At this time I wanted to pause to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a most happy of Holidays! Take time to hug those in your life and tell them how much you care for them and let them know what a blessing they are to you. Reach out to someone new and show them kindness. Pray for our community, our schools, our friends and our families.
Merry Christmas!
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About twice a year, by a board member rotation, each board member is responsible for the meeting opening exercises. December was my turn and I wanted to arrange for something that was about the Holiday season and that was a little entertainment gift to the other Board Members, Executive team, staff and guests. I arranged for the Citrus High School Girls Barbershop Quartet “So Divine” featuring Ashlyn Gibbs, Lead; Christi Black, Tenor; Jamee Billings, Baritone; Mary Jane Onsager, Bass. They to preform two holiday songs. They were amazing!
Click video above to watch
Gerry Mulligan, Publisher of the Citrus County Chronicle and Chief Volunteer Officer introduced the new Executive Director of the Citrus County YMCA, Joanna Castle. The “Y” currently offers after school and summer programs in Citrus County and a major Capital project is currently underway to build a permanent state of the art YMCA in Lecanto on property next to property recently purchased by CCSB for a future elementary school.
The Board also gave recognition to the winner of the Art Outside the Box Contest from the 40th Festival of the Arts celebration, which was the Citrus High School. Citrus County High School Students decorated Citrus County Chronicle newspaper boxes that were throughout the festival. The boxes will now be placed throughout the county to vend daily papers and for the community to enjoy. (Click here to read Chronicle Story)
The last recognition at this meeting was of Nathan P. Lovestrand, a Citrus High School student from Troop 415, for attaining the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. Nathan completed an award winning community service project, building a roost for up to 10,000 bats at Fort Cooper State Park.
The Board approved a number of items at the meeting including but not limited to a salary step increase, a top of the scale bonus based on contract days for CCEA Instructional, Support, Professional and Technical Staff for the 2011-2012 school year. The Substitute Salary Schedule will reflect a small increase in the daily rate. “Change Orders” for Phase II of the Crystal River High School Project. The purchase of Dell computers for Testing and Data Services.
Lastly the Board was asked to approve the 2012-2013 School Calendar. Due to a pending decision regarding the testing window requirement for the 2012-2013 by the Florida Department of Education , the Board “Tabled” the issue until the January 10th, 2012 Board meeting in hopes of hearing from DOE.
The next School Board meeting is a Regular School Board meeting at 3:00pm on January 10th, 2012.
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Before I went to my first School Board training session last year where I would meet newly elected school board members, fellow board member Pat Deutschman shared that I was likely to build a special bond and friendship with these other newly elected board members, and that it would be like belonging to your own “School Board Freshmen Class”. One of the board members from “Pat’s School Board Freshmen Class of 1998” is an excellent School Board member from Orange County, Rick Roach.
Rick Roach recently wrote about something he did this year as a Board Member that has impressed me so much. It is monumental, extraordinary, astonishing, and magnificent. It might be compared to a school board member taking the opportunity to go to the Moon. Rick Roach volunteered and took the 10th grade Math and Reading FCAT!! (a.k.a. “Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test”) I must tell you that just thinking about doing that myself gives me anxiety.
Roach shared about his experience recently to the Washington Post:
“I won’t beat around the bush. The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62%. In our system, that’s a ‘D,’ and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction…”
“It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a Bachelor of Science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate. I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities….”
I am in “aww” of Roach’s willingness to take the FCAT, and share the results. I agree with Roach’s concerns that the FCAT, while a positive tool, should not be the end all “high stakes test” for determining whether students and teachers are successful or failures. We have many students that have successfully passed Advanced Placement (“AP”) courses, SAT and ACT exams, yet don’t pass the FCAT. That alone speaks volumes on the subject of FCAT should be used as a determining factor in predicting whether our students will be successful or failures!
I encourage you to read and listen more about Rick Roach’s experience taking the FCAT.
