Wow!

As the Central football team heads into their last regular season football game tonight, they will be trying for a second undefeated season in a row.  Even in our early, rain filled games the team has competed in front of great Central crowds all season.  While the football team (rightfully so) has drawn the largest headlines, something even more special happened in Central sports yesterday.

The Central Girls Cross Country team competed in districts yesterday.  Not only did they take first at districts on their way to State, they did so by individually qualifying their top 5 runners.  For those that don't follow cross country running, folks this is unheard of!  To qualify for State, a runner has to finish in the top 15 at the district meet.  Central's runners finished 3rd, 5th, 10th, 14th, and 15th!  As a team Central finished 1st with a score of 47, second place Starmont finished with a score of 83.

This is the 4th year in a row the Central Girls Cross Country team has won districts.  Even more amazing than that, our Central Girls Cross Country team has qualified for State in 11 of the past 12 years and finished 5th or above 8 of those 11 times.

Cross Country doesn't come with huge home crowds, with most of the support coming from the runner's direct family and friends.  Yet, year in and year out our Central girls are quietly accomplishing something special.  Please take time to extend a congratulations to our runners and coaches on an incredible feat yesterday, and good luck at State girls!

Central Elementary SINA Corrective Action Plan

Central's SINA Corrective Action Plan is now available for public comment.  Anonymous comments will be accepted as long as they are kept constructive and professional.

Voter Survey Results

Vote Survey Letter and Results

Central Elementary Parent Resources

A big thank you to all of our Central parents for your support as we have transitioned into standards-based grading and multi-age classrooms.  The changes have been slow as we work to ensure we are doing things right the first time.  One change we are working on is to increase parent communication.  Our first step in doing this was to offer a stronger district website to better support communication.  While the district website is still a work in progress, I wanted to draw your attention to an area I hope you will find helpful in supporting your child's education.

Under the elementary tab of the district website, you will find a pull-down with Parent/Student Resources.  Resources are divided by multi-age level, IXL Math, and ST Math.  Our standards for the 1st quarter are listed as well as the grading rubric for that standard.  Under the grading rubric you will find resources you can do at home with your child that aligns to the standard they are learning in class. 

We will continue to develop these resources and add more as we move through the school year so please stop back often!

Again, thank you for your continued support.  Central Elementary students are off to a great start this school year.

Bond Survey Results

Last Friday a group of our National Honor Society students opened the bond surveys and entered the data and comments.  As of today we have had 45% of all voters respond to the survey with results being nearly 50-50 yes and no voters.  Outside a few pointed negative comments the feedback will be extremely valuable as the Central Board of Directors makes a decision on how to solve our current facility problems in regards to age, safety, accessibility, and student learning.  A work session is planned for October 5th at 6:00pm in the High School Media Center to discuss the survey data and possible next steps.

As the Central Board of Directors works through next steps for our facilities, the Central staff and I have our work cut out for us in addressing some major misconceptions about Central.

1. Central is a viable school district and can will remain so for a very long time.  Yes enrollment is a concern, but even if we combine with another district enrollment will remain a concern.  Outside of a few urban areas, enrollment around Iowa is declining.  Merging two school districts with declining enrollment and all you have created is one district with declining enrollment, plus you expanded your transportation and building costs.  In the November Central Newsletter I will provide data showing Central's financial status and enrollment.
2. Education is different from when we went to school, and that is a good thing.  I know this is a tough concept for most to grasp, but education has changed immensely in the last 5 years.  Federal and State mandates have led to much higher accountability on teachers and administration.  Gone are the days were we can teach "one-size fits all" out of a textbook to the whole grade level class.  Teachers are now asked to meet each individual student's needs, something our public education system was never designed for.  I am incredibly proud of the work our Central teachers have done to meet the changes of higher accountability.  Data also shows it is working!  In my two years as elementary principal, Central Elementary has went from a 74% reading proficiency rate to an 85% reading proficiency rate.
3. Improving Central isn't about a feather in the Superintendent's hat, and it isn't about luxury for teachers and staff.  Improving Central is about improving our community.  We can not recruit new people to our area without a vibrant school district.  You have to look no further than our surrounding communities to see what happens when the High School leaves.  When you lose your High School, you lose your identity, you lose your events, you lose your crowds that visit our businesses.  We sometimes take for granted the fact that we have a hospital, movie theater, grocery store, restaurants, bowling ally, car dealership, and a variety of other businesses not found in most small rural towns.  How do we support these businesses we often take for granted without youth?
4. Face-to-face communication needs to continue to improve.  Social media makes it easy for anyone to be brave and say anything (I have been guilty of this myself).  Highly successful schools have incredible parent and community support.  All of us need to work together and own our school.  If you live in this district, you are a taxpayer and a stakeholder of Central.  Lets work together to find ways of communicating that do not divide the community and school, but unite them.  Our bond survey wasn't meant for finger pointing, but instead meant to make whatever we decide to try and do with Central's facilities, a true community effort and project.  If you have a concern with Central, please bring that to our attention before posting something on Facebook.  Nobody wins when our school district is spoken about negatively.  You are our stakeholders and we want to hear from you, that is the only way we can improve!

