On Board Online • October 15, 2012

By Eric D. Randall
Editor-in-Chief

More than 700 men visited the Niagara Falls City School District on Sept. 20 to participate in the statewide Dads Take Your Child to School Day.

“We want this to be step one in making fathers and men feel valued and welcomed in our schools,” said district Community Relations Director Judie Gregory Glaser, an organizer of her district’s event. The district plans to invite the men (who include uncles, grandfathers and others) to participate in a reading campaign.

On Board Online • October 15, 2012

By Lisa A. Johnson
Special Correspondent

If a parent education program that some schools in Western New York currently use had been around in 2005, Janice Struebel believes that her son might still be alive.

A mother of five in the Erie County village of Angola, Struebel wishes she had known more about teenagers and alcohol before her youngest son, Mathew, fell from a balcony and suffered a fatal injury at age 17.

And if better parent education had been available back then, maybe adults in her community would have been more likely to report underage drinking parties and those who feel it is acceptable to host them – including the mother who was present at the house where Mathew drank.

“Parents are not supposed to bury their children,” Struebel said. After her son’s death, she joined Citizens for Responsible Choices (CRC), a Buffalo-area group that thinks all high schools should require parents to attend drug awareness sessions. The group models its approach off a program that started in Arizona.

On Board Online • September 24, 2012

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior Writer

State education officials estimate New York is hitting the halfway point in an overhaul of standards and curriculum sparked by adoption of a multi-state approach called the Common Core. But educators who are deeply immersed in the effort still struggle to define the concept and explain how it is changing public education.

Three enthusiastic local educators who were invited to brief the state Board of Regents this month said their colleagues have been uneasy about how the Common Core will change how they teach and how students learn.

“A lot of the anxiety around this was just not knowing,” said Courtney Jablonski, a network team leader with the Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES. She told the Regents at their September meeting that the most common question was very basic: “What does it look like?”

Jose Carrion, assistant superintendent for instruction in Poughkeepsie schools, said that sitting in on training sessions on math instruction was a revelation for him. Even though “I probably could do the calculations,” he said, “I realized I didn’t really know math.” He said, “I love the Common Core” because it requires a sophisticated approach that helps students reach a deeper understanding of math.

On Board Online • September 24, 2012

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior Writer

At a time when an impending presidential election is fueling super-heated political passions and rhetoric, the public environment often feels virtually saturated with partisan messages delivered via television, radio, social media, campaign signs and mailings.

But what about the public space of school classrooms and hallways?

Should faculty members be allowed to wear political campaign buttons in school? How about a teacher arguing on behalf of his or her personal political preference during a spirited classroom discussion of American democracy – or simply even expressing a political preference? What if a teacher’s car in the school parking lot displays a Romney or Obama bumper sticker?

“You get into some knotty issues regarding freedom of speech and First Amendment rights, and it’s a very gray area,” said Jay Boak, district superintendent for the Jefferson-Lewis-Hamilton-Herkimer-Oneida BOCES, based in Watertown.

On Board Online • September 24, 2012

One of a community’s worst fears just played out in the Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third largest school system. For more than a week, teachers went on strike, creating chaos for 350,000 students and their parents.

The strike in the Windy City loomed large nationally because the debate mirrored issues in other U.S. communities. School districts across the nation are implementing teacher evaluation reforms, competing with charter schools and looking for heroes to champion the cause of public education, even if that hero is a big city mayor.

Adding significance was the fact that the strike took place in Chicago – a Democratic stronghold with strong links to the Obama Administration. President Obama cut his political teeth there, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel served as Obama’s chief of staff and led campaign fundraising, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan formerly headed up the Chicago Public Schools. When Chicago (on the eve of a presidential election) becomes hamstrung in its efforts to implement the administration’s key reforms, hopes dim nationwide for an educational decision-making and delivery system based on metrics that includes some measure of student performance.

On Board Online • September 24, 2012

By Paul Heiser
Senior Research Analyst

Interest in school mergers is growing among school board members, but they say their support would hinge on whether the merger would expand educational opportunities for students, according to the results of NYSSBA’s latest Pulse Poll, a survey of school board members conducted via email.

One-third of the responding school board members said their school district should consider merging with a neighboring district, while 60 percent did not. Seven percent of board members said their district had already recently merged or considered a merger.

Asked to name the most important factor when considering a school merger, nearly half of school board members surveyed – 47 percent – said that expanded educational opportunities is key. Cost savings through potential economies of scale were a somewhat lesser – but still significant – factor. One-third of school boards said that would be the most important factor in considering a school merger.

On Board Online • September 24, 2012

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior Writer

In a project led by married school principals, the students and staff in two western New York school districts have helped build a school for a rural Nicaraguan community.

Support from colleagues and students in the Honeoye Falls-Lima and Avon districts in Livingston County enabled principals Jeanine and Robert Lupicella to travel with their children to Las Minitas last December to help transform a tattered shed into a sturdy brick-and-mortar school.

The Lupicellas say building the school was an example of “service learning.”

“Our school motto talks about being citizens in a global society,” Rob Lupicella told On Board. He said the project was a way to put that motto into action.

On Board Online • September 24, 2012

Among more than 100,000 schools in the nation, 269 have been named 2012 National Blue Ribbon Schools, including 16 public schools in New York State.

“Great schools don’t happen by chance. Great schools happen by design,” said U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan.

The federal government created the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program in 1982 and award criteria were revised in 2003 to place a stronger emphasis on state test data. Awards are given to two types of schools: