The Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) School Board enacted an administration recommendation to continue an Honors Biology program in the junior high schools, allowing those students to be transported to the high school laboratories for class. The action also allows plans to move forward with enhancing 7th & 8th grade science classes to conform with the rigor of the new state standards.
The vote was 4-3. Mike Bottorff, Sylvia Shepler and Amanda Shera cast the no votes.
As board comments became more critical of the proposal presented by school administrators, President Matt Burke urged his colleagues to support the measure.
“When we have a strong recommendation coming from our administrators, that have spent considerably more time than us evaluating this, and we call into question their judgment, we need to think about what message we are sending to our administrators,” Burke said. “We have to decide, are we going to trust our administrators in some of these types of situations?”
In other school board items from Wednesday night:
–A series of resolutions passed unanimously clearing the way for the financing of renovations to the Cumberland Road Elementary School and the HSE Schools Administration Building.
–There will be a new alternative school for HSE students in the fall of 2017. The school district will end the arrangement with a group in Noblesville. Administrators are close to a decision on leasing space locally for the facility. Alternative Schools are for students unable to function in a regular school setting.
–HSE will become a GoOPen District following the board action. GoOpen is a national Department of Education effort to share educational materials.
–Minor changes to the student handbooks were approved by the board. Those handbooks are now available online only.
–HSE Schools will be migrating Learning Management Systems from the Blackboard program to one called Canvas, after board approval of the contract. Canvas has not yet agreed to all the contract language, but any changes would come before the board for a vote.
–The board honored Fishers High School students that competed at the state Science Olympiad competition on March 18 at Indiana University.
The state competition comes on heels of FHS winning the 2017 Regional Science Olympiad at Vincennes University last month. Students from 12 area school districts competed in 23 events in 12 hours that tested their acumen in earth science, physics, computer science, technology, biology and chemistry.
The regional results were:
- First Place – materials science, optics, wind power, and write it, do it.
- Second Place — ecology, hydrogeology, experimental design, and remote sensing.
- Third Place — anatomy & physiology, dynamic planet, invasive species, and microbe mission.
- Fourth Place: hover craft, chemistry lab, robot arm and towers.
–Finally, this was the last school board meeting for HSE Schools Community Relations Director Beverly Redmond. She is leaving the school corporation and moving to Chicago. There will be a reception in her honor Thursday, March 30th at the HSE Schools Administration Building on Cumberland Road, 4-6pm.
(Editor’s Note: a previous post said the reception would be held on Monday, March 27th….this is incorrect and the corrected information is provided above)
To echo Mrs. Fullhart’s bio on the School Board website, we too moved to Fishers because of the school system. But that was over a decade ago, and now my morning email greets me with this article. I’ve rarely felt such a sense of regret, but at least my students are almost out of the school system, or at least beyond the reach of these changes.
It is good to know that, despite only one person with an education background among the new board members, they are all now experts in a wholly new field. Clearly they know much that the administration, with perhaps only 100 years of educational experience between them, do not. This certainly suggests great things for the future in HSE Schools.
The problem with the 8th grade honors biology program was not the location or facilities. The problem was its existence. Rather than requiring students to follow the rigor of HSE’s programs (more on that later), parents were allowed to skip what happened to be core classes in the transition of their early teens’ education – something that the parents and students had no idea. While there are some successes, multi-year advanced science and math are routinely a struggle for students that would have flourished in more appropriate advanced classes. But the decision is to go “all-in” on these programs; not only allowing them to continue, but moving them to the high school. I say “all-in”, because the time wasted on the bus will have no educational purpose, and constitutes an aggregate opportunity cost of many learning days per student year. I’d ask whether anybody told the Board this, but as outlined, this goes against the administration recommendation. Despite all the CPAs and financial professionals on the Board, nobody did the math.
But back to the “rigor of the new state standards”. The problem is that the state standards are horrible, and have been for years. The state standards are a result of misinterpreting the national standards, which were intended to be very flexible. They outline the standards for students in grades 5-8. The state interpreted them in such a way as to dilute the science topics over all those grades, rather than divide the content by subject matter and year. The state standards recommend teaching every subject in every year, allowing for no concentration in the subject matter. The result is a general survey course not really different from the general science courses offered in the elementary schools. This affects students, who get no depth of content whatsoever, and educators, who are unable to leverage their expertise in any one area. It is much better to force every teacher to teach outside their area of expertise for the majority of the year – the clear result, intended or not.
HSE has an exemption from the state to pursue the science standards in a way that allows for more depth, and these programs are generally held in high regard within the district. Each year focuses on one or two subject areas, and goes into great detail, building over the course of the year and generously using laboratory activities to support class instruction. As a result, students better prepared to take high-school classes when it is appropriate to do so. Adopting the current plan will cause measurable harm to student outcomes, though it will take years before that is evident. But it is a change that will take a decade or more to unwind if implemented.
There seems to be a general, unstated undercurrent that the junior high schools are the problem. These changes focus at that level, and generally ignore teacher and administration feedback. I question where this comes from and its motivations.
As a footnote, the change to Canvas from Blackboard is another concern, mostly due to timing. I’m sure the vendor will have the system installed before the 2017-18 school year, but the teachers, administrators, and students will have little or no training before being required to use it. Another recipe for success.