Over a span of two years, Warren Township Schools in Warren, New Jersey, first hired a new superintendent and then replaced the principal at Warren Middle School. Both came from other districts. While Matt Mingle is the K8 district's third superintendent in roughly seven years, George Villar succeeded a principal who retired after 23 years […]
Districts devote nearly 80 percent of their budgets to personnel costs—leaving little wiggle room for administrators tasked with maintaining fiscal responsibility and boosting the quality of education in a time of nearly stagnant funding. John Hutchison, chief financial and operations officer at Olathe Public Schools in Kansas, began budgetary planning for the 2017-18 school year […]
P rior to Aileen Parsons becoming director of human resources for Pleasanton USD in northern California, she was a school principal in the district. The memory of hiring paperwork was fresh in Parsons' mind when she switched jobs in November 2015. "We had to generate a form and then send it to the district office […]
Fast disappearing from schools are internet "lock and block" policies that keep students off social media and restrict them to carefully curated websites. Even with sophisticated filters and firewalls, today's learners carry all the access in the world in their back pockets. "We're past trying to stay ahead of the digital native" says Morgen Larsen, […]
The latest K12 school designs in classrooms favor versatile and adaptive spaces to support blended and project-based learning, as well as other progressive education techniques. Despite the financial challenges districts face, an estimated $41 billion was spent in 2016 on K12 construction and renovation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Renovation projects outnumber new building […]
Welcome to the second annual game-based learning special report in District Administration. Games continue to grow in popularity in K12 lessons ranging from science and math to English and social studies. They include alternate reality games that hook students' imaginations and introduce social-emotional learning lessons to help students process feelings and thoughts. In a soon-to-be-released […]
North Hills School District in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, wanted to better engage students in grades 6-12 across its English Language Arts curriculum through a commitment to education technology. With the move toward more rigorous digital learning, North Hills piloted StudySync, McGraw-Hill Education's digital English Language Arts curriculum for grades 6-12, during the 2015-16 school year […]
Herb Miller, Director of Education, OverDrive Education How do you build a digital reading platform that is easy for both students and teachers to use? There are four main pillars to effective digital content implementation. One, you have to be easily able to get the top content that any student or teacher may be looking […]
When beginning kindergarten, Latino students are three months behind in math literacy when compared to their white peers, says a 2017 study conducted by Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization that works to improve the lives children and families. The study, "Making Math Count More for Young Latino Children" cites poverty in Latino households as […]
Editor's note: CIO Hot Topic is produced in collaboration with CoSN. Districts must provide learning materials that are accessible to all students. Digital accessibility—a challenging undertaking—involves making websites, learning platforms, videos, digital textbooks and portals available to students with physical, visual, speech, auditory, neurological or cognitive disabilities. The consequences of failing to do so can […]
