Month: December 2010

IA36 – Student Transportation

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Student transportation is another issue which is different in the world of small private schools than it is in the world of public education. We still have to take the same care to keep our students safe, but, since our population is much smaller, the issues we face are on a much smaller scale. After discussing the issues related to transportation with our Operations Manager and Head of School, I identified two significant issues that relate to student transportation: liability and parking.

Liability

Anytime we move students around, we take care to protect both them and the institution. Being sure that the vehicles, drivers and conditions are safe are issues of safety; making sure that appropriate insurance, licenses and permission is taken care of is related to protecting the institution from liability. This impacts our policies in a number of ways:

  • Only specially licensed drivers, listed specifically on school insurance policies, may drive students. My Head of School once told me, “I can’t think of a single good reason to put a student into my personal automobile,” and this perspective had an impact on my thinking. It only takes one incident to destroy an institution, so care must be taken.
  • Permission forms must be obtained covering every trip and activity.
  • Insurance and maintenance on all school vehicles is always up-to-date.

Parking

A second major challenge is parking. Many of our upper school students drive themselves to school, which raises a number of issues. First, there is the simple challenge of offering them all a safe, legal place to park their cars. Once that is managed -which in our case involves a lottery to assign a limited number of parking permits- we still have to supervise the lot, make sure students drive and park safely and manage the hundreds of vehicles which come onto campus every day for drop-off and pick-up.

The school’s security force is helpful in this regard. Stickers are distributed to allow vehicles onto campus, guards man every entrance and vehicles are only allowed on-campus at certain times..

IA35 – School Facilities

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Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I met with PB, our Operations Manager, who oversees the custodial staff, and RQ, our Chief Operating Officer, who manages the maintenance of our facilities. The three of us discussed the policies that control the care and operation of our facility, how needs are identified and dealt with, how repairs are managed, what specific issues exist on our campus and what role, if any, the principals play in these processes.

Findings

To begin, I was shocked to discover how much work our school’s maintenance staff accomplishes in a single day. They begin with unlocking procedures as early as 5 am and move on through groundskeeping and maintenance before any students or faculty arrive. They conduct repairs throughout the day, handle setup and breakdown duties for programs, deal with trash removal and are still on campus when students and faculty leave at the end of the day. They work through school vacations and are often on campus on weekends. This is all done by a small maintenance staff of six, despite the fact that all custodial duties are outsourced.

According to both PB and RQ, the biggest operational change that has taken place in the last several years was the adoption of a continuous maintenance approach. Basically, instead of waiting for things to wear out or break, the maintenance staff has a year-round schedule or regular duties which are designed to prevent the need for costly, last-minute repairs. So, for example, filters and other parts that wear out are replaced on a rolling schedule, the entire campus’s walls and doors are painted over a six-month schedule, light bulbs are replaced before they burn out, etc. This allows the staff to get out ahead of these issues so that, rather than respond to emergent requests for assistance, they can be more proactive in their approach, freeing them up to deal with real emergencies when they arise.

This has a real-world impact on learning. When students and teachers are comfortable and have the things they need, research shows that they do a better job of learning and teaching. We are located in Miami, where heat is a real concern. When air conditioning units stop working, the temperature in a classroom can quickly rise above 85 degrees, making learning all but impossible. Knowing that the climate control systems are maintained regularly guarantees that we’ve done everything possible to keep our classes operational.

Another major issue is how to best handle requests for when things do go wrong. Though we are a small school, there are still almost 1,500 people on campus every day and dealing with things like broken equipment, unlocking doors, and alarms that go off accidentally can be complex. PB has developed a trouble-ticket system that allows teachers to fill out an online form to request repairs. She is researching different ways of managing those open requests to be sure that the staff is responding to them in a timely way.

Finally, special requests for facility schedule and setup is an ongoing communications issue. PB hosts a weekly meeting which looks at the next two weeks on the calendar for planning purposes. Managing schedule conflicts, furniture, catering, guests on campus, room requests, etc. is a complex task and these regular meetings help her to keep the staff in the loop..

