Chicago teachers strike underscores shift among Democrats

The Washington Post
Opinions
By Michelle Rhee, Published: September 27, 2012

 

Michelle Rhee was chancellor of the D.C. public schools from 2007 to 2010. She is founder and chief executive of StudentsFirst, a national nonprofit education advocacy group based in Sacramento.
 

I'm a Democrat because I believe in the party’s basic principles, particularly the idea that we have to look after one another and stand up for those who need help. I believe in fighting for the civil rights of all Americans, especially children and those facing injustices. That’s why I was heartened to see Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel advocating for the rights of kids in his standoff with the Chicago Teachers Union. Although his stance made perfect sense to me, it surprised many political observers. After all, Emanuel is a favorite within the Democratic Party, and teachers unions have long been allied with the party.
Emanuel went head to head with the union to get a better contract for the city’s schoolchildren. In the process, he underscored a transformation in the Democratic Party. Increasingly, those who staunchly side with unions at any cost appear to be in the minority, while more Democrats are saying we have to look at education differently.
...
It’s no longer acceptable to ignore the inequities and overall shortcomings of our public education system. Consider that only about half of black and Hispanic students earn high school diplomas with their peers, compared with three-fourths of whites, and that the academic achievement gap between poor students and their wealthier peers is widening. When kids do make it to college, roughly a third need remedial work because they weren’t adequately prepared by the K-12 system. The United States is also falling far behind our global competitors in math and science.
...
At the heart of the debate was a focus on teacher quality. We know that great teachers can have a tremendous impact. Yet we don’t have policies in place to ensure that all children are taught by great teachers. That’s why the mayor pushed for an evaluation system that would help determine who is excelling, who needs help and who may be better off in another profession. I’m so glad that, for the first time in Chicago, teacher evaluations will at least consider whether students are learning over the course of the year. But I do wish the union hadn’t won some key concessions.

Read more HERE.

AP scores increase; SAT scores dip in 2012

Charles County's students' scores increased slightly on Advanced Placement (AP) exams, but the average SAT score for the Class of 2012 decreased, according to data released this week by the College Board, which administers AP, SAT and other national programs.

Charles County Public Schools average score on AP exams rose slightly to 2.22 from 2.14 in 2011. Nearly 90 percent of all students taking the rigorous AP classes took at least one test in 2012. "Taking Advanced Placement classes in high school better prepares our students for future study and success," Superintendent James E. Richmond said.

While the number of students taking the SAT increased, average scores decreased. Scores for the class of 2012 were 1447, down from 1455 in 2010. National and state averages also declined. Average participation countywide is 39 percent.

Students average score on the critical reading section is 486; the average math score is 490 and the average writing score is 471.

The SAT is used by many colleges as part of an admission process and designed to demonstrate a student's mastery of certain subjects. Only scores for graduating seniors are included in the 2012 report. Students in the Class of 2012 were offered nearly $52 million in scholarships.

La Plata High School students averaged 1611, with 28.3 percent of graduates taking the SAT in 2011. North Point High School students posted a 1450 average, with 60 percent of seniors taking the test. Henry E. Lackey High School students averaged 1430, with 30.6 percent participation. Westlake High School students averaged 1423, with 20.6 percent participation. Thomas Stone High School students averaged 1398, with 42.7 percent participation and Maurice J. McDonough High School students averaged 1392 with 38.1 percent participation.

A detailed chart of SAT results for 2011-12 college bound seniors is posted on the Charles County Public Schools website at http://www2.ccboe.com/PDF/testscores/SAT-2012.pdf.

Notes from Board of Education, 9/24/12

The Board of Education Meeting on Monday, September 24 will be re-broadcast on Comcast Channel 96, Verizon FIOS Channel 12 and is available via webstream at http://www.ccboe.com/ . To view the full agenda and the various reports, please visit BoardDocs.

