Week 18: Our Cheese Will Be Moved

Happy Friday!

I hope you have had a good week of return coming out of our Christmas Break! I trust that your time over the holidays was enjoyable and well spent with your family and friends. The first week of 2023 marks the beginning of the eighteenth week of the 2022-2023 school year and we have a lot of good work in front of us to close out this school year and reach our district goals.

This week also marks the beginning of a new gubernatorial administration for our state and this means a new educational vision, goals, laws, policies, rules, procedures, and leaders at the state level. This began right away today as Governor Sanders proclaimed four executive orders, one of them being the resolution for her LEARNS initiative. I want to use this Wrap-up to provide you with some insight into what this may mean for us educators.

The headline of this Wrap-up may be exciting to some of you and ominous to others. I think we will experience a little of both but, overall, if the goals of LEARNS are achieved it will mean good things for our state.

LEARNS

This stands for Literacy, Empowerment, Accountability, Readiness, Networking, and School Safety and Governor Sanders released an executive order today instructing our new Secretary of Education, Jacob Oliva, to carry out this initiative. We have not seen the bill or bills of new laws that will be enacted to carry out this order but Secretary Oliva emailed all superintendents on Wednesday explaining that our state department would examine current practices in education to determine whether or not they meet these ends.

One of the concerns of the initiative is related to empowerment, which is referring to school choice. Secretary Oliva did say that public schools should be the preferred choice for parents and that it is his focus to make that happen. However, another matter related to empowerment has been the potential for vouchers to be expanded giving parents taxpayer funds to help pay tuition for private schools and even use for homeschooling. We need to monitor how this develops and consider how it meshes with the accountability portion of this initiative because right now, there is no accountability for homeschooled students other than their own.

The whole LEARNS initiative is encouraging and legislators have reached out to superintendents and administrators to learn more about the rules and regulations that bog us down as a way to reach these goals without having to overhaul our educational system. As I communicate with our state leaders, I would like to give you the opportunity to provide me with input; so, please take part in this next Thought Exchange.

I should add here that Secretary Oliva was the senior chancellor for the Florida Department of Education and you may recall that in a past Wrap-up from February 25th, 2022, I mentioned how Florida was abandoning standardized tests to focus on progress monitoring. This could be an indication of things to come and it would be encouraging for this administration to do the same for the students of Arkansas.

What We Are Asking For

We have become very good at doing school but are we doing the most for student learning to happen and the most to give our local communities the workforce and entrepreneurs it needs to thrive? This is a question we have been asking for a while as the issue of school choice has become more popular. One of our conclusions has been the increased demands placed on public schools without additional financial and structural support to provide them.

We have a very rigid system of standards and policies that have existed since 1983 and they squelch the numerous ways to provide individualized learning and fulfill specific community needs of students. They were developed for a ‘college for all’ concept but have created a disdain for learning, which is communicated very well for this generation in a video made by Prince Ea called What Is School For. This video encapsulates this generation’s attitude toward school. You should watch it. You will find truth in it but there are parts of it that may offend you or hurt your feelings. Nevertheless, we must strategize as educators not to fight this attitude but to make learning relevant again.

This year’s Superintendent of the Year for Arkansas, Dr. Jared Cleveland of Springdale, gave a good outline of this rigid system and its history. He expresses the need for a more flexible system to service our local communities and still provide the academic rigor for a strong citizenry. We will use this premise to ask legislators for the freedom to compete if school choice is going to be a focus of this legislative session and this administration.

These two things - the LEARNS initiative and the current public school plan to ask for a chance to compete will mean that the protected systems of education may not be protected any longer. Our cheese will be moved but there are three points in the parable to remember:

* Thinking too much about your cheese might paralyze you, so just start looking.

* Nothing lasts forever, so keep your eyes open for approaching changes.

* You can always find new cheese, and the minute you start moving things will get better.

I will add that staying mission-focused will help us deal with the change and mean the best outcomes for our students. I will keep you all up-to-date on this session but you can also go to the Arkansas State Legislature home page to read the bills that impact you in some way.

Closing

There will be a report given to the Board on Tuesday for our district goals. I have been given the good news from both MMS and MHS that last semester had fewer numbers of F’s, especially multiple F’s, than has been seen for a long time. Also, speaking of the Board, January is School Board Member Appreciation Month so please thank our members for their service if you have the opportunity.

Here are the Thought Exchange results for the question about next year’s calendar. The PPC is working on the 23-24 calendar now and it will be proposed at the February Board meeting unless finished by Tuesday.

Congratulations to all of our basketball players, wrestlers, band members, and chess players for all of the success they have had this week and over the Christmas Break!

At Mena Public Schools our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident.

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