| On Board Online • November 5, 2012 By Cathy Woodruff
“We’ve got to figure out a way to leverage the BOCES as the true regional leaders they should be,” King said. Schools face a myriad of financial issues, he said. A local property tax levy cap enacted last year and tight restrictions on the growth of state school aid will continue to financially hamstring New York’s school districts, he said. Meanwhile, districts have been struggling with lower property values and diminishing options to cut staff and program spending, he said. “I don’t want to pretend there are new resources coming along. I think the reality is that they are not,” King told one questioner. “The cavalry with new resources is not coming.” Therefore, King said, regionalism and cooperation hold the most promise for districts looking to preserve or improve their programs and build student achievement. He acknowledged that mergers and consolidations are “a difficult, challenging subject,” recalling the murmurs that spread throughout the crowd at last year’s NYSSBA convention when he raised the issue. Nonetheless, he insisted, “If you were starting from scratch, you would not design a system of 700 school districts.” King urged school leaders to more readily embrace joint options such as regional high schools, early college high schools, career and technical programming and health insurance cooperatives as they look ahead. |
| On Board Online • November 5, 2012 By Eric D. Randall
Tina Sciocchetti, who has been SED’s head of Test Security and Educator Integrity since March, entitled her presentation “Learning from Atlanta.” “You do not want to be like Atlanta,” where cheating was found in 44 of 56 schools, said attorney Robert E. Wilson of the Decatur, Ga., law firm of Wilson, Morton & Downs. He described an urban school system where the then-superintendent (Beverly Hall) created a culture of intimidation that placed pressure on principals and teachers to improve scores and meet defined “targets.” The Atlanta saga began when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published articles questioning the validity of Atlanta’s stellar improvement in test scores in 2001. Nine years later, in 2010, Gov. Sonny Perdue ordered an investigation that involved a team of seven lawyers, two law firm investigators and 50 agents from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Investigators found no evidence of written or oral directives to cheat. But Wilson gave the example of a teacher whose students had low scores and was told she had to sit under a table at a meeting where better performing colleagues sat normally. “They created a culture of fear and silence. Some bucked it and they lost their jobs.” Erasure analysis uncovered unfathomably improbable events, such as patterns in which 85 to 100 percent of changed answers were changed to the right answer. Noting patterns of cheating going back eight years in some schools, a statistical expert said one pattern of improvement was so far from what one would expect statistically that it was like flipping a quarter and having it land on its edge, then flip a second that also lands on its edge – on top of the other one. |
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| On Board Online • November 5, 2012 By Gayle Simidian Improving school climate is “the heart of the intent” of New York’s new Dignity for All Students Act, according to Mary Grenz Jalloh, executive director of the New York State Center for School Safety at Ulster BOCES. She led a session called “The Dignity Act Coordinator: Supporting and Strengthening their Role,” at NYSSBA’s 93rd Annual Convention. Jalloh reviewed the list of 11 protected classes under the Dignity Act and four sections of regulations that cover:
To avoid being accused of violating the law, school personnel need to choose their words carefully when dealing with students, she said. A well-meaning teacher concerned about a thin student’s health might say, “Go get something to eat before class.” Given the fact that the law states that students cannot be discriminated against on the basis of weight, such a statement would be potentially problematic because a student may interpret it as being forced to eat something before they can attend class. Jalloh suggested a better phrasing would be, “The cafeteria is around the corner….” |
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| On Board Online • November 5, 2012 By Paul Heiser
Coloroso has written several books and travelled the country bringing her message to schools about the harmful effects of bullying, how to recognize it, and what to do about it. Coloroso said bullying is not about conflict. It’s about contempt – a powerful feeling of dislike toward someone considered to be worthless, inferior or undeserving of respect. Bullying is a conscious, willful and deliberate hostile activity, intended to harm. It has four signs: an imbalance of power between the bully and the one being bullied; an intent to do harm; a threat of further aggression; and, if it continues unabated, it leads to terror. Coloroso said that any bullying situation has three components: the bully, the person being bullied, and the bystander (or bystanders). Each has his or her own role to play. The bully. Bullies feel a contempt for others that grows out of a sense of entitlement, or the right to control, dominate, subjugate, and abuse another human being. Bullies are intolerant to those who are different. Bullies also feel at liberty to bar, isolate, and segregate a person deemed not worthy of respect or care. The bullied. The one thing that all kids who are bullied have in common is that a bully or a bunch of bullies has targeted them. Each one was singled out to be the object of scorn, and thus the recipient of bullying, merely because he or she was different in some way. |
