Wow! I cannot believe we are already in the 4th nine weeks of this school year! I’m not sure I have had a year go more quickly than this one in all of my 30 years in education. Hopefully everyone is planning a great Easter with fellowship among family and friends.
As many of you are now aware, there has been lots of talk about school funding, teacher pay, and a teacher work stoppage. This has been a very fluid situation with an abundance of information being put forward on social media and the media in general. It might be interesting to know some of the issues that have brought education in Oklahoma to this point. Some of these issues are as follows:
- Since 2008, education funding in Oklahoma has been cut nearly 28%. These cuts have occurred while K-12 enrollment in the state has grown by 50,000 students.
- Oklahoma is ranked 47th in per pupil spending and 49th in teacher pay.
- We are in a teacher shortage crisis:
In the 2011-2012 school year 32 emergency certificates were issued be the SDE. In the 2017-2018 school year there have been 1943 emergency certificates issued by the SDE.
There are 536 teacher vacancies still left open this year, and 480 teacher positions havebeen eliminated since last year.
New and experienced teachers continue to leave our state due to salary and benefit differences.
- Class sizes continue to rise, decreasing a teacher’s ability to be effective in the classroom.
- Teachers in our state have not had a base pay raise in ten years.
In response to this situation, the Oklahoma Education Association has proposed a teacher walkout to begin April 2nd if the legislature does not meet the groups funding request. Our teachers voted to suspend school April 2nd as an advocacy day for education, then resume classes April 3rd. Scheduled school sponsored activities for April 2nd will take place. I strongly want to commend our teachers for the professionalism they have shown during this difficult time in education. We are very fortunate to have teachers that even though awareness needs to be brought to this situation, they have chosen to only suspend school one day in order to continue to serve our students for the remainder of the school year. I sincerely appreciate our teachers’ dedication to our students.
On another note, after many visits to other schools and attendance of many meetings involving teachers, administrators and Board of Education members, our Board of Education voted to implement a Personalized Learning system for our students for the 2017-2018 school year. This system allows our school, through formative NWEA assessments, to identify a student’s strengths and weaknesses. It allows us to formulate a learning program for students,which allows them to work at their own pace.
Through this program, mentors are assigned to students that communicate with parents frequently regarding their student’s progress. This program uses a digital curriculum that contains research based scope and sequence, as well as, proper lesson design to impact student learning in a positive way, while reinforcing concepts such as personal accountability and time management principles that will help students in the career or college path they choose.
Even though, we realizeour Personalized Learning program is a “work in progress” and monitoring and adjustment will continue to be necessary, the results from the first two rounds of NWEA assessmentsare promising.We have had many representatives from other schools visit our school this year as plans are made for implementation at their school next year. One school we visited last year, among many was Chickasha Public School. When we visited Chickasha last year, they were in their first year of implementation. As the media has reported, Chickasha school is now being investigated by the OSBI for grade infractions and the district BOE has chosen to suspend their Personalized Learning program after the spring semester ends.
It saddens my heart to see a school in controversy such as Chickasha is now. It was only a few short years ago that our very own school was under State Department of Education investigation for the improper and unethical actions of adults. One of the first issues I had to maneuver through as the new superintendent of Hinton Public School was that very investigation. I can speak from experience, the type of controversy that our school has gone through, as well as, what Chickasha is going through is never a result of children or a new learning initiative such as Personalized Learning, it is almost always due to the actions or inactions of the adults that should be, by the very nature of their choice to be in education, trying to make the learning situation better and more engaging for students.
It appears to me to be short sided to “throw the baby out with the bath water” especially when it doesn’t appear to be the baby’s fault. I can assure you, where there is controversy in public schools, there is also distraction taking away from the very mission of the school which is to provide a positive learning environment for every child. It is truly disheartening when adults try to politicize a child’s education for personal gain or use it as an opportunity for personal attack. I also find it amazing that adults will try to make a point regarding something they don’t understand or will not take the time to understand. In looking at current assessment results and courses being completed, it appears Personalized Learning is working for most of our Hinton students and with monitoring, planning, adjustment and a slight increase in staffing,results should get better.
As always, if you have constructive ways in which we can improve the program, or if there is something about the program simply not working for your child, I strongly encourage you to set up a meeting with your child’s teachers, mentor, building principal, counselor, or myself. I will be happy to sit down and visit with anyone who may have concerns about our school or academic programing options. I do not personally participate in social media, but I have discovered, that just because something is posted and shared on social media, it is not always true. One thing that is true regardless of whether we are talking about academics, sports, fine arts, etc. You will get out of it exactly what you are willing to put into it.
As always, please keep the safety of our students and staff in your prayers. Go Comets!!!!
Sincerely,
Richard Brownen
Superintendent
Go Comets!!!!