Why settle for one superintendent when you can have three? It's happening at District 49 in the Pikes Peak region of Colorado. Peter Hilts is chief education officer. He considers himself the visionary. Jack Bay is the "practical" chief operations officer who handles transportation, construction activities and IT. And as chief business officer, Brett Ridgway […]
Today's climate of budget cuts and shortfalls has increased the importance of risk management in school districts. Insurance premiums can wipe out extensive efforts to reduce costs. In the past, school safety has primarily focused on disaster preparation and security issues, but it has come to mean much more. School safety is a holistic approach […]
In the name of saving money, K12 administrators are also discovering that reconfiguring grade levels offers unique education advantages. School leaders nationwide are exploring innovative group-level groupings and thinking beyond the typical K5 elementary school, grades 6 through 8 middle school and grades 9 through 12 high school model to figure out how to continue […]
Winfred Roberson Jr. was unanimously voted new superintendent of economically and culturally diverse Glendale USD in California, where he will oversee 33 schools and more than 25,000 students. Roberson had been superintendent of Davis Joint USD for the past six years, a district where 69 percent of the students who took the English portion of […]
Edward Gonzalez says teachers??and classified employees??can make wise decisions about the classroom and technical training they receive. Madera USD sits in the center of California in the San Joaquin Valley, which grows much of the nation’s nuts, vegetables and fruit. Gonzalez, its superintendent, gave each of his roughly 1,100 teachers $500 to spend as they […]
Superintendent John Rouse sits on a jackpot of sorts. Chief of Rains ISD in a community not far from Dallas, Rouse says a little luck helped his district acquire about $8 million from what is known as the state’s County Permanent School Fund. It started two centuries ago. In the 1800s, the state granted land […]
The U.S. public school system's focus on struggling students leaves high-achieversÁ'especially minorities, the economically disadvantaged and English-language learners Á'without a challenging enough education, experts say. A lack of federal funding and patchwork policies across states often leave decisions on identifying and serving gifted students to district administrators. An estimated 3 million to 5 million academically […]
A "culture of safety"—at all levels of a district—is the first and most critical step in dealing with occupational injury. It also guides the prevention of, response to and mitigation of hazards in the workplace, including staff behavior. Students arrive in three days. A staff meeting starts in five minutes. A teacher wants to hang […]
Principals shifting their roles from building manager to instructional leader need more extensive PD to ensure top performance from teachers and students, according to a new policy brief from ASCD. Race to the Top's requirements linking teacher evaluations to student test scores is largely responsible for the change in the principal's responsibilities, says Susan Race, […]
STEM and the City: A Report on STEM Education in the Great American Urban Public School System Information Age Publishing Author Clair T. Berube says the future of American STEM education is here and students would benefit from science education–if only they had the pertinent resources, support systems and psychological ownership. The country's security, reputation […]
