On July 1, Cheryl Logan begins her tenure as superintendent of Omaha Public Schools, Nebraska’s largest school district. Logan will lead 8,000 staff members and serve a student body where nearly 16 percent are ELL and 75 percent qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. Logan also faces a $15.8 million budget shortfall, the result of […]
Editor’s Note: Nuts and Bolts delves into the development of an innovative program. District leaders of Piscataway Township Schools five years ago decided they needed to more effectively serve its large—and rapidly growing—population of English language learners. A combination of grants and community outreach allowed the New Jersey district to adopt a “cradle to career” […]
Towson University’s Educycle program teams college students with high school interns to clean, run diagnostics on and redistribute ‘old’ computers. Refurbished devices go to Towson’s student labs and to local Baltimore County, Harford County and Baltimore City school districts, who then install new software and operating systems. Educycle was launched in spring 2014 after Theresa […]
School leaders everywhere have experienced parent, staff and student anxiety about school safety following the tragic attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. While these emotionally charged climates are understandable, making knee-jerk decisions with a “do something, do anything, do it now” mantra can lead to high-risk, high-liability actions that administrators and […]
Whether it’s a small district with just a few schools or a mammoth operation that spends billions of dollars, one thing is certain: getting tech support in the right place at the right time is mission critical. This not only requires having trained staff to fix problems, but maintaining careful coordination and communication between the […]
For the past two years, leaders at Muhlenberg South Middle School in Greenville, Kentucky, have been working to decrease the number of teacher absences as part of a wider effort to improve school culture. Although this has occurred during a financial crisis in which all Muhlenberg County School District staff took a 10 percent pay […]
We pretty much understand rocket science, says Doug Green. That is, we understand the complex math and physics that propel objects into space. “The human brain, however, which is the learning playground for students and teachers, is much more complex and less understood.” An educator since 1970—as an elementary principal, district computer director, K12 science […]
Many elementary school students in Marion County Public Schools spend more than 20 minutes per night reading with family members. Parents in the central Florida district also report their children feel less stressed this school year.
Math instruction continues to move further into digital territory, but many lessons still depend on hands-on activities and nondigital materials, such as textbooks. Schools choose computer-based and online curricula because they can provide more engaging ways for students to learn—from playing games and watching instructional videos to creating graphs and drawing shapes digitally. These programs […]
