Higher expectations, lower funding

"As we are declining in revenue we are raising the bar (expectations of student performance). That is a disconnect," said Sisters School Superintendent Jim Golden at a school board workshop last week. "We need leadership with vision to leverage our reduced resources."

Led by High Country Educational Services District (ESD) Deputy Superintendent Kathy Emerson and the Sisters School Board, the three school principals and the superintendent tackled the always-tricky task of crafting revised mission and vision statements for the Sisters schools.

Once the mission and vision are defined, the board expects to be able to finalize the goals and objectives of the board, Golden, and the school principals.

"Our building focus will be connecting with kids, exceeding standards, continuous improvement, and aligning our goals to national and international standards. That means our kids can go anywhere on the planet. State standards, in my opinion, are too low," said Golden.

Each of the school principals placed an emphasis on real-time evaluation of student progress relative to the standards to allow sufficient time for corrective action. Jan Silberman, Sisters Elementary School Principal, focused on the "gateway" skill of reading for early intervention and small group instruction.

Mark Stewart, new Sisters Middle School Principal, focused on "unwrapping the standards," leadership evaluation and a new progressive discipline policy. In tune with the others, Bob Macauley, Sisters High School Principal, is focused on real-time evaluation and intervention to assure that all students will meet the ever more challenging graduation requirements.

Across the board there is an emphasis on all teachers being able to teach the full range of key subjects, especially reading and math. This might include integrating reading instruction into a math lesson or a science project or including a math lesson in a cooking project.

Sisters schools and Sisters students continue to perform well in comparison with Central Oregon schools, and Sisters enjoys a high ranking when compared to other schools in the state. However, most of these measurements are after-the-fact or "summative" measurements. The OAKS tests and No Child Left Behind standards are intended as accountability measures; they are not designed or intended to be real-time tools to modify instructional effectiveness.

There appears to be a consensus among the workshop attendees that a set of real-time, highly visible/accessable and constantly updated "dashboard gauges" needs to be developed to help keep Sisters schools on target.

Superintendent Golden submitted his draft for these dashboard gauges at the workshop. The board will meet for a second work session on November 17 with the intent of finalizing the vision, mission and goals statements. With agreement on these concepts, the final dashboard gauges can be refined and posted at the district office.

Public input on the vision, mission, goals and dashboard gauges is encouraged at the November 3 school board meeting (7 p.m. at the district office).