Decisions
Report Out
Team 1: Saving money/generating revenue - Sharing teachers and staff
There are a lot of ideas here on the board for the money-revenue question and we looked at whether we wanted to share teachers and staff.
We looked at including another school. That would create more options for everyone. We considered the idea of one math teacher teaching for all. Do all our schools have early retirement? That might be something we want to continue. We felt like our teachers already had full loads, but students are asking for more foreign languages as well as some other requirements.
MK: Are there any specific decisions?
We wondered how many schools you can take on, Dan. (laughter)
We currently have math at Wynot and science at Newcastle. We swap the teachers and they teach every other day. This is a way to do that and it counts as a distance class.
The long distance program in North Dakota serves 900 students who never step foot in their classrooms.
Q: Is there a way to market these classes to students who are being home schooled?
A: I’m sure there is a way but I don’t have an answer to that. Currently most of the home school students are younger.
Q: What happens to the principals?
A: The traditional job of a principal is reduced. We’ve already started doing this transition.
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Team 2: Expand distance education
We said yes where appropriate. There are some that lend themselves to this style and others we have to examine further. Some students may not be ready to take a distance learning class and we looked at what is necessary to prepare them. Maybe we need to give them some exposure much earlier? We need to have more training for parents. We need to have more qualified teachers to do this.
We need to eliminate the courier system. Geography dictates this. There are some parents, students and teachers that are going to have to step up. One of the issues is that we need to increase revenue.
We do distance ed by television, some online and some with blended environments. We’re in the process of updating our distance ed room. We want to increase the use of iChat. We can use the intranet from our service unit and expand limitlessly and pile up to 12 places rather than 4. We have to reconfigure how we think about space and connections. Expansion will cost something but not as much as it has in the past.
The next question is whether or not we want to add some more college level courses. There are a lot of considerations for this. There are many incentives for this. We want to propose a plan to get more endorsements; we want to pay the cost of the class if it has to move too far. We want to make it possible for being able to go back to class. We don’t want them to have out of pocket expenses. We want to have a consequence for doing this. They will generate more money and programs for us. We had to put in a double edge sword. This makes them more marketable also.
Some of the things up on the board were directed to high school kids looking at college but also adults looking to take continuing education.
Do we have any problem with adults sitting in with our kids? Not at all.
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Team 3 – Co-op sponsorship
Here is a list of things that we can consider in our co-op options: cross-country, wrestling, golf, vocal, band, FFA, FBLA, FCCLA, Spanish, math, art, science, speech, and theatre. We’ve done some of this last year. There are some areas where we have hardly enough to make one team much less two teams. Maybe we need to have two varsity teams? It was nice because these kids got to play 8 games instead of 4.
What’s the benefit of putting our high schools together? Any time you make emotional shifts like this it has to be better than what they have already. The 5-8 should be together but not until we can give them something better.
Right now we’re offering a certain level, if we’re going to serve other schools, we can make some more slots but we need to show them the advantages. These activities are a great option for that. We need to get more kids playing and participating. I have 5 kids who want to go to Coleridge so they can be on the basketball team. Every time you get into a bigger system you have less kids participating. You can play ball for Coleridge but can graduate from Laurel.
You can excel in a bigger class because there is more competition but I don’t’ have to reduce my participation in athletics or activities because of it. Normally schools will make no move until it comes down to a coach being fired. When a team wins it’s because the kids are great. And when you lose it’s because the coach is bad. Our goal is to keep more kids involved.
At the junior high level there is no co-op because it’s run by the Department of Education. At the high school level you cannot compete against each other. They can do drills but not actual races. You can scrimmage against a junior high school all you want.
We have to be mindful of going forward as this develops.
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Team 4 – Should we expand the number of schools/Middle school concept
We need to develop criteria to make these decisions. We have to identify if this is something we truly want to do. Should we actively approach boards and administrations to talk about this? Maybe we could create a place on the website to talk about this. We’ll need support staff and students to sell the process. This would take a commitment of all of us. As individuals we can reach out and touch other boards.
