School Board Elections

The filing period for the School Board elections ends Friday, Feb. 26^th, at noon. Four Iredell-Statesville Board of Education seats are up for election. Those are the seats representing districts 1, 3, 5 and 7. School Board elections are nonpartisan and are to be held at the time of the May primary election. The term of office is for four years.

The information below depicts the schools included in each district as well as the current School Board member representing each district.

District 1- Dr. Ken Wilson

Union Grove, Harmony, North Middle, North High, Central, East Middle (district also overlaps with West Middle and West High)

District 3- John Rogers

N.B. Mills, Northview, Pressly, Statesville High, East Elementary (district also overlaps with West High, North High, West Middle, Statesville Middle, Monticello, Ebenezer, and Third Creek)

District 5- Bill Brater

Celeste Henkel, South High, Troutman Elementary, Troutman Middle, Lakeshore Elementary, Lakeshore Middle, Lake Norman High, Shepherd (district also overlaps with West High, West Middle, and Sharon)

District 7- Karen Watson

Mt. Mourne, Brawley, Lake Norman Elementary, Woodland Heights (district also overlaps with Lakeshore Middle, Lakeshore Elementary, and Lake Norman High School)

According to the Iredell County Board of Elections, Dr. Ken Wilson, Mr. John Rogers, and Mr. Bill Brater have each filed for reelection. Mr. Robert Bobinski has filed to run in the election for the seat representing District 7. As of Feb. 19^th at 2:22 PM, Ms. Watson has not filed for reelection.

In my opinion, unless there is some significant change within the School Board there will not be any significant change in the administration of the School System. NOW is the time for some individuals to step up and speak out for the students. If you live in one of the school districts up for election, please either consider running for the School Board or encourage someone who will make a good candidate to do so.

According to Iredell-Statesville School Board Policy Code 2110, no School Board member shall serve more than two consecutive terms. According to the I-SS web site Dr. Wilson is in his second term and Mr. Brater is in his first term. I could not find information regarding the number of terms for Mr. Rogers and Ms. Watson.

SHS Media Specialist

On Friday, I received a phone call from Dewoyne Daye, SHS Student Body Vice-President. Dewoyne was concerned because one of the two media specialists at SHS was being transferred to Third Creek Elementary because the individual at Third Creek was retiring. He said that there were no plans to replace the specialist at SHS and that would mean a reduction in services at the High School. Dewoyne was particularly concerned in that this would mean that the library would no longer be open before and after school. He pointed out that many SHS students do not have access to computers at home and that they use the computers in the library before and after school to complete various class projects. Dewoyne also mentioned that the media specialists assist students and SHS staff in many other ways and that one media specialist at the high school would not be able to complete all of these tasks.

Dewoyne also informed me that at Statesville High currently enrolls 30% of the I-SS High School’s Hispanic population, 44% of the system’s African American population, and 19% of the system’s Asian population. SHS also has 14 different subgroups, which is more than any other high school in the system. In addition, SHS has the largest exceptional children’s population of all the high schools and Statesville High School has been declared a Title One/at risk high school.

Dewoyne asked me about the raises that were given to those taking the interim positions when Mr. Johnson was named Interim Superintendent. We talked about how that money could have been used for student programs and for funding positions such as the media specialist at SHS. Dewoyne said that everyone who works for I-SS should be looking out for the students' wellbeing but that is obviously not happening in this situation.

I think that the administration should be able to find money in the budget to keep these two media specialists at SHS and to hire a specialist to replace the individual at Third Creek. The students at SHS deserve the full support of the administration. I have already sent an e-mail to Mr. Johnson and to Mr. John Rogers in this regard and I am asking the readers of this blog to do so as well.

I received the following reply from Mr. John Rogers.

Paul,

All of the high schools except Lake Norman has lost a media specialist due to budget cuts. It was time for West Iredell and SHS to give up a media specialist. Keith Williams and I have worked closely with Mr. (Larry) Rogers concerning this issue. The plan at present is for both ladies to work at SHS and Third Creek.

This will keep both women at the high school a certain number of days per week. A major issue was the time in the morning and afternoon for students to work in the library on the computers. This will stay the same at the present. One major concern is for an experienced person at Third Creek. We are working on it.

Thanks for your interest and Merry Christmas!!!

Teacher's Survey

As has been mentioned in several comments to a previous post, I-SS teachers are now being given the opportunity to take a version of the survey that the Principals took back in August. Pam Schiffman, Associate Superintendent of Accountability and Technology, sent the survey, via e-mail, with the subject line: I-SS Learning initiatives Opinion Activity – FOR TEACHERS. The survey lists a number of I-SS initiatives/processes and asks for input about each one.