The below notes are my personal notes and are not intended to be all-inclusive or official minutes for the Board of Education meetings and are provided as a request from my supporters and the general public in a personal effort to be more transparent. Although I have diligently tried to make these notes as unbiased and accurate as possible, I am only human and do make mistakes.

Call to order – 6 p.m.


Pledge of Allegiance

Public Forum

Work Session

Opening of St. Charles High School - See report for additional development figures
According to officials from the developers of St. Charles:

--Sheffield is built out and includes about 1,300 housing units (apartments, townhomes, and single family.)
--Gleneagles North and South will have about 1,700 housing units.
--Fieldside will include just under 500 housing units.

Gleneagles North is largely complete. The first unit in Fieldside settled this month. St. Charles is still finishing lot development in Gleneagles South, but expect the first homeowner early next year.

This illustrates St. Charles' immediate plans around St. Charles High School. Of course, there are future neighborhoods that are still in planning and are not depicted on the map. After these units, the development agreement calls for approximately 10,000 more housing units, in the area between St. Charles High School and Radio Station Road/La Plata High School. At 300 units a year, those units would be built over 33 years.

The following is the link to the four options for opening St. Charles High School:
http://www2.ccboe.com/parentscomm/stcharleshsopeningoptions.cfm

• Wade - requests Richmonds opinion
• Richmond - doesn't recommend moving seniors

Motion to accept Option 2 for opening the St. Charles High School with grades 9,10,& 11;

Second by Bowie

Yes = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Lukas, Pedersen, Wade, Wise

Bowie - Costs involved

Balides/Richmond - $18M to run a new high school....no seniors would be less; based on our decision tonight they will produce a more detailed number.

Adjournment

REMINDER: Board of Education Meeting, 9/24/12

The Board of Education of Charles County is holding a work session at 6 p.m., Monday, September 24, at the Jesse L. Starkey Administration Building in La Plata. The meeting will be aired live on Comcast Channel 96 and Verizon FiOS Channel 12, and streamed on the school system website at http://www2.ccboe.com/boe/live/. The agenda is as follows:

Call to order – 6 p.m.

• Pledge of Allegiance

Public Forum

Work Session

• Opening of St. Charles High School

Adjournment

Redistricting committee members wanted

Charles County Public Schools is looking for a few good people to serve on its high school redistricting committee.

The school system will select 10 parents, two each from the elementary and middle school levels, and six from the high schools, to serve on the committee. Additionally, three community members will be selected for the committee, which also includes principals, county government planners and Charles County Public Schools (CCPS) staff. The school system is starting a comprehensive high school redistricting process that will create an attendance zone for the new St. Charles High School and redistribute and balance student populations at all high schools. The redistricting, which will be approved by the summer of 2013, takes effect in August 2014.

Commitment Applicants must agree to fulfill a four- to five-month commitment of attendance at a weekly meeting. The meeting day will be either Tuesday or Wednesday, and is determined after the first meeting and by consensus with the group. The time of all meetings is 6:30-8:30 p.m.

How to apply Elementary, middle and high school principals are now accepting names from parents with interest in serving on the committee. Please call your child's school for the deadline to apply. Community members must not have a child enrolled in any Charles County public school and must fill out an online application at http://www2.ccboe.com/parentscomm/transportation/hsredistricting.cfm, or call 301-934-7221 to receive an application by mail.

The process Each elementary and middle school will submit to the Superintendent the name of one parent to be selected at random from all expressing interest. The name of a parent from each elementary school will be placed in a container and two names will be selected at random from the 21 submissions. Principals from each of the eight middle schools will follow the same process. The name of a parent from each middle school will be submitted to the Superintendent, placed in a container and two names will be selected at random from the eight submissions.

Each high school will accept names of any interested parent and select one name, at random, to serve on the redistricting committee. Each high school will send the name of one representative, and no further drawing will be held at the high school level.

Contact your child's principal to find out the deadline for applying and when the random selection will be made at the school.

