Superintendent’s Blog

I have started to review the draft of the National Education Technology Plan.  It’s an interesting look at how the current administration views the effective use of technology in education.
The plan pushes the role of technology in creating more personalized learning opportunities for students.  It recommends the expanded use of multimedia curricula and altering traditional assessments. [...]

Read Full Post »

SAS Community,
These are challenging times that require an engaged and informed community. To help, I invite you to one of the two upcoming “Community Forums” concerning our 2010-2011 budget:
6:30-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 30th in the Harvest Cafeteria
or
6:30-8:30 p.m. Monday, April 12th in the Middle School Media Center
We will share information about the current budget status, [...]

Read Full Post »

For those of you that have been around a while, you will remember “Saline 2000.” For those who are newer, or can’t seem to recall that far back…. I’ll explain.
In the early 1990’s Saline was experiencing significant growth which provided the impetuous to look at the basic tenets of our instructional process.  This review led [...]

Read Full Post »

There is little doubt that these are challenging times to be in public education.  We have entered an era that is being described as the “lean years.” Strategies that have worked in the past are no longer effective.  With budgets being severely reduced and community expectations on the rise there is a need for creative [...]

Read Full Post »

On snow days we have a standing 10:00am administrative team meeting.  Our agenda is to work on issues that we don’t generally have time to have in-depth discussion on during the a typical school day.  On Monday, we had a lengthy discussion about the ubiquitous access to technology.  The conversation included how we as parents [...]

Read Full Post »

Last night we hosted a community forum to discuss building reconfiguration options related to the closing of Houghton School.  These are difficult and complex decisions that require feedback from a variety of sources.  The 35 member committee that has been tasked with developing a recommendation to deliver to the Board of Education in March has [...]

Read Full Post »

Recently, I’ve had several conversations about creating a 21st Century School.  They have been interesting discussions with experienced and talented educators.  Our thoughts and opinions have had a consistent theme, but we each think a bit differently about what we envision when we say 21st Century School.  In his recent book, Harvard Professor Tony Wagner [...]

Read Full Post »

There was an interesting article this week in USA Today called, “Tech-savvy ‘iGeneration’ kids multi-task, connect.” It left me with more questions than answers about “post-millennial” generation that is currently in middle school.  The article notes the constant access to technology.
Here are a couple quotes:

“It’s simply a part of their DNA,” says Dave Verhaagen, [...]

Read Full Post »

This year our high school English department altered one of our College Writing courses into an online course with a service learning focus.  All assignments will be online, and students can fulfill their service requirements during that fifth hour class. Students will volunteer in areas that interest them, and their writing will focus on issues [...]

Read Full Post »

Last night, as part of our ongoing attempt to reduce our current budget deficit for the year, the Board of Education approved our recommendation to eliminate 6 positions.  This resulted in the laying off of 4 remarkable young teachers and eliminating 2 long-term substitutes – effective March 17th.  It was particularly difficult, as I had [...]

Read Full Post »