When the question is bluntly asked about the middle school concept, it is obvious that the answer is yes. This will change the decisions about some of these other questions we’ve looked at. To sell this concept we need Stephanie Peterson to sell this idea. The rest of the community will step back if they accept it for their kids. The big question is how we communicate to the parents and the community. We need to get the parents on board and they’ll bring the rest of the community. The staff is ready and says to do it. It’s a gut call to do it.
Newcastle and Wynot will have this discussion when their enrollment goes down and we’ll have to consider it then.
The biggest way to approach this is to show what you’ll do differently if you do this and you’ll need to have some obvious benefits. We need to be able to say the kids will have better access to programming, more hands-on, and a better experience. The kids are already riding the bus for athletics so the transportation issue falls away.
A Coleridge kid is a Coleridge kid whether they take a class from Laurel or not. The advantage is that there may be more things here. We could expand our curriculum with these kids. We’re turning a lot of money between each other but if we add another school we can bring money in from the outside and our kids will get the benefit. We need to make that clear so that the parents want this. We need to use this pressure. There are two schools in northern Nebraska that offer more than we can offer here.
The opportunities for the curriculum increase by a lot. We need to get the benefits on paper. I have teachers who could be even more amazing if they could focus on their subjects instead of having to teach so many different subjects. We have a couple of months to get this on board.
Q: What makes a good partner for us?
A: Someone who can offer us more than what we have.
It’s like when you’re looking for a spouse. First you have to find a willing partner and then you sit down and look at what each party has to offer and see who has what we don’t. We want schools who give us something new or different.
We’re not a lame duck. We already match up with South Sioux and Norfolk. We have a lot to offer.
We keep making the progression to Laurel. We don’t want to lose the trust of the other communities. We need to find out if they’re ready to go.
We don’t talk a lot about moving the 9-12 here. We focus on the 5-8 but we need to talk about it.
There are a lot of kids who are friends already in other communities so I think they will have fewer problems than any of the rest of us.
We can tell the parents that we can move the kids already. It’s a big step but we can do it.
The parents are impacted because we’re empowering them to make decisions.
Stephanie, are you okay with all of this? Yes.
It’s up to the board to take it to the public. Moving the high school out of Coleridge will be more difficult, but we need to do it.
We have to let the parents know that the kids will still have a Coleridge diploma.
There’s no one else in the state who is doing this so we have to take into consideration that this idea is foreign.
Dan: If you want me to apply for the supervisor position, just let me know and I will throw my name in the hat.
That’s an oxymoron, why would we want to offer up the guy we want to keep here.
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Final comments
MK: All of the documentation from this session will be on the website.
Dan: Michael, would you be willing to help us with some of these decisions. He has iChat and he can come right into our board room. We’re going to try to grapple with all of this information.
Thanks from Wynot, for letting us be part of this. It’s wonderful.
Dan: We need to get some more grants to take care of this relationship. This has helped us take on some other ideas from the outside. It’s extremely powerful and helpful. We’d love to have more time with them.
MK: My passion has been to transform public schooling on many different levels. It’s a real honor to work with you. Thank you for the invitation to help you with this. There is no more important job than creating a successful opportunity for our youth.
Because we’re facilitators, especially in the fashion that we do it, much of the team is invisible but I want you to know that they’re very powerful people who are artists, writers, authors, and creators in their own right, and the talents they bring to this process allow you to tap into your own brilliance.
It’s amazing that you could bring about 250 students, 50 parents, 100 teachers and staff, and now the boards and work this process in order to take your work to another level. It’s very impressive.
If you think about how people in the community felt two years ago about the ideas we were putting forth and we look at what you've accomplished in that time, it’s a tremendous work you’ve done.
You can take advantage that you have a public voice here. Thanks for coming and we look forward to working with you further.
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