A Diverse Community

Limo and lunch with the superintendent – that’s the latest little prize we’ve been offering to the schools for students who have been doing well.

With the generous donation of a limo driven by Danny Aguilar of Racing Limos of Dover, each school this year was given the opportunity to identify nine students and one teacher to go to lunch with the superintendent. It’s been a real treat for me, I assure you, and the kids seem to enjoy it, too.

Recently it was the high school’s turn. Karen Williams, Lake Forest Teacher of the Year joined us. The students were randomly selected from hundreds who had earned various recognitions throughout the year. There were only eight - someone was absent. They were quiet when I first met them in the lobby. Since they were randomly chosen, they weren’t all friends.

But, during the ride to Frederica Pizza, with a little help from Mrs. Williams, we were able to get them talking. Some just about talked my head off.

To me, the most interesting part of the day, was the diversity of the group. From those eight randomly selected students there were at least 4 languages spoken at home. Three of the students were not born in the U.S.

I think many people see Lake Forest as a mostly white community, made up of students with family roots in agriculture. We are 25% African American. But, the growth of the last few years has brought a greater variety of folks from around the country and around the world.

There was Teresa, born in Italy of African parents. She recently won an award for her writing and she organized the talent show held this week at Lake Forest High School.

There was Melvin, son of a minister, who moved here two years ago from Guatemala with little or no English. Now he helps teachers translate for our newest Spanish-speaking students.

There was Ashwini, born in India, who educated me on Indian culture and the variety of languages spoken there. This girl can talk!

The others were Earl, Antwone, Nate, Amanda and Kristina. Each of them special in his or her own way. Each named student of the month or otherwise recognized for his or her good works at school. Each, like most every other high school kid, simultaneously sure of what he wants to do in the short term and equally unsure of what she wants to do in the long term.

This community is changing. We celebrate the diverse community that is Lake Forest. It is what makes us special.

Music in our Schools

In high school and college I sang in the choir. It was one of my favorite extra-curricular activities. As I told my football playing buddies, “There are no girls at football practice.”

That’s why I was really disappointed to learn, when I came to Lake Forest in 2003, that after 6th grade our children had no opportunity to sing. Band was the only musical offering through middle and high school. Singing in the choir brings in a whole bunch more kids with music in their heart, without the expense of the instrument. I can confirm that most singers continue to enjoy singing long into adulthood.

We’ve only had one faculty music position at LFHS and that person has always been expected to be a band person. Only in recent years have we pushed for the band teacher to also teach choir. The music program at the high school level has struggled to maintain good numbers, perhaps because we’ve been through 4 band teachers in the last seven years. We’ve had some great students and active band boosters who have hung in there and done their best because of their love of music, but I know the frequent changes have sometimes left them frustrated.

So, it’s time for some changes. Here’s the plan for next school year. We’ll have two part-time music people at LFHS. One will teach chorus the other will teach band. The good thing about it is, the teachers will be well known to the students and parents.

The chorus teacher will be Mark Teesdale, former Delaware Teacher of the Year, who has been teaching choir to students at Central Elementary for years. He’ll start each day with a couple of periods at LFHS. Then he’ll go across the street to finish his day at Central.

The band teacher will be Joe Baione, who has been teaching beginning band for many years at Central. He will continue to teach the beginners at Central and two periods a day will teach jazz band and concert band at LFHS. Note I say concert band, not marching band.

Marching band will be offered as an after school extra-curricular activity and it will be taught by someone other than Mr. Baione. This will be a little controversial I know. Some students who play sports will not be able to be in the marching band. Then again, there may be students who don’t want to take the class who will love band as an after school activity.

Wild Winter Causes Calendar Changes

That was some winter, huh? Gosh it’s good to see the sun shine and the flowers blooming and the grass turning green. We missed about 9 days of school altogether, plus we had 3 delays and one early dismissal. Since 4 of the days were under a “state of emergency” we will not be required to make them up. We also bank a little extra time each day, so we don’t need to make up every lost day.

So, we’re going to make up two snow days. Students will now go to school all day on June 10, 11 and 14. Monday the 14th will be the last day for kids. Tuesday June 15th will be the last day for teachers. Report cards will be mailed.

Summer school will be scaled back again. All summer school classes – elementary, middle and high school - will be held at Central Elementary. High school summer school will be drastically scaled back. Only seniors will get a chance to recover failed core classes.

Many call and ask when school will start next year. The answer is very late. We have some major remodeling projects planned for Lake Forest High School and W.T.Chipman. To maximize the summer construction period, we will not begin school for students until Tuesday, September 7 – following Labor Day.