IA34 – School Violence

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Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I conducted a survey of resources on school violence and participated as a member of a disciplinary hearing committee on our campus. I also interviewed JM, our upper school’s Assistant Principal to discuss our school’s policies and procedures regarding violence as well as past incidents and how they were handled. I also met with AH, our Head of School to discuss any insights he could add and other experiences he has had.

Findings

First and foremost, I believe that we are fairly lucky. As a small school, we don’t see much violence on our campus. In the last few years, only minor incidents have occurred, including a student bringing a slingshot to school and a couple of fights in the parking lot. though we are a security-concious school and we have a locked campus and 24-hour security force, that’s mainly to protect us from the outside; our student body is remarkably non-violent in light of what I read about during my research.

Our Discipline Policy is clear when it comes to violence and any incident results in immediate action up to and including expulsion. When a teacher discovered that a student had brought a slingshot onto campus in a gym bag last year, the policy was followed to the letter. The police were contacted, demerits were awarded, the family was contacted and a discipline hearing committee was convened. The student was later expelled, though not for this offense; it was only one of a string of unfortunate decisions the student made.

The only other incidents have been occasional fights in the parking lot, but none of these have been serious enough to cause injury or even permanent ill will. Ours is a small school with a close student body and violence on campus has not really ever been an issue. However, in my discussion with JM, he talked about how the research indicates that incidents of violence can come without warning and how we must be prepared for the worst. “Our policies spell out some things I’d rather not contemplate,” he said, explaining that it’s best to be prepared for anything..

IA33 – School Safety

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Introduction

To complete this activity, I reviewed copies of the state and local safety regulations for our area as well as the safety benchmarks for school’s seeking certification from the Association of Independent Schools of Florida. I also spoke with AH, our Head of School, RQ, our Chief Operating Officer and PB, our Operations Manager about safety concerns unique to our campus. I observed and participated in fire and lockdown drills and conducted walkarounds around the campus.

Findings

I found in every area that our campus was in compliance with all regulations and that all plans and certifications were up to date and correct. I also observed that, during drill conditions, students and faculty followed procedures correctly.

During my interview with AH, he noted that flooding is a concern unique to our campus. Over the last several years we have suffered floods during heavy rains and several inspections have determined that our drainage is not at fault, but that we are simply victims of geography. Rain runoff from the surrounding area all flows onto our campus and, during severe rainstorms, the volume of water can overwhelm our sewer system.

Last December we were forced to go to vacation four days early when 14 inches of rain fell in 24 hours and flooded our campus. We were left with six to eight inches of standing water in most first-floor offices and classrooms and significant damage. Beyond the initial cleanup, the main safety concern was mold, so, following repairs, the campus had to be sterilized and ongoing inspections and maintenance are now part of our routine.

Another constant safety concern is that of administrative coverage of the campus outside of school hours. Our campus has a security team on site 24 hours a day, but additional staff coverage is required whenever students are on campus. Managing this schedule is an administrative challenge. A rotating schedule has been created and, except for infrequent inconvenience to administrative team members, it has worked well..

IA32 – Standardized Testing Process

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Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I spoke with JM, our assistant principal, who proctors SAT and AP exams and proctored two sessions of the SAT and SAT II tests. Additionally, I served as Testing Coordinator at my last school.

Process

The process of administering these exams has become fairly standardized thanks to ETS but, since we are a unique school, there are some unique factors. The enrollment process is simple since the ETC handles it, usually online. The school receives the exams the week before the administration date and the Coordinator downloads rosters directly from ETS.

We are a religious school and, as such, we offer the exam on Sunday. This means that, in addition to our own students, we are a testing center for anyone looking for a Sunday exam session. The actual testing process is standardized, complete with posters, scripts for proctors to read out loud and simple forms to complete.

Once the test is complete, the Coordinator boxes everything up and ships it back to ETS on the following Monday. Everything is pre-arranged, all the way down to the shipping labels. The ETS really has made the process almost foolproof.

Problems

No problems of any serious sort came up in either session I proctored. There were some irregularities, for example, at one session, a student came to take a test he was not registered for and we didn’t have a copy of the exam for him. We sent him away, which upset him, but there was nothing we could do without a test and the error was his.

