Teachers prepare for new school year

Hey, kids ­ your teachers are back in school.

On Monday, August 24, teachers of the Sisters School District headed back to the classroom. Not to teach ­ students won't be back for a week ­ but to plan for a better school year.

The agenda for the day began at 8 a.m. with general comments, introduction of new staff, a discussion of goals and a report on a leadership retreat.

"This day in part is an extension of last spring's leadership conference," said Superintendent Steve Swisher.

A summary of the leadership retreat handed out to teachers listed strengths of the district and areas of possible improvement. Strengths included quality administrative and teaching staff, strong academics and high standards for student behavior, among others attributes.

Priority "areas for growth" included improving communication among the three schools, becoming more effective in helping students meet new and tougher state standards, and providing more time for staff training and planning.

Before lunch, small groups reviewed different topics according to their specialty, according to Swisher.

Eavesdropping from the halls revealed one group of teachers discussing curriculum alignment from kindergarten through 10th grade.

"If we need more time for math, what do we take away from?" asked one teacher.

In another room, teachers worked tried to plan for better coordination between volunteers, aides and teaching staff.

Across the hall, a teacher asked when the switch from paper to electronic tracking of students would take place.

On this first day back from the summer break, Swisher said the staff seemed eager and ready to go, although those returning from the elementary and middle school had a shorter than normal summer vacation.

This was caused in part by the abrupt abandonment of the new calendar adopted last year for grades K-8. That calendar had shorter vacations to help students retain over the summer what they had learned. School for those students and teachers lasted until July.

The school board abandoned the modified calendar in the face of protests from a group of parents and some staff, especially at the middle school, who opposed having one schedule for the high school and another for the rest of the district.

Of the change, Swisher said he was "disappointed that we did not have a full implementation, so we could measure the impact" of the new calendar. When the calendar was adopted it was determined that it would take two to three years to see the benefits.

A change facing teachers this year at the high school is a trimester system, with a five-class school day, each class lasting for 70 to 75 minutes. Last year, students carried eight classes, attending four 90-minute sessions each day. Under that "block" system, a single subject would be taught every other day.

The change was made primarily for budget reasons. The block calendar was more labor intensive and, according to Principal Dennis Dempsey, with a decrease in teachers and increase in high school enrollment this year, classes would have grown too large.

Swisher said that most of the high school staff seemed to favor the new schedule, but for different reasons. Some, he said, never particularly favored the block scheduling.

Others regard the return to the more standard schedule "as the least of evils, based upon the budget constraints," he said.