| On Board Online • November 5, 2012 By Jeffrey S. Handelman Is your community tired of supporting galas and golf tournaments, bake sales and chicken dinners as fundraising vehicles for your district? While there is nothing wrong with these types of activities, presenter Nancy Dye provided dozens of ideas to reinvigorate school district fundraising at NYSSBA’s 93rd Annual Convention. She solicited additional ideas from attendees throughout her program. The executive director of the American Schools Foundation Alliance (ASFA), Dye helps school districts set up and manage their foundations. From her national perspective, she comes across successful ideas all over the country, including:
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| On Board Online • November 5, 2012 By Paul Heiser Is your district looking everywhere it can to save money and run more efficiently? Adam Haber, a board trustee for the Roslyn school district on Long Island, has some cost-savings tips that his district has tried or considered. At NYSSBA’s Annual Convention, he presented them in an educational seminar on creative ways to save money. The bottom line: everything is negotiable, and working together with other districts when possible is better than going it alone. For instance, Roslyn refinanced its debt and saved nearly a quarter of a million dollars in the process. The district had a $3.175 million bond with nearly five-and-a-half years remaining. Simply by renegotiating the terms of the bond, the district was able to lower its interest rate from 4.39 percent to 2.28 percent, saving $238,000. Haber is a big advocate of cooperative purchasing as well. His district borders six other districts in Nassau County, and they have found great success in creating an ad hoc bidding unit to purchase goods and services more cheaply. Haber cautions about hidden fees in the cooperative bidding process, though. For example, Roslyn bought five new high-end printers for roughly $62,000. However, there was nearly $6,000 in extra charges for such items as an attorney financing fee, project management and coordination, and a 2 percent receiving and inventory fee. |
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| On Board Online • November 5, 2012 By Pilar Sokol At their October meeting, the state Board of Regents took emergency action to give school boards a new way to enable students with disabilities to graduate with a local high school diploma. The so-called “compensatory option” allows students with disabilities to “compensate” for a score of between 45-54 on certain Regents exams that are required for graduation by achieving a score of 65 or higher on a separate required examination. The option is available beginning with the current school year. Until now, students with disabilities that are unable to earn a Regents diploma have been able to graduate with a local high school diploma only if: |
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| FOR RELEASE: November 1, 2012
Thomas Nespeca of Webster, NY has been re-elected president of the New York State School Boards Association (NYSSBA). His one-year term begins Jan. 1, 2013> The election took place Saturday, Oct. 27, at NYSSBA’s Annual Business Meeting in Rochester. A total of 228 voting delegates participated in the business meeting, which was held in conjunction with the Association’s 93rd Annual Convention and Education Expo attended by nearly 2,500 members of the education community. "NYSSBA is committed to providing strong leadership to New York schools," said Nespeca. "As an organization, we are particularly focused on being advocates for education and children. We're committed to making progress, every week, every month and every year." Nespeca, who served two terms as vice president of NYSSBA, was first appointed to the Board of Directors in 2006. He served as NYSSBA’s Area 2 Director where he represented school boards in Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Seneca, Wayne and Yates counties. Nespeca has been a member of the Webster School Board since 1998, having served as president and vice president. He is also a member of the Monroe County School Boards Association and served as president in 2004-05. Nespeca also served on the Monroe County School Board Association’s Executive Committee and formerly co-chaired the Legislative Committee. |
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Expanding the role of BOCES could help school districts cut the Gordian Knot of school finance, Commissioner of Education John B. King Jr. said in a dialogue with school board members at NYSSBA’s 93rd Annual Convention.
After listening to a Georgia attorney tell a gripping tale about how a team of investigators broke through denials to uncover a top-to-bottom cheating scandal in Atlanta schools, attendees at the 16th Annual Pre-Convention School Law Seminar heard New York’s test security chief describe the State Education Department’s strategy to discourage and crack down on cheating.
Barbara Coloroso distilled a 30-hour course into a 90-minute session at NYSSBA’s 93rd Annual Convention. The renowned writer and educational consultant presented “The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander – Breaking the Cycle of Violence,” to attentive listeners at the Saturday morning session, which was repeated in the afternoon.