Changing The Tire With The Car Still Moving...

Here we are at the start of a new semester. In some ways the time has flown by, but in other ways it's taken a while. In either case, on Monday students will begin their new semester. For some of them, it will mean different classes and different teachers. However, for most students the majority of their schedule will be unchanged as students typically enroll in yearlong classes.

At the same time everyone is gearing up for the new semester, we are also enrolling students for the 2010-11 school year. That's the way it goes in the business of schooling, you're preparing for next year even though you're only halfway through the current school year. Hence, the analogy to changing a tire while the car is still moving.

I want to take this opportunity to remind students and parents to choose their classes carefully. Guidance counselors and teacher will be offering the same advice. Please heed it.

Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at more than 10,000 course requests from our high school students. We take all of those course requests and determine staffing based upon requests. If there are enough students interested in a course to offer it, we do so. If there is not enough student interest, the course doesn't run.

We then take all of those course requests and determine the 375+ sections that will be needed within our master schedule. And then we will build a master schedule that 'fits' those sections into an 8:00 - 3:05 school day.

The aspect of creating the master schedule that takes the greatest emotional toll in these difficult economic times is creation of a layoff list. Each of the past six years we have been in the downsizing mode, requiring layoffs from nearly all of our bargaining groups. That's why we need you to choose classes carefully. It affects people's livelihood.

In a downsizing mode, we have to eliminate sections with low enrollment and collapse sections when possible. That creates far less flexibility in the master schedule than we had just a few years ago. It also means that when school begins in the fall we cannot accommodate schedule changes except in the rarest of circumstances.

So again I ask you, please choose your courses carefully becuase what you decide in the next few weeks will be reality in the fall of 2010. Good luck!

What Is A Tardy Sweep?

Periodically, we are asked by the staff to "crack down" on students that are late to class.

Don't get me wrong, compared to any other high school in my experience, this is far less of an issue at South than elsewhere. However, when teachers are investing all they have into student achievement and engagement, it's frustrating to have students walk in late to class. At the very least it's a disruption, but it can also cause somewhat of a restart to the class.

So occasionally we conduct a "hall sweep". It's pretty simple. We pick a certain period of the day and once the bell rings, teachers are asked to lock their doors and refer all tardy students to the auditorium. Once students report there, the administrators assign detentions to students caught in the hall sweep because obviously these students were tardy to class.

Each time we do this we get some complaints from students or parents. Of course, if a student has a legitimate excuse to be in the hall (i.e. sent to their locker by the teacher) the detention is cancelled. However, there are always some students that claim it was their first time being late and they are being unduly punished.

I don't believe a detention is too big a penalty for tardiness to class, and hopefully it will serve as a deterrent to future tardiness. I mention this because we will have another hall sweep in the near future, and I'm hopeful that an up-front explanation may prevent some of the complaints after it is implemented.

I believe it's obvious to all that punctuality is a good lifelong skill to possess, and this is something all high schools try to enforce. Students have seven minutes to move between classes here at South and that is ample time to get wherever they need to go. Often times, the tardy students are those that spend time socializing with friends and waiting for the last minute to start to class.

We believe this is an effective deterrent, we know that teachers and hall monitors request it, even though students caught in the sweep dislike it. It's one of the ways we use to curb tardiness to class.

The Survey Says...

I hope everyone was able to enjoy the New Year and that it was a happy one for you and your families.

Just before the Holidays, we were able to make each of the surveys available to the public. These are the surveys administered in early October and that are designed to provide feedback to our School Improvement Team.

If you go to the South webpage, there is a message embedded in the document that references the surveys. The message instructs you to go to the links on the left side of the page to see each of the four surveys:
1) Parent
2) Teacher
3) Student
4) Support Staff

At our staff meeting on January 5th, we took a good look at both the parent and teacher survey results. At an upcoming meeting, we will continue with the student and support staff results.

For the most part, each of the surveys are complimentary of the quality of education here at South. There was high praise for the curriculum standards and high expectations for students. There are, however, areas that we must address and dissecting the survey results is the first step.

In hindsight, we wish we would have asked students the same three open-ended questions that were asked in the other surveys:
1) What do you like best about South?
2) What do you like least?
3) What suggestions do you have for improvement?

Having that information from the students would have given us a more complete picture of the similarities and differences of opinion. Oh well, we can do that next time.

I encourage you to take some time to go through the survey results. At the minimum, I think you will find it interesting to see how others feel about South High School.