Heard it Through the Grapevine

We’re going to try a new angle on this social media idea by offering up a place where you can find out everything you ever wanted to know about Lake Forest Schools but were afraid to ask.

I heard recently that among the parents of a certain school district somewhere in the USA, rumors started going around that the school was going to offer coffee for sale to students. That story spread like wildfire through the bleachers, the grocery lines, the churches and anywhere else folks gathered. An angry mob showed up at the next meeting of the local board of education armed with all sorts of research to prove it was a bad idea. Of course they were chagrinned to learn that there was no plan and no discussion of serving coffee to students.

Of course if any one of them had just called a principal or the superintendent’s office they might have found out sooner that there was no truth to the story. But they didn’t.

We know that no matter how well we communicate, rumors still persist. And sometimes, those sharing the rumors may themselves think, “Oh, that’s ridiculous. There’s probably nothing to it. But what if….?” It might sound so silly that they are embarrassed to ask.

So, the new Spartan Grapevine blog is a place to ask any question. Ask it anonymously if you like. The question will be sent to the appropriate Lake Forest staff person to answer it. Then both the question and the answer will be posted for all to see.

So, if you have a question that you’d like to post on the Spartan Grapevine just go to www.spartangrapevine.blogspot.com and enter your question in the comment section. We promise that within a few days you’ll see your question and the answer.

Testifying in Washington, D.C.

I recently had the honor of being asked by the American Association of School Administrators to testify before the Congressional Sub-Committee on reauthorization of what is known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Congressman Castle is senior minority member of that committee and he and his staff helped me out a lot with understanding the process – kept me from getting too scared. I was asked to speak on the important issues for rural school districts in ESEA. If you go to the committee site at http://edlabor.house.gov/hearings/ecese/ and click on the archives button for March 18 you’ll be able to see the web cast and a full copy of my written testimony. What follows is a summary of that testimony.

Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education
Committee on Education and Labor
March 18, 2010

SUMMARY
Testimony of Dr. Daniel Curry, Superintendent
Lake Forest School District, Kent County Delaware

I come today to speak on behalf or rural school districts. I have been a superintendent for 22 years in West Virginia and Delaware. In my testimony I will make the following key points about the nature of rural districts:
• Rural school districts are by definition poor with little in the way of property value that adds to the tax base.
• Rural districts, due to geographic isolation, often find it difficult to attract new professionals.
• Rural districts, with necessarily small schools, must give teacher multiple assignments which leads challenges when it comes to federally required Highly Qualified teachers.
• Qualified teachers in Math, Science and Special Education are hard to find.
• Rural districts generally have small, often shared central office staff members who wear multiple hats.
• Rural districts don’t often have individuals dedicated to grant writing.
• Tech support is often home-grown.

Reauthorization of ESEA and rural school districts:
• ESEA funding is and always has been crucial to student success in rural areas.
• Formula funding, based upon poverty rates is the fairest means of distribution of ESEA funds.
• Making ESEA funding competitive would only broaden the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
• Gauge student progress through measuring growth.
• Gauge special education student progress on growth as measured through their I.E.P..
• There is nothing special about special education if they are held to the same achievement standard as all other students, when by definition they are struggling learners.
• Small schools can easily have student performance measures skewed by the performance of just a couple of students.
• Graduation rates should be calculated on the number of students who successfully complete the high school program no matter how many years it takes.

Finally, on behalf of the 6000 school districts which depend upon the funds provided by the Rural Education Achievement Program, I urge your support of HR 2446 and reauthorize REAP.

A Country School in Paraguay

Last week I posted a story about my adventures in rural Paraguay. Although we gather numerous stories from once-in-a-lifetime adventures, I’ll not attempt to put them all in writing for this spot. I must share with you, though, what I was able to see of a rural Paraguayan school.

One of the Peace Corps volunteers in my daughter’s rural community is named Greg. Greg lives in a school in the campo. He has a small two room apartment, a kitchen the size of a closet and a bathroom with no toilet. His cook stove works on bottle gas and when we visited, he had been out of gas for a week. He was cooking on a brick oven in an attached shed.

One of the basic rules of Peace Corps assignment is that the volunteers are provided with a sufficient living allowance to live at the same standard as their community. They are provided health care support at the American standard but they cannot afford to live at an “American standard” when it comes to housing, food and transportation.

So, Greg lives in his little place and one of his assignments is to help the school in any way he can. He found their meager supplies were in disarray and stored in broken, unsecured cabinets, so he built storage cabinets for the school.
He found there were limited ancient texts and virtually no library books, so he started a campaign to raise money and seek donations of books. I delivered to him 55children’s books in Spanish that my wife and I bought from one of the companies that does book fairs in the schools.

