January 2008 Newspaper Column

School consolidation. Just the mention of the words starts discussion and the lining up of pro and con supporters. Each side armed with studies, reports, experiences and opinions. The reality is that both sides can make valid points to support their arguments for keeping smaller community schools or the benefits that a large consolidated school can provide.

The time is nearing that Roane County is going to have to address a building program for its high schools. At that time the decision will have to be made to consolidate our high schools or keep our community high schools. It is not going to be easy.

Our current high schools on the average are 52 years old. Kingston high school was built in 1950, Rockwood high school in 1950, Oliver Springs in 1949, Midway in 1960, and Harriman in 1974.

Currently, Roane County is bucking a state-wide consolidation trend. One-third of the 95 counties in the state have a single high school, in 1950 that number was around three. Twenty-five counties have but two high schools – this means that over 60% of the counties in the state have two or less high schools. Only ten counties in the state have more high schools than Roane County.

Looking at it in another way, Roane County with a population of 52,500 has one high school for approximately every 10,500 residents. No other school system in the state has as many high schools for a population the size of our county. In the area, Blount County has four high schools for a population of 105,000 or one high school for each 26,456 residents and Cumberland County one high school for every 23,000 residents.

The Roane County school Board began addressing the school building needs last year when a $47 million proposal was presented to county commission to fix the growth issues in the county for our middle and elementary schools. The Board felt that this amount would address all the immediate facility needs for everything except the high schools, knowing full well that in about ten years, the high school issue will have to be addressed. Then the average age of our high schools will be 62 years old and the consolidation issue will have to be addressed.

It would serve us all to look at the reasons why 3% of counties in the state had one high school in 1950 and now 33 have a single high school.

Since our high schools were built, our road infrastructure has improved, bridges built, the homogeneous of communities has become less due to new citizens moving in and urbanization, and school building needs have changed as now we cannot just have classrooms. Now a school needs computer labs, science labs, vocational areas, and other specialized workrooms. So many of the reasons for having small community high schools are not as valid as they were 50 years ago.

However, I suspect one of the biggest factors in whether to consolidate or not will come because of cost. Building costs have risen sharply in the past five years – mainly because of hurricane Katrina. Before Katrina, building a high school cost less than $100 a square foot. Now the cost can be as much as $175 a square foot. This is not including additional land purchase, land preparation, furnishing, athletic facilities, wiring, and parking.

Ten years from now it would probably cost Roane County close to $300 million to completely replace all of our five high schools. A recession and added safety, national and state building requirements will continue to increase the cost of our schools faster than regular housing prices will increase. If money was borrowed for this type of construction at a 3% rate, our property taxes would increase by 67% for a 25-year period. As an alternative, a $375 wheel tax for 25-years would have to be imposed.

Staggering numbers, but probably close to real in 2018. Three bordering counties – Knox, Cumberland, and Anderson (Oak Ridge) just built three new high schools for a total cost of over $150 million – and that is in today’s dollars. Each of these new schools were built to handle around 1,500 students (Roane County’s high school enrollment is around 2,500), so obviously if we were to build five high schools right now, the cost would be much cheaper than the $300 million ten years from now. But what will our school population be in 2018?

For a frame of reference, if a decision was made to build a single high school in the county, it would be slightly larger than Farragut, or the third biggest in the state. If two high schools were built they would each be roughly the size of Oak Ridge, Maryville, Rhea County or Knoxville Central.

What decision will be made when the issue is addressed? Consolidation supporters will point out that more advanced courses can be offered, a vocational program can be developed that would reach the 40% of students government statistics say are better suited for that career field, school infrastructure costs would decrease with less buildings to maintain, security can be better, and teacher skills can be better distributed.

Opponents will argue that community schools provide smaller class sizes, less travel time, more students being able to participate in extra curricular activities, lessons can be made more relevant and the schools adjust more easily to social change.

Whatever the decision on consolidation – one will have to be made in the coming years.

Technology Meeting

On Wednesday, January 23rd there was a school technology meeting. The primary purpose of the meeting was to meet the new Director of Technology for Roane County schools - Jerry Yarbrough. Jerry was previously head of technology in Morgan County.

There are some exciting things going on in technology in the school system. I will post the meeting minutes here with all details of everything that was discussed and things that are planned after the Board approves the minutes at the next Board meeting on February 21.

School Board Meeting - January 17th

Last night’s school Board meeting (Jan 17^th) was relatively short. There were two presentations made. Rob Dill, principal of Roane County High School and Celia Simon, a teacher at the school gave a presentation on the status of their 9^th grade academy and Stephanie Walker led a presentation on a new Data Driven method for tracking students in Special Education.

