Some Good News...Some Not So Good

If any of you have tuned in to last evening's Board of Education meeting, you know what I mean by the title of this entry. Prior to the meeting, we discussed the budget for the upcoming school year. That, of course, is the bad news.

However, during the Board meeting there were at least three pieces of good news. Our girl's State Hockey Champs were recognized at the meeting last evening as were two of our senior students that earned the Presidential Scholar Award. In both cases, students were duly honored for achievements that are nothing less than outstanding!

The third piece of good news is that the district's Foundation presented the school district with a check in the amount of $350,000 to further the implementation of classroom technology. With this latest contribution, we can expect to have every classroom at South outfitted with a Smartboard and the necessary accessories by early next fall. That is truly something we could not have accomplished without the efforts of Mr. Bob Bury, Mrs. Lisa Vreede, Mr. Pat Burke and others that dedicate their efforts to fund raising. I encourage you to watch a tape delay of the Board meeting to see their presentation first-hand.

The bad news is simply reflective of the economic struggles in Michigan. What Governor Snyder has originally forecast for schools will result in Draconian cuts. We are hopeful that the legislature will have some impact in peeling back those deep cuts, however, we know that cuts are in order with even a best case scenario.

At South, that means class sizes will get just a little larger and cuts of other personnel will mean a reduction in services. It just seems to be a sign of the times. For the 2012-13 school year, we have to look at our current schedule for the school day. We can't continue the seven-period day the way it is currently offered. The tutorials that about 50% of the students are enrolled in are not a good use of time or money. We simply must get more efficient with our schedule.

There will be much greater detail about the budget in the coming months. Until then, let's hope spring weather finally arrives.

A Successful Search and Hopefully, A Deterrent

As some of you may have heard, today we had our second lockdown exercise for the purpose of bringing drug dogs through the building. At just about 9:00 this morning, we put the building on "lockdown" meaning no one could be in the halls and no one could enter or leave the building.

Through coordination with the Grosse Pointe Farms Police and Grosse Pointe City Police (and dog handler Mike and his dog, Raleigh), we had a coordinated effort with many municipalities to adequately search the building in just over 75 minutes.

This is essentially how the search was handled. There were at least four dogs in the building and at least five dogs in the parking lots. In the building, we searched all lockers and locker rooms, and even selected five classrooms at random to be searched. In the case of the classrooms, we moved those students to the auditorium and had them leave their coats and backpacks behind. The dogs then went through the respective classrooms looking for drugs and/or paraphernalia. When the classrooms were finished, the dogs went through the hallways to search the lockers for contraband.

Outside, the dogs searched each of the lots adjacent to the building. We searched the S-lot, J-lot, K-lot and even cars parked along the boulevard and down Fisher road. Fortunately, there were very few "hits" and of those only one turned out to be positive.

I was in the lots for the car searches. If a dog hit on a car, the student was brought outside and asked to unlock the car. The student was also asked if there might be anything in the car prior to letting the dog inside. In only one case did we find anything, and that was a small amount of marijuana.

I want to publicly thank the police officers that were involved. As mentioned earlier, there were at least nine dogs and their handlers, along with many other officers from the Farms and the City. It was a well coordinated effort that I hope serves as a deterrent for our students.

All in all, I was pleased with the findings.

Day One In The Books

With the arrival of March this year, we have the onset of the MME, or Michigan Merit Exam. Today was the first day of state testing of high school juniors, with all members of the class of 2012 taking the ACT. From my personal observations, it appears we are off to a good start.

Students arrived on time and were ready to go, and as has been the case at South, we were blessed once again with very good attendance. That means the "make-up" testing window two weeks from now will not require a great deal of adult oversight.

It's amazing how standardized testing has changed over the years, especially when compared to high school administration of the MEAP not too many years ago. This battery of tests is taken much more seriously by students, and the accountability for adults in schools is dramatically different than it used to be. And more changes are on the horizon.

Wholesale changes will be implemented across the state by 2014, but we will begin to see changes next fall at the elementary and middle level with more rigorous testing. The new tests will be more closely aligned to the ACT than the old MEAP tests. What the Department of Education discovered over the years is that the MEAP was not a good predictor of "college readiness". And college readiness is the new standard, much more so than just graduating with a high school diploma.

I am hopeful the serious approach that was observable today translates into another class of strong scores. Like it or not, the reputation of our school district and community is closely tied to standardized test performance.