the input and put together a wide range of independent experts and educators, so that the plan can be improved. I have not studied the plan in any detail, but I did review parts of it and attend and gave testimony at the public hearing. My point then and now is that you do not get good feedback at these public hearing and certainly not from entrenched insiders. My remarks up to now have all been about the process of how they might do it. Maybe the process needs to include some paid experts, but there are plenty of people-in this community that are willing to help-if Preston lets that happen. You gain control by giving up control. Let me be more specific.
1. Individualized interdisciplinary case management is needed for "troubled" students.
2. District 116 needs to "sell" a whole new category for NCLB. Case managers need to be interdisciplinary case managers. In other words, they must be able to monitor mental health, know the social service system, know special educational, understand health, vocational, and family issues and be teachers as well. Sounds a lot like a super parent doesn't it. The curriculm at the School of Social Work, teaches a "wrap around" concept for Child Welfare Social Workers, but there is no "wrap around concept" or training for Interdisciplianary case workers getting training as School Social Workers. I understand that NCLB deals with group standards, but the problem is that you have to make a new "group", not by racial standards, but by "at risk" standards. Urbana is the perfect place to sell that talked about concept to the feds as a pilot program.
3. Urbana has been struggling with the fact that the federal government is so ridgid that they are not going to accept deviations from NCLB protocol. Of course they won't. The reason is that school district after school district float along just trying to get by. So in order to sell change, you have to have it recommended by independent people that are not just trying to get by. This is why you need to do the "rope a dope" and turn the process over, not to your paid expert, but to really independent citizens and Foundations that are looking for innovation. I know it galls liberals to ask Bush for anything, so that won't happen. The next best place to ask is the Community College. They can ask a whole range of experts as "free advisors". If they started this process, my bet is that the fed will like the approach and fund it. Now that is thinking outside the box.
Are you kidding me? You may have some good ideas for a school with a one to ten ratio of teachers to students. Two of my classes (not in Urbana) are in the thirties and two are in the high twenties. Do you really think that it's possible for me to be well-versed in all the family issues, etc. for 150 kids, plus teach, plus grade, plus seve on other committees, plus have any time to eat or sleep You act as though the school is the only variable in a student's success and the school is the only place responsible for this success. Is there any responsibility on the part of the parent or the community or is it all the school?