Three community members will be selected from applicants. Community members should not have a child enrolled in any Charles County public school and must fill out an application. The application can be completed and submitted online. Applications will also be mailed on request. Only applications received by Oct. 5 will be considered. If more than three names are submitted, the community members will be selected in a public drawing at the Oct. 9 Board meeting.

Selection of committee members Superintendent James E. Richmond and the Board of Education will publicly draw the names of the elementary and middle school parents and the community representatives at the Board's Oct. 9 meeting.

Questions about the process can be sent to redistrict@ccboe.com or call 301-934-7221.

Open forums scheduled to aid in finding new superintendent

The Charles County Board of Education has initiated its search for a new Superintendent of Schools. The superintendent search process is Charles County's first in 17 years. To help facilitate this process, the Charles County Board has contracted the services of the Maryland Association of Boards of Education (MABE), an agency that specializes in assisting Boards with the consideration of candidates for educational leadership roles.

Open forums for the community will be held at locations throughout the county to help identify the qualities and characteristics residents want for the new superintendent.

The following are the open forum times, dates and locations:

• Oct. 8 at 6:30 p.m. at Henry E. Lackey High School, 3000 Chicamuxen Road, Indian Head, Md., 20640
• Oct. 8 at 7 p.m. at Thomas Stone High School, 3785 Leonardtown Road, Waldorf, Md., 20601
• Oct. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at Piccowaxen Middle School, 12834 Rock Point Road, Newburg, Md., 20664
• Oct. 9 at 7 p.m. at Westlake High School, 3300 Middletown Road, Waldorf, Md., 20603
• Oct. 10 at 7 p.m. at La Plata High School (session open to the public), 6035 Radio Station Road, La Plata, Md., 20646

Participants will be provided a brief presentation about the superintendent search, participate in group discussions and will be asked to answer three questions:

• What do you feel are the most positive things about Charles County and Charles County Public Schools?
• What characteristics and qualifications do you feel a superintendent should possess?
• What challenges do you think the new superintendent will face?

Input from these forums will be compiled, presented to and used by the Board of Education to develop a brochure and advertisement to solicit candidates for the superintendent position. The brochure and advertisement will be posted on our school system website and placed in local, state and national publications.

Individuals or groups that cannot participate in the forums are encouraged to e-mail responses to kblumsack@mabe.org or mail responses to arrive by October 10 to: Kathryn Blumsack, Maryland Association of Boards of Education, 621 Ridgley Avenue, Suite 300, Annapolis, Md., 21201.

School system launches attendance audit at North Point

Charles County Public Schools is launching an attendance audit at North Point High School to ensure students enrolled there live in the North Point attendance zone or in Charles County if they are in a Science, Technology and Industry (STI) program. While the school system routinely investigates questionable attendance issues, this is the first concentrated effort to conduct a formal audit.


Superintendent James E. Richmond said overcrowding strains building capacity in terms of facility and staffing levels, and enrollment at North Point has steadily risen to 2,252 students, which is hundreds more students than the school was designed to handle.

"Despite overcrowding, North Point is managing the challenges and staff continues to provide the students there with quality instructional programs and opportunities. However, as we begin a redistricting process at the high school level, we need to first make sure we are confirming that students in our schools are Charles County residents and that they are attending the proper school," Richmond said.

This is a residency verification pilot program and analysis, and once the North Point student audit is complete, staff could look at other schools, Richmond said.