It was summer in Paraguay, but school was scheduled to start this week. Cow’s grazed through the yard. A little boy and an old man, came to get them around noon to take them to shade and water. Greg told me that by tradition, during the first week of school, the students and the teachers clean and paint.

Greg took me into the director’s office (principal’s office) to show me the cabinets he built and the beginnings of the library he was putting together. I noticed a hand made poster on the wall. The poster was labeled “Caracteristicas del Director”. Listed on this colorful poster, which was obviously the product of a group activity at some workshop, I read that the director is: Lider, Profesional, Responsable, Orientador, Democratico, Conciliador, Respetuoso and Cortes.

It was clear that, although this school is located far down a red dirt road in poverty filled rural Paraguay, that someone had invested in staff development for the director to make him a better director. It just goes to show you, no matter where you go, people do want to get better. No matter how poor, they don’t want to be poor for ever. No matter how limited the resources of the school, the director had a vision to become a better director. And even if it means, we all help to clean the school, the beginning of school is an exciting time no matter where you live.

In fact, as a special event prior to the opening of school, the director invited Greg to his house to eat pigs head. Gee, I’m sorry I missed that.

Another World

Last week I played hooky from school. As it turned out, I didn’t miss much – more snow days and two 2 hour delays.

I took a long overdue vacation trip to see my little girl Betsy. She graduated from college in May of 2007 and that June headed to Paraguay to honor her plan to serve in the Peace Corps. She signed on for an extra year as a coordinator and presently lives in the capital city of Asuncion. Her first two years were spent on assignment in the “campo” which translates to “out in the sticks”, where she was to assist the farm co-op and others with economic development.

She has been home once in 2 ½ years and will finish her obligation in September. I thought I owed it to her, before she leaves South America, to see first hand the life she has been living and the community she served. I wanted to personally thank the man and woman who served as her surrogate parents in the campo, Pablino and Racquel, for looking after my little girl.

After 3 planes and 29 hours of travel time I finally arrived in Asuncion.

I rented a car at the airport and after a good nights sleep, we headed to the campo. Betsy had organized a cookout to be held at her host parent’s home and we were in charge of picking up other Peace Corps volunteers who would be attending. We drove around 200 kilometers on a good highway to get from the city to the San Pedro district that was home to these folks.

Then it was time to round up the kids (as I call the volunteers – all in their 20s). Now I have fished some of the most remote trout streams of West Virginia. For 13 years I lived and worked in the most sparsely populated school district east of the Mississippi where the student population averaged 1.5 kids per square mile. I have never traveled dirt roads like this.

There were no rocks to speak of, just dusty red dirt. The base seemed solid enough and although there were ruts and washouts, there was plenty of traffic. There were lots of motorbikes, a few cars and trucks, and plenty of horse and ox carts. In what seemed like a 15 mile loop I picked up 3 kids, each at their little two room shacks, delivered them to the host family’s house and repeated the process once again on another network of dusty red roads to collect 4 more.

While we enjoyed a nice barbecue of tough Brahman beef it started to rain. It rained all afternoon. Eventually Betsy suggested we start taking the kids home, because it was well known that the public buses these folks depended on to get out to more populated areas, never run when it rains. Maybe that’s because driving on these red dirt roads gets treacherous when wet. I learned that was true.

My rental car was a well used Ford Explorer and it was questionable if the 4 wheel drive was functional. After 2 nail biting hours of slipping and slopping through the soup, I managed to get all the kids delivered back to their little cabins safely. We were just a mile from the hard road when a truck with a top heavy load of pineapples stopped in front of me. I eased around it, found myself on a severely sloped shoulder and in seconds we were hung up - immobile in the side ditch with only one wheel actually touching the road.

The rain had finally stopped and as we stepped out of the car and into the road we learned just how greasy slick that red dirt had become.

This whole experience will lead to a couple of stories worth sharing in the weeks to come, but let me close this one out by saying the Paraguan people are kind and generous. Many offered shelter while we awaited rescue. One truck tried to pull us free using an ancient rope offered by one of the neighbors. The rope broke twice. We offered to pay for the rope, but they laughed and said it was a grandfather rope with no strength left in it.

I would still be standing in that ditch with a forlorn look on my face if not for ol’ John Deere. That’s right. The local farm co-op owns a big green John Deere tractor and eventually Pablino came along and snatched us out of that hole. While watching that big green machine come over the hill, I couldn’t have felt any more rescued than if I were watching the arrival of the U. S. Marines. Memories of Paraguay will stay with me for a long, long time.