As a matter of fact, I don’t see how anything could go wrong unless the Coordinator or Proctor had not read the instructions – every possible scenario is anticipated and dealt with there. We held a brief training meeting the week before the test and reviewed procedures for 15 minutes that morning; no other preparation was required.

The only challenge we faces was setting up the room to prevent cheating and, in our case, this was simple since there were no more than seven students in each room. In the case or larger groups, we use a gymnasium and folding tables and, while this presents certain logistical and scheduling issues, it has never been a real problem.

Principal’s Role

In our school, the principal serves as testing coordinator. If that were not the case, his role would be smaller, but still important. Many of these exams are voluntary and it is important to create a culture which encourages students to strive for the sort of recognition these tests offer. This is one important role of a principal: to encourage participation and recognize achievement.

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IA31 – Beginning the School Year

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In order to complete this activity, I met with NH, our US principal and spent time with him at the start of August, talking about start-up procedures for the school year. These tasks fell into two major categories, what he called “the nuts and bolts” and the “vision stuff.”

Nuts and bolts

This category included details like class rosters, supplies and textbooks, finalizing dates on calendar events and completing repairs. These tasks actually begin before the school year ends and make up, in NH’s estimation, about 40% of his summer workload.

Much of the student-related work happens very late in the summer, including things like assigning students and teachers to classes. He can’t make final decisions until enrollment is settled so many of these actually aren’t finalized until after classes begin in the fall.

Other Nuts and Bolts details, like textbook and supply orders must be done before teachers leave for the summer. So, as final exams are going on, the staff is already looking ahead and thinking about school supplies and books for the coming school year. Nothing is ordered yet, but lists are built and Purchase Orders are prepared. It is only after the new school year’s budget is open that purchasing can happen, so things usually aren’t ordered until late July.

The Vision Stuff

NH said this took up the other 60% of his summer work time and included issues like planning orientation for teachers and staff, setting goals for staff development, organizing presentation of assessment data and creating new courses and programs. He explained that, in previous years, this sort of work had to wait until early August, when faculty started to reappear on campus but now, thanks to email and internet communications, he is able to more easily reach faculty on vacation and they seem to be more willing to work an hour or two on a project in this arena.

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IA29 – Student Classroom Placement

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Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I spoke with NH, our Grade 6-12 Principal regarding policies related to our most controversial placement issue, AP classes in our upper school. I also spoke with BM, a history teacher, and YB, the AP European History teacher about placement of students into their classes and the issues surrounding it. Finally, I spoke with a parent who wished to remain anonymous regarding his dissatisfaction with her son’s placement and the change of heart she underwent.

The Issue

Our school offers over 15 AP courses for upper school students which is a huge number for a school our size. Some of the classes are large, with more than 20 students every semester, while others are as small as three or four. Because a student receives a two-point bump in their grade for taking an AP class, enrollment tends to run high and many students unprepared for an AP-level class enroll, often against the wishes of the instructor. However, our policy allows any student who wants to take an AP class to do so, provided his or her parents have met with the teacher and administration and support the decision.

This often leads to students deciding at the end of the term not to sit for the AP exam and, in cases of seniors, to not take the class particularly seriously throughout the semester, confident that they can earn a C which will become an A on their report card. The school has experimented with requiring students int the class to take the exam, but seniors tended to hand in blank exams and simply not report the scores to colleges, which lowered our school’s average score significantly and reflected poorly on the institution. So, the situation is in flux and is complicated.

Our current policy allows any student to take an AP class because we believe that simply sitting in the room in which college-level discussion is occurring will help a student who may not otherwise be “AP material.” Whether we agree or not, this is the policy and, as you might imagine AP placement is a tricky issue.

Teachers’ Perspectives

YB, who teachers AP European History told me that she supports the policy. In her class, which is always large, students are asked to write AP-level essays almost weekly and she is confident that the workload alone convinces many lazy students to transfer out early in the semester. BM, the regular history class teacher who inherits many of these students, agrees that her plan seems to work and acknowledges that, in most cases, this weeding out process effectively allows students to level themselves into groupings that seem to make sense.

