Superintendent's Blog

My favorite writer on the topic of education and technology is Scott McLeod. Mr. McLeod writes a blog and runs CASTLE, a technology center for school leaders at Iowa State University. He recently wrote an article for The School Administrator, the newsletter for the American Association of School Administrators, titled “Blocking the Future”.

The article discusses how many districts are blocking websites and digital technologies. He doesn’t spend much time on the why we are doing it, but more on the impact blocking can have on the students. He states, “It is clear by now our world is becoming even more technological, not less. Technology tools such as digital software, online systems, global networks, and personal computers are literally reshaping global civilization.”

I agree with him to a large degree, however, the push to quickly accept and use new technologies is problematic. First, Saline Area Schools cannot typically afford to be the first to adopt new technology. We are getting better at finding free programs and with many of the Web 2.0 tools that are out there – these costs are then minimal. For example, we are starting to use Moodle as a tool for our staff and it is free. Secondly, there is a operational piece, as many parents know, access to the internet is a blessing and curse. As we work with young students we find the amount of inappropriate content is staggering. Attempting to filter access to restrict the ability to locate the objectionable material is a never ending battle. Take YouTube for example – we restrict access to it due to some of the content. However, some staff want to use clips from presidential debates and I can see the benefit to our students. Additionally, several other Washtenaw County school districts allow unfiltered access to YouTube.

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. We will continue to be open to exploring new technologies and guarded about their implementation.

I had the chance to stop by the Two Twelve Arts Center and check out the Saline High School Advanced Placement Art exhibit. Some of the pieces had been picked up as the grading process for the AP program has begun. The exhibit officially ends this Saturday. I was amazed at the creativity and talent of our students.

We will have another great opportunity to view the work of our students at the Spring Arts Festival on May 9th and 10th at Saline High School. The event will include selected works from each building.

Below are a couple examples from the AP exhibit, the top one is from John Wright and the bottom one is from Christine Westmaas.

Last week there was a fun event held between the middle school and the high school. The 2008 Nazzy Awards are given out for excellence in digital book talks. They were hosted by Ms. Staci Nazareth - the middle school media specialist. At the high school, Mr. Nate Bush and Mr. Stephen Stump provided support. When you watch the video, check out the lower left-hand corner to see the high school watching the middle school presentation. The live webcast was a great way to bridge the buildings - and it was a lot of fun.

There was a nice article in the Ann Arbor News on the "Wheel, Run Together" event put on by Saline High's Courtney Bertoia and Adam Davis. Check out the article here. The project was part of their participation in student council.

In researching information from this year, I learned that 85% of high school parents have used eSembler to view their student’s grades and/or attendance. At the middle school is was 95% and at Heritage it was 92%. From my standpoint, it is great to see our families involved in monitoring the progress of their children. I’m not sure how our students feel about it…..

Next year we will again have a district wide “gradebook” that parents will be able to view. Along with most school districts in Washtenaw County, we are preparing to move to PowerSchool. We have begun to think about how best to launch the “parent portal” portion of the software. Ms. Jackie Lane who is the Saline Area School’s behind the scenes tech person has been developing implementation plans.

Look for information at open houses next fall, as well as, specific informational nights where our tech staff will lead parents through the process of monitoring their children’s information.

Congratulations to 1998 Saline High School graduate Bobby Korecky. He was called up by the Minnesota Twins today - the righthand pitcher was 2-1 in AAA so far this season. As a Hornet, Bobby led the 1998 Varsity squad that finished as the Class A State Runner-Up. If there was ever a time to root for the Twins - it's now. He's also lucky to be married to SHS graduate Jill (Palmeri) Korecky.

At the Board of Education meeting last night we had several presentations. First, the District Parenting Council, which is made up of the officers of each building’s PTO/A. It was great to hear the deep commitment to supporting the parent/teacher relationship in each building. I was astounded by the amount of money that is raised and used to help provide for needed programs and materials.

We then were able to hear a presentation from two middle school teachers - Ms. Laurie Erby and Ms. Jennifer Nelson on the success of the Reading Apprenticeship program. It was exciting to see the data from their assessments and the gains our students are achieving in this area. We were also pleased by the implementation plan. There has been increased staff trained in the last two years and next year the plan is continue to expand the use of the Reading Apprenticeship framework.