Results from the bond survey will be released on our district website and in the local paper shortly after the work-session.  We are also continuously working on updating our new district website to better provide information to our stakeholders.  Please let us know how we are doing or suggestions of things you would like to see.

Yes or No on the bond vote, lets work together to improve our Central Community.  Together we can do great things!

Very Proud

Last night Central hosted Parent's Night for volleyball.  Our Warrior girls faced off against North Fayette Valley, and while we lost our matches they fought hard and represented Central extremely well.

On top of being represented well by our athletes and coaches, I shot out a Tweet last night about our student section.  I was extremely impressed with their sportsmanship and school spirit.  They single-handedly made the atmosphere in our gymnasium electric! 

This morning when I opened up my email, I was extremely pleased to see I wasn't the only one that noticed.  The following is from a NFV spectator:
Just wanted to send you a quick note and let you know how impressed I was with your student section last night at the volleyball games.  What an excellent display of school spirit and sportsmanship.  Nice to see that still exists.  Kudos to the Central kids!

Being an administrator it is often times very wearing always hearing what we are doing wrong.  I love hearing about the many things we are doing well, specially from outside sources!  Thank you Central students and staff for representing our Mission/Vision as a school district.

I am a very proud Superintendent/Principal today!

Welcome Back!

Today starts the beginning of the 2015/16 school year and I can't begin to express how wonderful it was seeing all of our students this morning.  Mr. Yanda greeted his 6-12 student body with an assembly in the auditorium and I greeted my K-5th grade student body with our annual flag raising ceremony.

This school year we will continue on our journey of multi-age classrooms in the elementary.  This move will ensure Central remains viable as a district for a very long time, and by evidence of last year's test scores does not hurt students academically.

I will also be emphasizing the importance of communication with all Central staff to all of our Central stakeholders.  We have begun improving our communication through a new and updated district website.  Those interested in news from Central can sign up for updates and every time we update our website an email will be sent to you.  Please be patient with us as we are all still learning the many capabilities of our new district website.

Obviously the hot topic over the summer has been the school remodel and bond election.  Data from the election shows 75% of voters were 45 years or older, almost 50% of voters were 60 years or older.  Central needs the support of this age group to make much needed improvements to our K-12 building.  I am challenging my staff to get our students out into the community even more this school year.  We need voters to realize the importance of having Central Community School District.  Those with the mindset that we should consolidate with another school need to consider the following:
Who would you like to consolidate with?  We are the smallest district of our surrounding neighbors, so do you believe the larger districts will be in favor of keeping a consolidated school here in Elkader?  The answer is "no"!  Now take the school out of Elkader, what does that mean for our businesses?  What does that mean for our movie theater?  Our hospital?  Our pool?  What about students getting to this new consolidated school?  We currently have students on the bus already at the hour limit set by law, how can we legally expand travel time? 

Consolidation isn't a "real" answer if those of us that live in this community love the services our community offers.  If our school district leaves, then people leave and our services leave, simple as that!  So what is our alternative?  Obviously I believe we need to support our school district by investing in our school district.  By investing in our school district, we have a better chance to attract more families to our community, not lose them through consolidation.  Albert Einstein said it best, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again & expecting different results."  Do we really want to continue to patch our building together, or do we want to make an investment that could have the potential to grow our community?  We NEED to do something different.

The school board will be sending out a survey to receive feedback from everyone who voted in the June 30th bond election.  The information from the survey will be used to determine next steps for our school district.  Please return the survey with your honest feedback and please consider the points I make about consolidation.  Look at any town in Iowa that has lost it's school.  The proof is clearly out there!

Sunday Night's Open House

My "tour" group last night had some amazing questions, which I thought I would share on my Blog plus other questions I have been hearing.  Enjoy and feel free to ask anything I may have missed.

Why does this project need to be done now?

It has been 43 years since Central last passed a bond.  One could argue there is never a good time to increase taxes, so when is a good time to do a project like this?  The longer we wait to address the needs of our K-12 building, the more the cost goes up.  So while $6.75 million is a lot of money, that number will be higher next year and even higher the year after.  Meanwhile, the problems with our building are not going away and we simply cannot fix them without a bond.

What is unsafe about our current building?

·      Currently we are using three classrooms (two special education rooms and one drafting room) that are unsafe for our students due to accessibility issues and having only one exit.  Without this remodel, we will have to continue using those classrooms. 

·      The entrances to our K-12 building are unsecured.  With recent news of child abductions (Henry county) and another shooting (Coral Ridge Mall), we should be proactively working to make our kids safe.  With the remodel, we will have secure entrances and know exactly who is in our building and when.

·      Our K-12 building currently does not have a tornado safe room.  The new construction will be built tornado safe.

What about Clayton Ridge and their bond failing?

Two major differences between Clayton Ridge and Central: 1) The Central School Board voted 100% in favor of this project; the Clayton Ridge School Board did not.  2) We have one building for our kids, Clayton Ridge has two.  If we still had Volga and I said we were putting $6.75 million into Elkader and doing nothing with Volga, that would be a hard vote to get passed.  This is a focused investment towards making necessary improvements to the only building we have.

What is being done in each phase?

Phase one includes the following:

·      Turning the HS media center into a new commons area and cafeteria/kitchen.

·      Eliminate unsafe special education classrooms and remodel two new special education classrooms.

·      Remodel of science rooms and labs including new greenhouse.

·      New concession stand.

·      New guidance counselor office and conference room.

·      New handicap accessible restrooms.

·      New elementary music rooms and music storage.

·      New 6^th grade classroom.

·      Remodel district office to include high school offices.

·      New elementary office, which includes new nurse’s area.

·      Secure elementary entrance on Davis Street.

·      Secure middle school/high school entrance on North First Street.

Phase two includes the following:

·      Total tear down of kitchen, middle school locker rooms, weight room, wrestling room, and cardio room.

·      Rebuild all new middle school locker rooms, weight room, aerobics room, multi-purpose room, elementary restrooms, scaled-up classroom, high school restrooms, and high school media center.

·      New elevator to address accessibility concerns.

·      Remodel the career and technical education area (shop).

New mechanical including replacing our boilers will be done in all phases.  Depending on how quickly we can free up space, will make the difference on how fast this project can be completed.  Estimations are 2 or 3 years to complete the project.

Why don’t we build a new school?

The facilities committee looked at all options.  Building a new K-12 building would cost a minimum of $20 million and our bonding capacity is only $16 million.  That eliminates building a brand new school from being an option.  There are also many academic benefits to having our school located in town.

Why don’t we have one high school for all of the area schools?

Who is going to give up their high school?  Should we give up our high school when Elkader leads the county in sales tax revenue?  Should MFL Mar-Mac give up their high school when they have the most kids?  If we do give up our high school, what will that do for our local businesses?  In my experience, every town that loses their school suffers major economic distress once that school is gone.

How do we know Central won’t be closed in 20 years?

Nobody can say for certainty how things will be 20 years into the future.  We can only look at current factors and make the best decision possible based on the information we have now.  Central’s current enrollment is 450 students; projections for the next couple years look similar with possible increases. 

One thing we considered was West Central.  Their current enrollment is 265 students.  They just invested $7.9 million into an addition.  If you look at Central’s enrollment the past 5 years, we average a loss of 6 students a year.  At that rate it would take us 31 years to get down to 265 students.  This strongly indicates that Central will be here for the life of the bond and beyond. 

The Central School Board and I also believe we can pay off the bond in less than 20 years.

How do you get the support of the agricultural community?

This is the toughest area to get support, in my opinion.  Those of us who own property in town know our property values will plummet if we lose our school.  Agricultural land value isn’t affected in the same way.  Still, there are benefits for our agricultural community to support this bond:

·      Central currently has the 2^nd lowest tax rate when compared to our bordering districts.

·      Currently, some of our rural students are on a bus for an hour, which will only increase if we don’t have a school.

·      Central supports agriculture through FFA, 4H and our industrial technology classes.  This is an area being remodeled in the bond. 

·      Many of our students graduate, go off to college, and come back home.  Some continue to work on the family farm; others take jobs that support the agricultural industry.

Why should the business community support this project?

Central Community School District runs a $7 million dollar yearly budget.  Out of that $7 million, approximately half goes to salaries.  The people employed by Central spend a lot of money and tax dollars in our local community.  It would be very hard to argue taking $7 million dollars out of the Central community would have a positive affect on our local businesses.  We need a quality school if we want to attract quality people to our community.  How do I get the best educators, how does the hospital get the best doctors, or how do we get people to live here when we show them a school building that isn’t safe and accessible for all?

When is good enough no longer "good enough?"

As we near the upcoming bond vote for Central's proposed remodel project, the opposition is starting to use "good enough" as a reason not to support the project.  So I have to ask, what does "good enough" mean? 

Here is a picture of my truck, a 2002 Chevy Silverado which I bought with 17,000 miles.  By far and away the most dependable, low maintenance vehicle I have ever owned.  Yet, is it "good enough"?  The motor has over 250,000 miles on it and as you can see the body is deteriorating badly.  Should I replace the body and continue to maintain it, or should I start looking for a replacement? 

In essence, this is where we are at with our K-12 building.  43 years since Central last passed a bond issue to do anything major to our facilities.  Like my truck, there comes a time where maintenance no longer makes sense.  Sure we can continue to be "good enough" and maintain our building, and with a "no" vote that is exactly what we will do.  Looking around our community, I don't see anything that says "good enough".  A large investment was made to improve our downtown store fronts.  Our industrial park (CAT, MTS, Alpine, and our Fire Department) all have state of the art buildings.  Looking around this summer I see many residents making improvements to their houses.  Our community became a pioneer with the addition of a whitewater park and Founders Park.  Innovative Ag Services put in a new bin and is moving to a new computerized system to better support farmers.  Again, nowhere do I see "good enough" in our community so why should "good enough" be the standard we want for our school district?

Central has the second lowest tax rate when compared to our neighbors, and the highest overall academics (source- 2014 Iowa Assessments).  Yet we also outsourced $200,000 last year due to our inability to have handicapped students in our building.  These are ongoing costs to taxpayers.  And more importantly, us turning our backs on our local children who have the highest needs.

I will do another piece next week getting more specific about costs, projections, and concerns I am hearing.  I completely understand someone not being able to afford higher taxes.  What I do not understand is how we can have a "good enough" attitude for our children and our community's future.

Upcoming Elementary Events

Elementary Parents/Guardians,

A letter will be sent out about our upcoming events but I also wanted to share them here so you can plan ahead.  Below are some important dates as we wrap up the school year:

May 15th- K/1 Mother's Day Program, 8:30-9:30 in the auditorium.
May 27th- 4/5 Volga River Day
May 28th- K/1 Field Trip to Osborne.
June 2nd- 4/5 Field Trip to Mississippi River Museum, Dubuque.
June 3rd- Transition Day. All students will move up to their new classes in the afternoon.
June 4th- CCS awards assembly, 9:30-10:30.
June 4th- Family Lunch at Founder's Park, students will begin walking to Founder's Park at 11:00 and will meet their families at the park.
June 5th- 11:30 dismissal (Enjoy your summer!)