Quick quiz: After the buildings, salaries and benefits, what is one of the biggest expenses for most school districts? Chances are that it's those ubiquitous yellow buses that pick up kids in the morning and return them home (or close to it) after school. With the typical school bus costing between $45,000 and $90,000 a […]
School district administrators hate it when they stumble across closets full of unused computing devices or visit classrooms where whiteboards are being used as very expensive chalkboards. Technology leaders at Dysart USD in the Phoenix suburbs had real-world experience with this phenomenon and were determined to make changes, says Diana Hawari, chief information officer. "Buying […]
Last fall, a national problem arrived in Superintendent Richard Scaletta's corner of rural northwestern Pennsylvania. Principals in the General McLane School District began reporting unprecedented levels of misbehavior: students in frequent and severe distress, sometimes kicking, biting or throwing things.
Breaking down silos is far from a new concept. More than 25 years ago, Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, championed the idea of working across organizational boundaries. Today, we live in a far different world. Our communications technologies have dramatically improved, and we have instant access to massive amounts of information. The promise […]
Managing and keeping track of the many hours of professional development required for a district's non-instructional staff may be one of an administrator's more underappreciated responsibilities. "There are a lot of different employees within the system who can easily be left out of the loop if you're not mindful of the two types of training […]
Two years ago, the Mehlville School District in suburban St. Louis passed a tax levy that included dedicated funding for professional development and strategic plans focusing on middle school STEM programs. For Tina Plummer, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning in Mehlville, that meant implementing the STEM Innovator program with Discovery Education, where staff had […]
Districts are increasingly tasked with providing options for at-risk and underserved student populations to address persistent achievement gaps. While nationwide gains in closing achievement gaps have been made, research shows that underserved student populations still achieve at lower rates than their peers in many areas. Black and Hispanic students graduate at lower rates than white […]
The past two decades have seen 1-to-1 computing grow in popularity, with school districts across the country deploying millions of laptops and tablets to students, excited by their potential to enhance learning. But unfortunately, with the trend came the reality that many school systems didn't adequately plan, prepare for or sustain their 1-to-1 initiatives, and […]
Steven Yates has a message for would-be school librarians. "If you're coming to this because you like to read and you want to manage a collection of books, then you showed up about 30 years too late to the profession" says Yates, a former high school librarian who teaches in the school library media certification […]
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 […]
