Athletic Code of Conduct
Middle school students must adhere to the district code of conduct. In part, the code of conduct addresses appropriate behavior as follows:
- D. APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR:
- 1. No profanity or foul language will be tolerated at anytime.
- 2. Athletes shall conduct themselves in a manner becoming an athlete and
- as to bring no discredits to the athlete, parents, school or team. Athletes
- are expected to exhibit good citizenship in and out of the classroom.
- * Determination of the disciplinary action shall be left to the judgment of the coach and/or Athletic Director/Coordinator.
- Minimum Penalty: Suspension from one athletic contest.
- Maximum Penalty: Suspension for the remainder of the season to suspension for remainder of school career.
Is the rule reasonable?
Schools all over the nation are now bombarded with information that the schools didn't have a few years ago. Myspace, Facebook, and other blogs have students leaving their thoughts and pictures in cyberspace for all to see. There has already been more than a few athletes disciplined for what they left on the web.
I know I don't have time to search the web to find violations, but as time goes by things will assuredly be brought to my desk.
So, are today's students expected to not post thing that could come back to haunt them?
What are your thoughts?
MEAP Scores
Well, the time of year has come where the "scores" start arriving. I must admit I was anxious to see the school's improvement. Now I feel like the child who waited an hour to get on the roller coaster to find that he was just under the "YOU MUST BE THIS TALL" stick. Don't get me wrong, the scores are still above the projected State average score. The point is that I felt as if many of the things the staff and I did would result in significant gain. The fact is our improvement when compared with other schools in the county was not impressive.
A new
piece of data is included with the school summary report this year. The new data gives the school information on how the same kids performed from year to year. I can see that of the 14 students in the seventh grade who scored Basic last year, 6 of those students have moved up to the Met Standards level. I can also see how many students went down in any area. The nice thing about this data is that it directly relates to specific kids. I can't assume that one group was brighter from year to year because these are the same students.
Now comes the time where the staff and I look at all the data and try to find out where we can improve as a school. Wish us skill. (Luck is for Vegas, not for school improvement.)
Money, Money
The State is holding the revenue
estimating conference next week. Based on the current state of the economy the experts are expected to tell officials that the budget will be short of the target. So what will that mean for the schools?
Rumor has it the State may pull $100 to $150 per student from this year's budget. That means the reduction in money from the middle school could be $54,000 to $81,000 less, and even more for the total district. So how does a school save that much money in half a year?
I don't know. Luckily, Dr.
Guiser has been frugal with the budget and we do have a fund balance to take up some of the slack. Other districts that have not budgeted as well could find
themselves in trouble.
The bottom line is schools have a difficult time when our funds change mid-year. Unfortunately, mid-year cuts are always a
possibility under the current system of funding.
New Year - New Technology
This school year I put in the budget, money for United Streaming. (http://www.unitedstreaming.com/) We have come a long way from those old filmstrips my Biology teacher used to show. With United Streaming teachers can search an archive of classroom approved video resources to show their classes. These clips range from a few seconds to a full class period. This technology allows teachers to pull what they need when the need it to enhance learning. These clips can be edited and many include lesson suggestions for the teachers. The teacher just needs to have a video projector or a computer that hooks up to a
TV.
The district and the building installed four video projectors in classrooms to see how well this technology would be used. We also purchased a projector that could be checked out from the library. The result was not very surprising. The teacher who had the projectors readily available used them often. Along with United Streaming I've seen
PowerPoint's and classroom notes. The net result seemed to enhance the instruction in those rooms.
So now I'm waiting on the parts to install five more projectors in classrooms and one in the lecture hall. The cost has come down, but each room still costs just over $1000 to equip. I'm hoping the end result will improve the instruction in all classrooms
equipped.