They both told me that they’ve almost never seen a situation where a student wants, against the wishes of teachers or parents, to take an AP class they do not recommend. Instead, the push usually comes from parents who are concerned with how non-AP classes will look on a college application and push their children to take the more challenging courses. To understand this wish, I spoke with a parent who did just this and regretted it.

A Parent’s Perspective

The parent, who wishes to remain anonymous, told me that when her second child became a senior, she was concerned about her grades because the first child had done far better and been accepted to Ivy League schools. The mother was concerned that the younger brother’s transcript was unimpressive and pushed him to enroll in five AP classes his senior year. She told me that it is only in retrospect that she realizes that he didn’t want to take the classes and that children are often unwilling to argue with their parents on this point.

The son took the classes, against the recommendation of his teachers and principal and stopped participating in both dramatics and the varsity soccer team to focus on his classwork. His grades were only mediocre in his classes and the highest score he earned on any AP exam was a single 4. Only now does his mother recognize that his teachers and principals knew him well enough to make correct recommendations and that she should have been more receptive to their input.

Principal’s Perspective

I asked NH, our principal if there is anything he feels he could have done differently in this case to better guide the mother’s decision and he said that, in light of our policy on the issue, he doesn’t think so. “Leaving that decision up to the family ties our hands quite a bit,” he said. He didn’t go so far as to say that he wanted to change the policy but he does sometime regret not having a little more force to exert on parents who might not make the most dispassionate decision.

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IA28 – Communicating about Standardized Tests

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Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I spoke with DrS, a twenty-year veteran teacher of AP US History who is famous for helping her students score well. She moved overseas this past summer and is so effective that she is continuing to teach her class via videoconferencing this year. She is also a parent of three college students -all of whom are graduates of our school- so I conducted my mock interview with her playing the role of parent.

Issues of Concern

My experiences and discussions helped me understand how little parents really know about standardized assessment and thus how important it is to help them understand the process. Often, I discovered, a parent’s question doesn’t communicate what it is they really want to know, so the real skill lies in decoding the questions they ask and providing the information they are really after.

For example, most parents don’t understand how grades can be curved, what normalized scores are or, if they do, they don’t understand how a curved score can be useful. Or, many parents don’t understand the different kinds of knowledge that might be assessed on an exam so they can’t help their children prepare effectively.

One issue that DrS told me she has to face a lot is when parents have unreasonable expectations for their children on the AP US History exam. Often, shortly before the test, a parent might ask, “How will my child do on the test?” and, if the answer is anything but a guaranteed 5, the parent will want to stop the student from taking the test.

An answer to this question must communicate at least two things: first, the grading process specific to AP exams must be explained so that the parent understands that the scores are not analogous to scores out of 100. The fact of the matter is that a 3 is a respectable score on many AP exams and will certainly not hurt a student’s college chances in most cases. In this situation, the parent is really asking for reassurance that their kid should take the test and has not wasted his or her semester preparing for it. 

Another common question has to do with retaking exams. A parent might assume that any score less than 5 warrants a retake, so a response has to communicate the point that the exam is designed to measure more than simple content knowledge and that we can trust the score to reflect the student’s master of the subject. Colleges are not impressed with a student who takes an exam three times before earning a 5 since they prefer well-rounded students with a variety of interests.

Parent Discussions

DrS and I agree that I did well during my mock interview with her. She felt that I could have been more forceful when explained how the school uses score data, but that, all in all, I was informative and did a good job explaining the intricacies of the scores with clarity.

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IA27 – Media Relations

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Introduction

In order to complete this activity, I reviewed my school’s Communications Plan, paying specific attention to the section dealing with communication with the media. I also met with IL, our school’s Director of Communications, to discuss FERPA’s guidelines regarding “personally identifiable information” and how they inform our school’s policies. We also discussed examples of good and bad communications with the media in our past. Finally, I met with AG, a community report for the Miami-Herald’s website, to discuss the school’s relationship with the media.

Findings

Far and away, the most important guideline I picked up regarding working with the media is the importance of preparation. Every example we could find of a bad experience in our past boiled down to someone on our staff being unprepared for dealing with reporters. Either they didn’t have all the facts or they were misinformed in some important way, leading to coverage in the media that did not reflect well upon the school. The key to avoiding this in the future is to follow our Communications Plan to be prepared.