North Point, which serves as the STI center for Charles County Public Schools, is a comprehensive high school. A designated number of students at the school come from across Charles County and apply for and are accepted in STI programs. The remainder of the student population is zoned to attend North Point. The audit is focusing on the attendance zone population; however, Richmond said staff is looking to ensure students in the STI programs are county residents.
The formal audit supplements daily efforts by schools and the Charles County Public Schools (CCPS) student services department to monitor enrollment numbers and to ensure children are enrolled at the schools they are zoned to attend. During the last two school years, more than 60 out-of-zone students have been removed from North Point following residency investigations. Additionally, according to Patricia Vaira, director of student services, many more students are stopped from enrolling because the school system is taking a closer look at leases and residency verification during the registration process.
A letter from Richmond is going home to North Point parents on Sept. 12 alerting them to the audit and asking for cooperation.
The school system's audit to confirm students' residency status includes, but is not limited to:

• A complete review of all residency documents, including lease agreements and statements of residency;
• Unscheduled home visits to confirm the accuracy of residency documents; and
• A review of publicly available information regarding property ownership.

Parents of students enrolled at North Point under false information can withdrawal their child by Sept. 19 with no questions asked. "I hope parents will respond before we need to take action," Richmond said.
"I heard the complaints during the elementary and middle school redistricting that people feel there are students throughout the county, but particularly on the North Point campus, who are not zoned to attend these schools and are causing overcrowding. I felt we needed to investigate thoroughly those claims," Richmond said.
Students found to be attending the wrong school will be sent to their zoned school or removed from the school system if they are not a resident. Nonresidents will be charged tuition, retroactively, for the time they attended school here. County students attending a school under false information will be ineligible to participate in athletics. "Families providing inaccurate residency information not only overcrowd our schools, but they also put our athletic programs at risk. If we find an out-of-zone student playing on one of our teams, the entire team suffers the consequence for this ineligible player through forfeited games," Richmond said.

Richmond asks anyone with knowledge of a family that is attending school who does not reside in the school's attendance zone to contact the school or anonymously call the school system's fraud hotline at 301-302-8305.

Notes from Board of Education Meeting, 9/11/12

The Board of Education Meeting on Tuesday, September 11 will be re-broadcast on Comcast Channel 96, Verizon FIOS Channel 12 and is available via webstream at http://www.ccboe.com/ . To view the full agenda and the various reports, please visit BoardDocs.

The below notes are my personal notes and are not intended to be all-inclusive or official minutes for the Board of Education meetings and are provided as a request from my supporters and the general public in a personal effort to be more transparent. Although I have diligently tried to make these notes as unbiased and accurate as possible, I am only human and do make mistakes.

Executive session – 12 p.m.

Call to order – 1 p.m.

Pledge of Allegiance – Henry E. Lackey High School's JROTC unit

Superintendent's update to the board - see report

Maryland Association of Boards of Education (MABE) update  - see report

Correspondence/board member updates

• Bowie - Encourage reading your calendar, wealth of information
• Wade - 911 remembrance; worse than Pearl Harbor
• Pedersen - Update on classroom sizes; flex program in middle schools and middle school schedules
• Cook - Bannister Neighborhood Association looking for used books to use as awards for their one-on-one tutoring program
• Wise - Commissioners' meeting on the 18th; Reaching Out Now hopes to provide Wal-mart gift cards as well as monetary donations to schools; Letter from Commissioner Kelley asking for a joint committee to study school capacity.  Abell & Pedersen volunteered.  Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Summit

Education Association of Charles County update - see report

Student board member's update - see report

Opening of schools - oral report; uneventful

Capital Improvement Program (CIP) update - see report

• Construction of high school has begun; March 2014 completion
• F B Gwynn Center renovation update

Report item: FY 2013 Comprehensive Maintenance Plan - see report

Gifted and talented education policy - see report

• Pedersen - questioning validity of 'flex time'
• Wise - Annotated Code of Maryland states that students are identified by a qualified individual; who identifies our students?
• Bourasso - Committee of teachers and staff

Gifted and Talented Education Month resolution - see report

Policy #5171.1 – Epi-pens - see report

Unfinished business - none

New business

• Resolution for MABE

Motion to accept the resolution by Abell; Second by Cook

YES = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; Absent = Lukas



Future agenda items - none

Recognition – 4:30 p.m.

• Truth Chapter No. 19, Order of the Eastern Star, Prince Hall Affiliated

Public Forum – 6 p.m.

