Gov. Larry Hogan is allocating a percentage of Maryland's casino revenues to an education trust fund for public school systems. But with that extra monies, some local educators are worried about how it will be dispersed to school districts, and whether it will be on top of maintenance of effort or a part of the existing budget.
Greene County Career Center (Ohio) Initiative: A truancy interventionist helps students cope with life challenges such as daycare for their children, homelessness and driving parents to chemotherapy appointments. Result: Truancy court referrals fell from 24 to one in just two years. Meriden Public Schools (Conn.) Initiative: District leaders asked school-based behavioral teams to monitor attendance. […]
Years ago, it was easy for districts to ignore what high average daily-attendance numbers can conceal: kids, sometimes lots of them, who miss weeks of school every year. The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act has changed that calculus. For the first time, the law requires states to report chronic-absenteeism rates, and more than two-thirds of […]
More than one-third of U.S. school districts have elevated levels of lead in school water, according to a July report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Administrators must now work quickly to determine the best and most cost-effective solutions for providing safe drinking water amid a lack of national standards and federal funding. “It’s total […]
Books represent just a part of the early literacy equation. Districts and community organizations now provide transportation, meals, summer lessons and family activities to prepare children for kindergarten reading. “The biggest challenge for closing the literacy gap is to address its cause: an opportunity gap” says Nell Duke, professor of literacy, language and culture at […]
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 […]
While auditing New Hanover County Schools in North Carolina, Nancy Braswell noticed assets coming into the district from unfamiliar sources. “Items were being received from Donors Choose and checks were being received through GoFundMe” says Braswell, internal auditor. When she investigated, Braswell found that teachers were turning to a variety of companies and nonprofits to […]
The 3,000 students in rural Maine’s Regional School Unit 19 begin compiling electronic portfolios of their schoolwork in pre-K, when the district issues every child a Google account. In the elementary years, teachers snap and upload digital photos of handwritten work. In the upper grades, students accustomed to electronically documenting their school lives habitually upload […]
While detention remains a staple of student discipline across the country, many school leaders are looking at ways to modify the practice, or even replace it, with approaches that may be more effective in actually reducing bad behavior. Classic detention, where bored students sit silently and unproductively in classrooms after school, has limited value as […]
Kathy Kelly, superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools in Minnesota, received the 2015 L. Anthony Sutin Civic Imagination Award from the U.S. Department of Justice. The award recognizes Kelly’s efforts to build trust between law enforcement and students. Working with the local police chief, Kelly instituted youth outreach programs designed to provide students with opportunities […]
