Schoolsnk.Net

Junior Girls Volleyball Tryouts

Jaxon Murnin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:25:51 +0000

Junior Girls Volleyball Tryouts

Female students interested in playing Volleyball! With our Senior Girls tryouts wrapping up this week, Junior Girls tryouts run next Tuesday, September 7^th @ 4:00 PM and Wednesday, September 8^th @ 3:45 PM. You must attend both tryouts.

The season gets going right away with a preseason tournament September 10-11.

Marquette University’s new building gives law school vital space

Benjamin Pelloe — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:46:42 +0000

Tom Lynn

The third-floor reading room at Marquette University’s new law school building, Eckstein Hall, provides a spacious and attractive study area. In legal circles, the $85 million Michigan St. building is making waves because it provides the tools for modern law, which is more technologically oriented and media intensive. <

The Tests Are Biased

Benjamin Pelloe — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:05:21 +0000

I came across this video on The Onion and felt this breaking news needed to be shared: A new study finds that tests are biased against students who don’t care about their education.

I will warn you, this video contains several examples of foul language. And even though I do not condone the language in this report, I thought the information was just too valuable to ignore.

In The Know: Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don’t Give A Shit?

How are the students that don’t care supposed to get ahead?

Should teachers, students ‘friend’ each other?

Elizabeth Spears — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:16:01 +0000

Akilah Johnson

After people meet in the real world, their next step is often a visit to the virtual one, where they’ll make a “friend” request on Facebook or MySpace.

But that can create a dilemma for teachers who get such requests from students, especially in Broward and Palm Beach counties, which have no written social media policies in place.

“I don’t want to see the nonsense they write,” quipped Wendy Peale, a language arts teacher at Falcon Cove Middle School in Weston, before getting serious. “I don’t confirm friend requests from students. They’re not my friends. I’m friendly with them, and I’m concerned about them and if there was something they needed to discuss, I would be there to guide them.

Seminole County exempts cheerleaders from short-skirt ban

Elizabeth Spears — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:03:05 +0000

Dave Weber

SANFORD — Seminole County schools’ tough new student dress code designed to make students look more “professional” already has its first exception: Cheerleaders will be allowed to wear short uniform skirts to class on game days, as has been tradition.

While some complain it is unfair, district officials have decided that the ban on short skirts on girls does not apply to cheerleaders.

The decision came after high school principals huddled at the start of football season and agreed to give cheerleaders an exemption to the new rules, which say “dresses, skirts and shorts must be at least mid-thigh or below in length” and nixes clothing that is “sexually suggestive.”

The rules also ban “garments that are distracting” – and spirit-building distraction is the intent of having the cheer squad wear outfits to school on game days.

Nicastro Keynotes Education Vision Meeting

Jaxon Murnin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:23:47 +0000

Nicastro Keynotes Education Vision Meeting

Commissioner of Education Chris L. Nicastro spoke to public school leaders today in Jefferson City about the need for major change in the education system to ensure success for all students. The event, jointly hosted by the Missouri School Boards’ Association and the Missouri Association of School Administrators, was designed to develop a comprehensive vision for the work of their organizations and the future of public education in Missouri.

In her remarks to superintendents and school board members, Nicastro said Missouri has been working on education reform for the past 26 years, amounting to two generations of students passing through public schools. T

Awash in Federal Money

Benjamin Pelloe — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:21:21 +0000

If you thought selling taxpayers on a levy this fall would be difficult because Ohio recently secured $400 million in Race to the Top grant funding, just wait. Today the Ohio Department of Education announced preliminary allocations for the recently passed federal Ed Jobs legislation.

While Race to the Top funding will be split over four years and only flow to participating districts, Ed Jobs money will be awarded to every district and community school in the state during the 2010-11 school year.

A list of preliminary allocations is available here.

If you’re keeping track, the scorecard for stimulus-related funding for the 2010-11 school year alone looks something like this:

ARRA (federal stimulus bill passed 2009) $ 766 million
Race to the Top (passed as part of ARRA) $ 100 million
Ed Jobs (passed August 2010) $ 361 million

Total $1.227 billion

Are you starting to see why balancing the budget will be so challenging in the future? Read more…

Suncoast High School traffic snarls still irk neighbors, but relief promised by mid-October

Elizabeth Spears — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:47:50 +0000

RIVIERA BEACH — Drivers still wait in lines of traffic and obey police to reach the new Suncoast High School in the mornings.