Both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Rogers told me some time ago that the teachers would be given the same survey that was given to principals. However that did not happen. First of all, principals were given the option of listing most items as OK as is, tweak, or abandon while teachers are not given the option to directly mark abandon for any of the items. It was mentioned in one of the blog comments that teachers could write abandon in the Suggestions For Improvement section, but teachers should have been specifically given a column to mark abandon for individual items.

Next, the principals were given 34 items on their survey while teachers were only given 15 items. The following items were on the teacher’s survey.

1. Baseline Assessments (BA)
2. Common Formative Assessments (CFA)
3. Predictive Assessments (PAs)
4. School Improvement Planning
5. Data Warehouse/Reports
6. Early Release Professional Development
7. High Yield Instructional Strategies (HYIS)
8. Instructional Facilitator Model (IF)
9. L to J (Lee Jenkins Resources)
10. PDSA
11. Classroom Walkthroughs (CWTs)
12. Professional Learning Communities (PLC)
13. Virtual PLCs
14. Curriculum Guides
15. Teamwork Matrix

The principal survey included all of the above items except High Yield Instructional Strategies and it also included the following items.

1. Budgeting Process
2. Hiring Process
3. Response to Intervention
4. Teacher Evaluation System
5. Corrective Reading
6. Read 180
7. Positive Behavior Support
8. The ISS Triangle Models: Raising Achievement and Closing the Gaps & Effective and Efficient Operations
9. School Improvement Plan Coaching
10. Leadership Academy Week
11. Quality Fair/RACG Day
12. Leadership Academy for Novice Principals
13. Leveled Principal’s Meetings
14. Mid and End of Year Review
15. Instructional Facilitator/Principal Meetings
16. Boot Camps
17. Curriculum Review Week
18. Assistant Principal Meetings
19. Quarterly Principal Coaching Sessions
20. Whole Group Principal Meeting

Granted, some of these additional items on the principal’s survey such as Assistant Principal Meetings and Whole Group Principal Meeting do not apply directly to teachers and would not need to be included on the teacher survey. However, a number of them do apply directly to teachers. For example, Teacher Evaluation System, Response to Intervention, The ISS Triangle Models, and Corrective Reading all have direct teacher involvement. Teachers should have been given the opportunity to rate these items as well.

I think that Mr. Johnson needs to have Pam Schiffman restructure the survey or at least give a valid explanation of why these items were not included on the teacher’s survey and why teachers were not given the direct opportunity to mark any items as needing to be abandoned.

WIHS Advisory Meeting

I attended the Advisory Meeting at West Iredell High School last night and I must say that I think that this one was much better than the one at Statesville High. The procedure was the same but the presentation was a little clearer. Of course, the presenters have now had the opportunity to go through the process several times and I had gone through it once before.

However, I think the biggest change was in the group of participants. At the first meeting, my wife was probably the only teacher in attendance and there were a significant number of Central Office administrators present. At this meeting that ratio seemed to be reversed. I did not know most of the people in attendance but from the comments of those present there did seem to be a significant number of teachers at this meeting. The comments seemed to be more related to students, teachers, and classrooms.

There were two School Board members in attendance as well. John Rogers was there and he told me that he had been to all of the advisory meetings except one. Charles Kelly was also there. He told me that he had attended a couple of the other Advisory Meetings.

At the end of the meeting Mr. Johnson stated that they hoped to have the reports from all of the meetings posted on the school web site in a few days. I am looking forward to seeing the overall report. Click on the link below to access the I-SS web site.

Iredell-Statesville Schools

Thursday Meeting Reminder

I want to remind everyone of the meeting with Mr. Brady Johnson that is scheduled for this Thursday at 7:00 PM in the media center at Statesville High School.

I sent an e-mail to Mr. Johnson stating that many teachers are still fearful of speaking out and asking him to notify all I-SS employees of the meeting and to reassure them that they can speak freely and without the fear of any repercussion. Mr. Johnson replied saying "I certainly will. I have always said there are basically 2 ways to motivate people...one is fear and the other is to show them that you respect them. This is true for students as well. I have never used fear as a management tool and never will."

Therefore, this will be a time when everyone, including teachers, can come together for the benefit of the students. As Mr. Rogers, School Board member, said in a response to a previous post, "We just have to look at each other eye ball to eye ball and deal with all the issues with the realization that WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER."

Also remember that everyone is asked to bring some school supplies to donate for use in the classrooms.

Mr. Rogers' E-mail Address Update

After the Committee of the Whole meeting, Board member Mr. John Rogers, Jr. stopped me for a moment and asked me to update his e-mail address on this blog. He said he does not regularly use the e-mail address that was formally listed on the I-SS web site and on this blog. Mr. Rogers’ told me his new e-mail address is johnrgrsjb@aol.com and asks everyone to use this address to contact him about any concerns. He also asked me to let everyone know that he does read this blog.

Mr. Rogers, thank you serving on the School Board and for taking the time to consider to the concerns of the citizens of Iredell County.