South Side High School got mediocre (poor to fair) ratings in the recent follow-up by the Cambridge group on behalf of the IDOE. Krista Stockman's comment was "we knew most... of this already" (but we just didn't do anything about it until the state came in with a hammer). That's right. In fact I sent Wendy a letter eight years ago after subbing at South Side, describing much of what Cambridge said. I sent Mark GiaQuinta a similar letter after he was elected to the board. (wonder what happened to those letters.) Steve Brace criticized Cambridge for denigrating the staff after spending so little time and effort. Well, Steve, after spending a year at South as a volunteer tutor in freshman math classes, I can say that the consultant has a remarkably good grasp of the situation. But you know that, don't you, Steve?
The report is available on line as a PDF file
http://www.journalgazette.net/assets/pdf/JG71687413.PDF in last week's JG article. Much of the criticism falls on principal Thomas Smith who's strength is discipline and creation of an orderly environment. His weakness is lack of vision and management skill in carrying out an academic improvement strategy. He is also hampered by a top down administration on Clinton Street, which allows no discretion in devising different strategies or administering personnel. The straitjacket of a union contract was, of course, not explicitly mentioned. But now Mr. Smith is going to Wayne to straighten them out. Good luck with that.
I don't have anything against Mr. Smith. If the middle schools weren't dumping unprepared kids into South Side (as ordered by the top down administration on Clinton Street) he would probably do just fine. To expect anyone to succeed pulling up an anchor at the end of a broken chain is unrealistic, and I personally told him so. But he knew what he was getting into. And it will be worse at Wayne.
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8 comments:
Elmhurst isn't a done deal yet...looks like Angie got the money she needed and an attorney that thinks she has a case. I live in Angies neighborhood and have known her most of my life and she does NOT back down...good for her!
Have you followed the story on the Memorial Bench at EHS for the two EHS grads killed in Iraq??
Of course if you follow facebook at all you will see that FWCS has an answer for everything as usual.
They have the money and an attorney. If it gets into court, the district is going to get a lot of exposure they won't enjoy.
The Leona group, a charter school corporation who's talking about buying the Taylor U. property, reportedly offered to buy the the Elmhurst building. Needless to say Wendy said no. FWCS can't stand the competition.
It will be interesting to see if Ms Karen Friso jumps on the Johnson Academy for being owned and operated by a firm in Arizona and wanting to go for a K-12 charter...And I "think" they are also chartered by Ball State..that's local tax dollars you know paying a business out of state...and even MORE interesting will be to see if Ball State allows the new charter since they have denied Imagine Schools this whole past year. Or is it just Don Willis and not the Imagine Schools? hmmmmm The JG and FWCS had no concerns with the Johnson Academy as long as they were EACS...but now they will be in FWCS territory...and if BSU says ok you can have it...what about two FWCS in the area already? Imagine was denied a new location because they would have been 7 mi away from Croninger when they wanted the Pontiac location. This should be very interesting to see what all parties have to say to defend their decisions.
And by the way...FWCS will NEVER sell the EHS building they have plans for it already..but they better hurry...the Timothy Johnson Academy might beat them to it...
what plans? What would they do with Elmhurst besides sell it or lease it? Four years ago they said they wanted to close it because it was unfit for human habitation and would take millions to fix. So they were going to spend millions on the academic disaster on Winchester Road and ship the kids over there.
They won't say for awhile...but there are ways to receive Race to The Top Funds from the feds for doing certain things and the Feds pay for the building to be re done..just watch and see...they will sell if and only if the Feds say no to their plans
As good as the Elmhurst ISTEP scores are, Elmhurst has not made AYP for 8 consecutive years...I guess "failing" is a subjective term. That fact certainly weakens Elmhurst's case.
Of course, under NCLB, eventually nearly all schools will be failing because the bar is raised every year. No school with a special education program can succeed under the current rules.
If the bar is set by NCLB you're probably right, and that's one reason FWCS blew it off from the start. But NLCB is going to be changed and there's no telling how that will come out, so state law PL221 may be the defining measure. Going by ISTEP scores, they were still ahead of the other schools south of Coliseum although those were dropping Elmhurst since Mr. Hissong came in.
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