One of my favorite parts of my job is the many different activities I get to do with our students. Yesterday was another example. One of my longstanding friends, Tim Stuart, is the media specialist at Citrus High School. He asked me to chaperone an annual field trip that he was taking some of the Seniors on. This trip was going to the Barnes & Noble Book Store in Ocala. Now while I enjoy going to the book store and looking through the books and magazines this trip, as was explained to me, was going to be work mixed in with some fun. Mr. Stuart put out an offer to seniors at CHS to go on the trip to help him purchase new books for the school’s media center. Media Centers often have resources to purchase materials through a mixture of budgeted funds, donations and fund raising. Throughout the year when a CHS student asks for a book that the media center doesn’t have, or a book or book series that the student would like the media center to have, Mr. Stuart asks the student to submit to title/request on a digital request form he created using Google Docs. When we arrived at B&N Mr. Stuart provided each student with a printed list of the books they were responsible for locating and to bring them back to him for review. Mr. Stuart brought his laptop and as the students would bring him the books he would review them, double verify using his laptop, to make sure that CHS does not already have them and also checking on any reviews or feedback that has been written about the book. As the morning went on the pile of books grew and grew. The students were also provided an opportunity once they had completed finding and bring Mr. Stuart their assigned books to search for other books that they felt would be of interest to other students. The students represent a broad cross-section of the student body and so did the student’s personal book suggestions. Students brought up books ranging from Sci-fi, classic stories to vegan diets and other topics for healthy living.
After leaving Barnes and Nobel we had just enough time to have a quick lunch at Moe’s and get the students back to CHS before dismissal.
I have to share with you once again how impressed I am with our county’s young people. When I am with high school students, and seniors in particular, one of the first questions those in education will often ask them is, “what are your plans for the future”? Their answers often tell lots about their interests, backgrounds and their future plans. I love this opportunity of learning about each of them and obtaining a little insight into their lives. These students all had some plan for next year. One was going to FSU to study Marine Biology, another was planning to study business at College of Central Florida because they want to open a Bakery in Citrus County and felt in order to be successful they should have a background in business education. Another is going to be a Nurse Practitioner, another a Counselor and one would like to become an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) to help pay for their college expenses. Others weren’t sure exactly what profession they would like to take up but would begin by taking basic courses by attending a Florida College.
These young people represent Citrus County and will eventually become our future leaders. Today’s students often have greater challenges to endure than what we had to face at their ages. Please encourage them, support them, help them. An old high school friend of mine recently reminded me of a quote by W. H. Auden, “We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.”
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Florida School Board Association Annual Conference Update
Last week School Board Members along with Superintendents from around the State of Florida gathered in Tampa for the Florida School Board Association Annual Conference. These conferences are an opportunity for board members to receive continual training and be briefed on current issues facing our schools so that we can better serve our students, schools, staff and community.
I attended workshops in “Utilizing eGovernment Solutions”, “Social Media and Technology Policies” and “Hot Legal Topics”. During these workshops much of the challenge (outside of budget) that the districts are facing is developing policies and guidelines in the better use of technology by staff, teachers and students. As policy makers we need to balance providing excellent learning and work opportunities while maintaining high standards in the educational and work environments. At times, policies can be your “friend” or your “challenge”. In the use of eGovernment solutions we often are working to balance providing a more streamline way of providing information and doing business while not adding new costs and, perhaps, even additional work. As the old saying goes we want to “work smarter”. Citrus County has been continually working to advance and improve our eGoverment operations and, consequently, we have come a long way. New advances are becoming available and, when appropriate and within budget, I feel we will continue to improve and expand our eGovernment services. Next year one of the ways we will be doing that for staff, schools, students and parents is through the Skyward, Student Information System and School Business System Software.
The main and hot topic throughout the conference was undeniably the state budget and educational funding. The state of Florida is expecting about a $2billon dollar short fall in the budget for next year. In addition Florida is expecting about 300,000 new additional students. The Legislators have been having discussions regarding their hope to maintain “level” funding for education for next year but how this will be done is not entiringly known at this time. Many new and corrective legislative bills are in committee and the state’s Legislators will meet in session earlier than normal beginning in early January 2012. In addition Governor Scott has indicated additional funding for schools in his budget (see news story) but it is not fully clear how this will be accomplished as the Governor wants to do this without increasing taxes. An issue that will be discussed again a great deal during the upcoming Legislative Session will be “Unfunded Mandates”. Just to give you an idea, in the Florida Education Statues (a.k.a. “EDUCATION CODE: Ch.1000-1013”), the word “required” appears 5,519 times and the word “must” appears 14,770 times. Those words come at a great cost to tax payers and have monumental effects on the educational budget, schools and most importantly our students.
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Citrus Parks & Rec. has been putting together a wonderful with-worthy event for decorated trees for the holiday season. He asked if we might put this out to our staff and/or department heads to see if any departments or staff groups wanted to go in and “Adopt a Tree”. He is also encouraging organizations and other groups to “Adopt a Tree” and decorate it with their group’s, organization’s or business’s names, logos, mascots, etc.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
