Mold growth at California’s Klamath-Trinity Joint USD three years ago was an asset in disguise. Mold growth at California’s Klamath-Trinity Joint USD three years ago was an asset in disguise. It required the district to reconstruct six of its seven schools, a $65 million endeavor that superintendent Jon Ray saw as an opportunity. His classrooms […]
Going into his third year as principal of Sunset Elementary School near Spokane, Washington, Ty McGregor feels more confident that he has prepared his building for an intruder or active shooter. While school was out this past June, a group of staff members, students and emergency responders conducted drills on two potentially devastating scenarios: a […]
Lockdown drills can pose health hazards, says Dennis Lewis, president of Edu-Safe, a safety training firm. Lewis, who spent 17 years as the public safety director for Springfield Public Schools in Missouri, shares the following best practices: Connect instruction to safety. Rigid, step-by-step drills don’t encourage critical thinking, discussion or variations. Educators can develop lessons […]
There are few topics as divisive among administrators, parents and communities as the prospect of firearms in the classroom. As more states consider allowing staff to be armed, we present two perspectives. Laura Carno is the founder and executive director of FasterColorado.com, an organization that provides firearms training to school staff who are authorized as […]
When Deer Creek School District in Edmond, Oklahoma, was asked to participate in a pilot program for Marzano High Reliability Schools, there was an immediate buy-in from Grove Valley Elementary School principal Kelly McCoy. “We were very excited to see what it could do and if it could make an impact at our school” McCoy […]
When Nita Cochran was district math coordinator for Norman Public Schools in Oklahoma, she was looking to help the district’s elementary school students improve their mathematical foundation. There are nearly 16,000 students in NPS, which is located in Oklahoma’s third-largest city and is also home to the University of Oklahoma. Cochran, who is currently math […]
Three chronically underperforming Baltimore City Public Schools are now getting intensive, hands-on guidance from educators at a fourth district school, Commodore John Rodgers, that has achieved a dramatic turnaround. Educators at the struggling elementary and middle schools—Harford Heights, James McHenry and Mary E. Rodman—won’t just follow a set of guidelines. Rodgers’ principal, Marc Martin, has […]
The race to offer a rigorous pre-college curriculum to K12 students, even in elementary school, is heating up, with the move by one of the nation’s largest districts to introduce a curriculum of international standards to its students in grade 3 through 5 this fall. Florida’s Collier County school district, with 47,000 students, will use […]
The PTA at an elementary school on New York’s Upper East Side raised nearly $1 million in one school year—about $1,260 per student. In a wealthy suburb of Boston, an elementary school PTA brought in $1,680 per student that same year, while a Washington, D.C., school’s PTA intake totaled $2,220 per student. These extreme cases […]