• Roseman Diaz - Davis to Henson redistricting; students love it but it is extremely crowded.  Already 70 students overcrowded.  Additional developments being built.  Here to advocate for the students and ally with the board.
• Lourdes Sagun - redistricting; students love school; class sizes are still 27-30 students; wants to be involved and on the committee for the high school redistricting

Action items

• Minutes

Motion to accept the June 5 meeting minutes by Pedersen; Second by Cook

YES = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; Absent = Lukas

Motion to accept the June 28th teleconference by Cook; Second by Pedersen

YES = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; Absent = Lukas

Motion to accept the August 14th minutes by Abell; Second by Pedersen

YES = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; Absent = Lukas

Motion to accept the August 14th executive session minutes by Cook; Second by Pedersen

YES = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; Absent = Lukas

Motion to accept the August 6th & August 14th executive session minutes by Cook; Second by Wade

YES = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; Absent = Lukas

• Personnel

Motion to accept the personnel by Wade; Second by Personnel

YES = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; Absent = Lukas

• FY 2014 CIP state and local CIP program

Motion to accept the CIP by Cook; Second by Wade

YES = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; Absent = Lukas

• Redistricting policies

Motion to accept the redistricting policies as amended by Abell; Second by Pedersen

YES = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; Absent = Lukas

• Recurring resolutions: American Education Week; American Freedom Week; African-American History Month; Career and Technical Education Month; National School Counseling Week; Read Across America; Women's History Month; Fine and Performing Arts Month; Month of the Young Child; National Student Leadership Week; Teacher Appreciation Week; Administrative Professionals Week; Child Nutrition Employee Appreciation Week; National Physical Education and Sport Week; Washington Post Distinguished Educational Leader; Charles County Teacher of the Year; Employees Retirement; and Washington Post Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Award.

Motion to accept the recurring resolutions by Cook; Second by Bowie

YES = Bowie, Cook, Pedersen, Wade, Wise; ABSTAIN = Abell; Absent = Lukas

Adjournment

REMINDER: Board of Education Meeting, 9/11/12

The Board of Education's next monthly meeting is Tuesday, Sept. 11, at the Jesse L. Starkey Administration Building on Radio Station Road in La Plata. The public portion of the meeting begins at 1 p.m. The meeting is televised live on Comcast Channel 96 and Verizon FiOS Channel 12, and is rebroadcast throughout the week. Board meetings are also streamed live on the school system Web site at http://www2.ccboe.com/boe/live/.

Executive session – 12 p.m.

Call to order – 1 p.m.

Pledge of Allegiance – Henry E. Lackey High School's JROTC unit

 
Maryland Association of Boards of Education (MABE) update

Superintendent's update to the board

Correspondence/board member updates

Education Association of Charles County update

Student board member's update

Opening of schools

Capital Improvement Program (CIP) update

Report item: FY 2013 Comprehensive Maintenance Plan

Gifted and talented education policy

Gifted and talented education month resolution

Policy #5171.1 – Epi-pens

Unfinished business

 
New business

• Resolution for MABE

Future agenda items

Recognition – 4:30 p.m.

• Truth Chapter No. 19, Order of the Eastern Star, Prince Hall Affiliated

Public Forum – 6 p.m.

Action items

• Minutes
• Personnel
• FY 2014 CIP state and local CIP program
• Redistricting policies
• Recurring resolutions: American Education Week; American Freedom Week; African-American History Month; Career and Technical Education Month; National School Counseling Week; Read Across America; Women's History Month; Fine and Performing Arts Month; Month of the Young Child; National Student Leadership Week; Teacher Appreciation Week; Administrative Professionals Week; Child Nutrition Employee Appreciation Week; National Physical Education and Sport Week; Washington Post Distinguished Educational Leader; Charles County Teacher of the Year; Employees Retirement; and Washington Post Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Award.

Adjournment