The Board was presented an American Flag from the Daughters of the American Revolution, Avery Trace Chapter with headquartered in Kingston. The flag will be flown outside the school board building on Bluff road.

In Reports, school Budget Director Eric Harbin gave the quarterly summary financial report for December, 2007.

During committee reports, Board member Wade McCullough passed out minutes from the January 10th, 2008 Negotiation Team meeting.

In the facilities overview, a Board retreat is being planned for sometime in February or March to address the status of the building program and what steps to take next in the attempt to alleviate the overcrowding at some of the elementary and middle schools in the county.

In business items, a motion was made and passed to send the 2008-2009 calendar back to the Educational Council for them to rework it so as to include not only a fall break but to investigate the possibility of what can be done to start school later. It is hoped that the Ed Council can send another calendar to the Board for its consideration soon.

The Board also passed a resolution to support the Princess Theatre in Harriman.

In the special report on the Freshman Academy at Roane County High School Mr. Dill and Ms. Simon discussed why the Academy was started. The goal of the freshmen academy is to decrease the amount of dropouts. The idea was that if you stopped freshmen from falling behind early, then the chances that that they will drop out of high school will decrease. By intervening early when freshmen fall behind, they will transition more easily into high school and be more likely to graduate on time.

There have been early successes as there has been increased communication between the core teachers of the freshman academy. Teachers have a common planning period within the groups so they are able to get together and discuss how students are doing in each of the classes.

This is the second year of the Academy and already there have been many lessons learned as Ms. Simon stated “it is a works in progress”.

Data from area schools using similar academies have shown remarkable success. I applaud our teaching staff for putting the extra work into creating a program like this. It has required much extra effort and work on their own time to develop this and I hope things continue to improve. This is a classic case of putting a lot of work up front on something in order for it to pay big dividends later.

Upon entry to the Board room I noticed the walls lined with charts and graphs. This was part of the presentation that was given to the Board on Data Driven tracking of Special Education students in the system. Obviously, I was very interested in this as my profession is data analysis. During the report it was learned that this concept was introduced at the Tennessee Lead conference in fall of 2005. After a visit to Johnson County in November 2006 a plan was devised to implement this system in Roane County. Pilot programs were set up at seven schools in 2006-2007 and expanded by two more this year. Each school is assigned data team leaders that are in charge of schedules, meetings, setting up data walls and making reports to the Special Education Supervisor.

Data is then analyzed and improvements are based on data review and results prominently displayed showing school needs and celebrations.

Special folders are developed for each student that document progress, detect trends, and drive IEP goal development.

As with the freshman academy at Roane County high school, this is just another case of our teachers going the extra mile to provide the best education they can for our students. Again, I am proud of our staff for being so self-starting and pro-active in doing their work.

Thursday's School Board Meeting

We have a school board meeting this Thursday night, January 15th. There is very little on the agenda.

There will be reports on the status of the Freshman Academy at Roane County High and a Special Education Up-date.

There will be a Quarterly Summary Financial Report December 2007 given by Eric Harbin.

The only business item is a Resolution to support the Princess Theatre

Shift Happens and The World is Flat

Few books I have ever read had such an impact on me as The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. In the book, Friedman talks of globalization with an emphasis on this 100 years.

To a lesser extent there are a number of videos on the Internet that expand on some of the concepts that Friedman discusses. At the November, 2007 school board meeting, the video Did You Know was shown. That video was derived from another one “Shift Happens”, which I suspect was just renamed so that it could be shown without controversy about the title. The one I have embedded below is “Shift Happens” mainly because I like the music in it more than the others. Content is basically the same.

The book and the videos bring up some important issues with our education system. On one hand it is apparent that we must have our schools teach students to think “out of the box”, be creative, and learn how to learn. On the other side, our teachers have to teach a curriculum that will allow students to pass state mandated exams, and pass national tests for college entrance.

The issue I have are the tests themselves.

There is a problem with many of our tests are as to who is being tested - the student, or the teacher (e.g. tests that are designed to show the effectiveness of a teacher)? Are we teaching what the student has learned, or what the student knows? Should our tests focus on specific knowledge or on general attributes, like creative thinking and problem solving? Should our tests be achievement, which measure what a student knows, or aptitude tests which are designed to predict how well test-takers will perform in future settings?

I don’t know – but what I do know is that our teachers are daily facing more and more challenges that are out of their control. The more I learn, the more I respect our teachers and administrators in the job and challenges ahead of them.