When I began the process, I felt that the idea that our faculty needed to go through a Communications Office just to get word out about a school program seemed like overkill. After all, I reasoned, all we need to do is spread the word about a student performance, for example, or a fundraising carwash. How complicated can it be?

What I discovered is that, while the media is never nefarious, its goals are often not the same as the school’s. This is not meant to imply wrongdoing on anyone’s part, but rather to describe reality. Reporters want to write sensational stories because that is what sell’s newspapers. However, there’s very little that is sensational about a fundraising carwash, so reporters are conditioned to look for more.

When an organization is as large as our school, there are always things going on that not everyone is aware of. So, for example, if a grade 5 teacher is putting together a Civil War play, he might not be aware of the fact that the AP US History class is studying the Civil War and doing in-class presentations on significant battles. It would be a shame if one was mentioned in a news article while the other was not. Just as cross-curricular activities are good for learning, they are good PR and should be shared; having a Communications Office to serve as a clearinghouse for news helps to manage this.

Our school has developed the following guidelines for when a member of the staff is contacted by a journalist:

  • Act with courtesy and professionalism. How this is handled may be the reporter’s first impression of Hillel and may be reflected in any coverage.
  • If the inquiry is a phone call, refer the reporter to school’s Communication Office.
  •  When referring the media to the Communication Office, members should not say they are not allowed to talk to a reporter or have to get permission to do so. Instead, tell the reporter: “Our policy is to refer all media inquiries to our Communication Office. You can reach them at…” Don’t let a reporter compel you to answer questions on the spot. Work with the Communication Office to determine the response best for you and the school.

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IA26 – Community Outreach

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Introduction

In order to complete this activity I spent quite a bit of time with my school’s Director of Student Life brainstorming how local community organizations could partner with the school to collaborate on projects which enhance student learning. I also met with the principal and discussed the same issue. In both conversations, we kept coming back to two major areas, vocational training and community service. The idea was that local organizations and businesses could either offer our students the opportunity to do work, as interns for example, to learn skills and gain workplace experience, or they could offer us opportunities for service learning.

For example:

  • Local print shops could volunteer or discount their services for advertisement of school activities in exchange for internship hours and prominent advertising in school publications as a partner. We already have a relationship like this with a print shop, a video production company and an event production company.
  • Medical offices are great places for students to gain unique, valuable learning experiences. These opportunities are limited but, with enough contact work, students interested in studying medicine could have a great opportunity to “try it on for size” while still in high school.
  • Charity organizations of all kinds welcome volunteer hours from schools like ours all the time. They gain muscle and the students get to be involved in front-line service to a needy community. Many of our student clubs already operate in this way.
  • Police and Fire Departments offer educational programs on safety, drugs, self-defense, etc and already have officers assigned to community education. This is a real hit in our Early Childhood and Lower School.
  • Local Restaurants can provide food for distribution to local shelters and food pantries; they often have the food but no staff to transport it. We have students who pick up bread every morning and deliver it to organizations all over town, all before 6 am.
  • Museums offer wonderful resources for both students and teachers, though these often come at a higher cost than other community partnership opportunities.

in this vein, we have developed an internship program to try to solve a problem we have with second semester seniors who are often less interested in their schoolwork than other students. We arrange their schedules so that they take only two classes during their final semester, both requirements. One is a religious course on business ethics and the other is an Internship course. Both meet only on Fridays, for two hours.

On the other days of the week, students go to work as interns in local businesses. They work in doctor’s offices, businesses, factories and retail stores and then, on Friday, return to school to learn about business, share what they’ve experienced and work on summative writing and presentation projects.

This program runs well, but there are a number of obstacles. The most challenging is locating a meaningful internship position for each student that they are excited to participate in. Some businesses look at interns as something akin to slave labor so we have to make sure that the organization looks at the program as a learning opportunity first. We have to shuffle about 10% of our students during the first week or two but, once that settles down, the vast majority of them have meaningful learning experiences.

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