The last presentation was from Athletic Director Rob White. During the 2007-8 school year, over 1,950 students participated in athletic programs in grades 7-12. We have 22 varsity programs, 9 club programs and 7 middle school sports. Mr. White shared the core values of the Athletic Department that were developed by the coaches last summer – team, integrity, responsibility, accountability, honesty, loyalty and respect. These core values are listed on a special coin given to all our coaches to remind us of the role of interscholastic athletics in the educational process.

Ms. Carol Melcher, our new Director of Secondary Special Education was introduced to the board and community. The board then approved my contract as superintendent. It is a three year contract that begins officially on July 1, 2008. We also reviewed the WISD budget for 2008-2009.

The board also noted the acceptance of retirement letters from three long time Saline teachers Ms. Alison Robison, Mr. Bruce Ross, and Mr. Bill Smigielski. They are all retiring at the end of the school year – together they have combined for 91 years of service to the district!

Congratulations to Rob Law, Nick Schineman, and James Jeffery (l-r) who participated in the State of Michigan Skills USA Automated Manufacturing contest on April 18th through the 20th. Mr. Gillow is very proud of their performance.

The contest was over four hours long and consisted of many challenging skills related to complex designs and manufacturing problems. The contest evaluates teams for employment in integrated manufacturing technology fields of Computer Aided Drafting/Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), and Computer Numerical Controlled machining (CNC). In this process the CAD operators construct the part geometry, the CAM operator generates the tool paths, and the CNC operator sets up and machines the part. These are the newest methods used by industry and colleges to reduce the time and cost of bringing a new product to market.

These students will be traveling to Kansas City Missouri for a week to compete at the National level contest. If the students place first at Nationals they may have a chance to travel to Australia to compete at the Internationals.

We are fortunate to be hosting the 2008 Central Collegiate Lacrosse Association Championships at the Saline High School Athletic Complex. The event will take place May 2, 3 and 4th and possible teams include the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Indiana University.

Last evening, Saline High School was the site of the 2008 Saline Area Chamber of Commerce "Saline Salutes" program. The event had a great "school" feel as Ms. Betsy Marl was honored as the 2008 Saline Citizen of the Year. Retired Saline High art teacher Taylor Jacobsen took home the Lifetime Achievement Award. Saline High junior Andrew Schantz was awarded the Saline Youth of the Year and I accepted the 2008 George A. Anderson Vision award on behalf of the CARES Advisory Board.

The event started with a wonderful reception catered by the Chef Musto and the Saline High Culinary Arts students. The Fiddlers ReStrung had a ensemble group to perform during the reception. Stephanie Webb played the piano in the Ewing Performing Arts Center as the program began. Ms. Lucy Ann Lance was the MC and did an excellent job.

The evening included political presentations by State Representatives Pam Byrnes and Kathy Angerer, State Senator Randy Richardville, City of Saline Mayor Gretchen Driskell along with an office representative of U.S. Representative Tim Wahlberg.

Thank you to the Saline Reporter's Sue Collins for the picture.

We have the final calendar for the 2008-2009 school year. Due to the trimester, it is somewhat different than in the past. You will see that high school exams are now the week of Thanksgiving, the first week of March and the end of the year. The high school will also have three conferences - one for each trimester. We also adjusted elementary conferences and attempted to make the schedule as consistent as possible between buildings.

Click the link below to download a pdf version.

I stopped by the High School today to meet with a several staff members on different items. While I was in the hall I noticed a long line of students bringing recyclables from around the building to Ms. O'Harris. It was great to see the students supporting this worthy effort. From the little I saw - we go through a lot of plastic, paper and cardboard at the High School!

The Saline Alternative High School leadership class partnered with the Washtenaw Intermediate School District Young Adult Program, which is also housed at Union School to begin the “spring cleaning” process. The students paired up and began to pick up the winter debris. Later this week they will begin beautifying the grounds.

Although it felt like winter, today the University of Michigan football team wrapped up their spring football practice schedule with the “spring game” at the Saline High School Stadium. It was fun to watch the Wolverines take the field and run the new spread offense.

Even better I was able to watch Nick Sheridan, Saline High Class of 2006, quarterback the offense on several offensive drives. Unfortunately, Vince Helmuth, Saline High Class of 2007, did not play as he recovered from being ill earlier in the week.