But some residents say the Suncoast traffic is flowing better than it was during the first few hectic days of the school year. And the school district says the traffic jam between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. will be eased in mid-October, when a wider section of West 13th Street is scheduled to open.

Still, some residents remain frustrated by the congested mass of cars winding through their residential streets.

“It’s crazy,” said Erica Gonder, a parent who lives on 13th Street near the Suncoast entrance. “It’s not that we don’t want the school there. T

Memphis officials scramble for funds to pay city schools

Jaxon Murnin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 08:12:22 +0000

The City Council slashed $57 million from its annual contribution to Memphis City Schools two years ago but put no money aside in case of unfavorable court rulings in its dispute with the school district.

Instead, the council delivered a property-tax-rate reduction to citizens and increased city spending by more than $40 million. City employees also got a 5 percent raise.

Now, after the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday not to hear the city’s appeal in the school-funding dispute, council members and Mayor A C Wharton are scrambling to raise as much as $57 million — 9.1 percent of the city’s operating budget — for a one-time payment to the school district.

Wharton said Thursday that a variety of options — including spending cuts, layoffs and a tax increase — will be under consideration.

“Nothing is sacred,” the mayor said during a news conference at City Hall.

Delray Beach teachers tour students’ historically black neighborhoods

Elizabeth Spears — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:57:03 +0000

Wayne Roustan

DELRAY BEACH — More than 50 teachers became students Thursday on a two-hour tour of historic black neighborhoods here.

Guarn Sims, principal of Village Academy – the only K-12 school in the Palm Beach County school district – organized the bus trip to show his teachers where their students were coming from. Thursday was a professional planning day for teachers.

“We are a school that’s 99 percent African-American. All of our students come from this community. A lot are low-income,” said Sims. “

Is the box we want to think outside of digital?

Benjamin Pelloe — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 06:19:48 +0000

My daughter recently asked me, “Do Smartboards make students smarter?” I was taken aback by the random nature of this question from this asker, but saw she was holding in her hand an article from the NEA Today magazine, written by Rosita Force, a technology teacher from Omaha. I hadn’t read the article yet, but my response echoed Ms. Force in that technology these days has become so insanely helpful it confuses and scares many teachers. To that end, I answered that it is not simply using the technology, but how a teacher uses technology that helps students grow. Teachers who advocate technology use have our favorites, but I often have to step back and ask myself, is this application or tool really helping grow the child and his or her thinking, or is it just a neat way to do the same thing? Is th

Volleyball Open Gym

Jaxon Murnin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:47:42 +0000

Volleyball Open Gym

Students interested in playing volleyball are invited to open gym on Tuesday, August 31. Men’s gym time is 3-4:30 p.m. and women’s will follow from 4:30-6 p.m. Tryouts will begin Wednesday, September 1 afterschool.

Should We Rate High Schools Using College Remediation Rates?

Benjamin Pelloe — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:34:00 +0000

There’s an interesting article in today’s Columbus Dispatch. Reporter Charlie Boss takes a closer look at the disconnect between grades earned in high school, school ratings and college readiness of some Ohio graduates.

Do good grades mean a high-school graduate has mastered the material and is ready for the next level?

That’s hard to determine, experts say.

Boynton weighs doing 12th study on high school, at $52,000 price

Elizabeth Spears — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:26:15 +0000

The old Boynton High School has been at the center of political debates through the years.

It has been on the verge of being demolished several times in the past decade, and it also has been the subject of 12 studies since 1993, costing the city nearly $300,000 .

Despite all of the reports, discussions and spending, the old high school remains standing, empty, just as it has been since the day its doors closed in 1949.

Now the city has put out a request for another study regarding possible plans and financing sources for the old high school, and the Boynton Beach Community Redevelopment Agency has set aside $52,000 for this purpose.

But things will be different this time around, according to the city commissioners.