Last Night's Board Meeting

Last night was the regularly scheduled meeting of the Penn-Trafford School Board.  The meeting was held at 7:00PM in the high school library.  Although the agenda for the meeting was rather routine, there were a few presentations that I think you would find interesting.  First, the Board had an opportunity to meet the students that operate the “coffee house” (Coffee with a Cause) in the library.  The students are life skills students who operate a “café” (think of the coffee shop in a Barnes and Nobles) and they get a chance to practice practical life skills like making money, organizing their work, budgeting etc. The proceeds from the sale of the coffee go to a different charity every month. Some of the students introduced themselves to the Board and explained why they liked the program so much.  The Board then purchased coffee of hot chocolate from the café.  I want to thank the student’s teachers, Mrs. Enick and Mrs. Blank and Mrs. Momeyer the class health technician.  It is truly a wonderful thing to watch students interact with adults that care as deeply about their students as these three do.

The Board also saw a presentation about the school district’s PSSA scores.  The presentation can be found here.  In a nutshell, Penn-Trafford has once again showed its commitment to student learning.  Overall, 90.7% of Penn-Trafford students are proficient in Reading; while 91.5% are proficient in Math.  Also, according to www.schooldigger.com, PT is the 10^th ranked public school district in the State (out of 500) and 15^th overall when you include charter schools.  I know (and agree) that there is a lot more to a school system then just test scores.  In a lot of ways it is unfair to judge a student or a school based solely on a test score.  However, test scores do reflect student learning and student learning has been the focus of the school district for quite some time.  These scores reflect a lot of hard work by the students, parents and teachers.  Congratulations!

Change of Venue for School Board Meetings

The school board has changed the place and time of school board meetings.  This initiative was undertaken in the hopes of increasing community participation at board meetings.  The meetings are now being held at the high school library at 7:00PM in the library.  This allows for easy access for anyone that is handicapped or has a hard time climbing stairs.  Our next meeting is this Monday, October 10^th at 7:00PM.  Please come and watch the meeting if you have a chance.  The school board is committed to openness and transparency in the school district’s operation.  We hope to see you there!

Great Discussions About Education

I apologize for not updating the blog this week.  My goal is to update the blog at least twice a week so I guess I will have to have posts two days in a row!  The reason that I have not updated is that I have been enjoying so many great conversations with people about Penn-Trafford’s education as well as the future of education.  Yesterday I met with a group of parents and we spent two hours talking about how we can work together to improve the learning experience for the students in our school district.  My take away from that meeting was the school district must continually strive to become the best communicator possible.  Parents must have all relevant information easily accessible to them so they can help guide their children through school.  We also spent time discussing how education should be crafted to meet the students at their intellectual, social, and interest level.  After all, all students should have an educational experience that is tailored exclusively to them.

I also spent some time this morning with a group of teachers that I am calling my “guinea pigs”.  On September 22^nd I posted a link to a web site that invites people to “reinvent” education.  The process involved in the “reinvention” is called design thinking and I have used aspects of design thinking through my years as a superintendent.  The web site invites people to form teams to work though a self paced course and the end result would be a project that would reinvent education.  I asked a group of teachers to meet with me a few times to work through the class and evaluate the process as well as the finished product.  I am simply overjoyed with the way the first meeting went.  The discussion about the potential direction of education, and the enthusiasm to provide the best learning experience for students was AWESOME!  One of the tasks this morning was to view videos that would challenge us to think differently about education.  The videos that the group chose as exemplars are here, here, here, and here.  Please view them, I think you will find them inspiringly challenging!