Below is a picture of current Saline senior Drew Jurgensen from the Golden Sting (the Saline High School newspaper) interviewing Nick after the game.



The event was a wonderful opportunity for the Golden Sting staff to test their journalism skills side by side with the Big Ten Network and ESPN. Led by Mr. Hill, the students took over 700 photos and conducted numerous interviews. Below is a photo of junior Derek Tinkle interviewing Rich Rodriguez. The photo was taken by junior Taylor Franz


Check out some video on the Big Ten Network site.

I hope everyone enjoyed a relaxing break. We are set for a busy couple months as the 07-08 school-year begins to come to an end. I know for some it was a busy week. As you can see below, our high school marching band did us proud at Disney World.

One of the nice features of our school website is the "staff lookup" feature. You can access it from the www.salineschools.com page. Run your curser over the "staff" tab along the top menu, go down to the "staff directory" link and click.

It will open the "staff lookup" page. You can type in a portion of the staff members name and it will pull their email and phone information up. If you don't know the spelling, just give it a few letters and it guesses for you. If you are close, it will get the name and information. For me, this is often quicker than pulling out the printed list and it can accessed from anywhere. If changes occur, it updates as soon as a staff member moves and their new phone number is assigned, so it is always up-to-date.

Those of you have been to any of the offices that I have had over the last 10 or so years know that I am a pretty big Detroit Tigers fan. Well, after a rough 15 or so years, the last two have been very good. This year’s squad is as good as I have ever seen. True, they need some bullpen help, but I have faith they will add some arms if needed.

I plan to head down to the park a few times, starting this week. Okay, so this post has nothing to do with Saline schools – I’m just excited for the season.

A common formative assessment is a fancy name for a pretest, or so I thought! As an administrative team, we have begun reading and discussing the 2006 book, Common Formative Assessments authored by Larry Ainsworth and Donald Vieght. This opportunity provided me with the chance to learn more about where we (and many high-achieving schools) are heading in terms of instructional practices.

Basically, in the traditional education model a pretest is given followed by instruction. To conclude the unit, a posttest evaluates learning and grades are assigned. In this newer model, a formative assessment is given followed by analysis of the results, a differentiated instructional plan, instruction, monitoring and adjustments, more instruction and a summative assessment. Sounds pretty easy, right?

Now, the word “common” is in the title. The “common” aspect comes in when each teacher is using the same assessment. This allows us to understand each student’s present knowledge compared to the larger picture. How do I know that a 4th grade student at Harvest, is getting the same information as a 4th grade student at Pleasant Ridge and that they are getting the same as a 4th grade student at Woodland Meadows? “Common” formative and summative assessments help us understand where our students are at in terms of learning.

At the secondary level, common assessments given in an academic area are already in place in many departments. We know that all of our students who complete our world history class have been assessed on the same information, whether that took it with Mr. Fox, Mr. Smigielski, Mr. Boze or Mr. Schmier doesn’t matter.

As an administrative team, we still have extensive learning and analyzing to do regarding assessments and using the data they provide. We are looking at norm-referenced assessments through NWEA; we have reviewed (and ruled out for 2008-2009) Pearson assessment building software and have piloted a Gates reading assessment at Harvest this year. As much as I would love to have a “one size fits all” approach that can be purchased cheaply and implemented easily with nearly 100% staff buy-in right from the start – we do not live in that world!

Here in Saline, we are blessed with professional staff that is committed to continuous improvement, which makes this process much easier for all of us. We are also blessed with families that value education and support staff and administration as we advance our understanding of best practices.

More to come on this topic….

When the weather breaks, the new sign for the High School will be installed!

This week I had the chance to stop by and check the completed projects from the Extreme Middle School program. Hannah Chen, Claire Koerschner, Jacob Liebowitz, Joey Omichinski, Lindsey Stolzenfeld and Amelia Waters participated in the group that met Monday mornings before school to work on their projects with the help of assistant principal Ms. Michelle Szczechowicz. The projects included selecting a research topic and developing a research blog. The students did an excellent job of picking topics they were interested in and following appropriate research techniques to explore each topic. Pictured below are Clarie Koerschner, Amelia Waters, Hannah Chen and Joey Omichinski.