Almost There

Anyone who has lived in Syracuse for any length of time knows enough not to complain about the weather being too hot. That being said, it has been a challenge for students and staff in a few of our buildings to beat the heat these past few days. We are not running a "Sweating Off the Pounds" program in case anyone asks you.

I recently finished signing all of the diplomas for graduation. I sign all of them in the hopes that all of our seniors will graduate in June. The process of signing diplomas takes about 6 hours.  People ask why I don't just use a stamp and save the time. Providing a personal signature on every document I sign, including diplomas, to me is a non-negotiable. Our children have spent 13 years getting to the stage in June and the last thing I want to give them as a memento is a piece of paper with a rubber stamp signature. I just looked at my diploma from 1989 the other day and my Superintendent did the exact same thing; I just didn't know who he was ;>).

Stan Davis came and spoke to our staff, students, and community about bullying. I found his presentation to be very helpful. He introduced new research that will help us to depart from many of the things that we have tried as school leaders over the years that have simply not worked. 

As we form our committee to refocus our efforts and develop a new direction for our District, we will apply some of his techniques including involving students in the process (at all levels), increasing communication with the home, finding ways to hold parents more accountable for the behavior of their children, teaching strategies to children so they have a better understanding of when something should and shouldn't be brought to the attention of an adult. I am pretty excited to move in this direction and I am hopeful that we will be a better District in this regard when our project is completed.

I am really excited for Kaleidoscope this evening. What a great way to see all of our Fine Arts talent in one location! Good luck to all of our sports teams that have entered Sectional play and have a wonderful weekend capped off with a great parade on Monday.

Chris

Recharge

If you have been following my Twitter feeds at (http://www.twitter.com/cbrownwgcsd), you have seen that I finally got the camera on my phone working and able to upload pictures!  This has been a blast. 

From the Senior Ball (which was elegant), to the after-party (thanks to all of the parent volunteers), through the budget vote, the various concerts this week, several games, and the Special Olympics, you can see that we have our children involved in a lot of very worthwhile activities.  As I get better with the camera, I will certainly share more pictures.  The pictures from the Ball for example, had over 500 views in the first 2 hours that they were posted.  Amazing.

Speaking of amazing, thank you once again for your overwhelming support on the budget. We had close to a 75% pass rate which really exemplifies the trust that the community has in our school District. I certainly respect that trust and will do everything in my power to keep it.

I am hoping to enjoy a beautiful weekend watching my youngest play AAU basketball, and I plan to attend the opening of the aqueduct in Camillus if I can rally and shake this cold that seemingly will not go away!

Enjoy your weekend and I will post again next week.

Chris

Senior Ball

There have been a lot of things happening lately and sharing them all would be something that I could probably bind and publish. The long and short of it is that we are now 29 days away from graduation.  Advanced Placement Exams, Grades 3-8 Assessments, and benchmarking are all in full swing. Spring sports are well underway and just about all of our teams are performing very well. It is always a pleasure to watch the joy that success brings.

We also held the Honors Dinner at the high school, have held many concerts, and are preparing for Kaleidoscope and a Blue Ribbon School Celebration.

We have done all of this while elected officials bicker over sales tax, the Governor furloughs workers and holds back State Aid, and 5,000 gallons of oil spill into the Gulf each day. We are handling our business.

Today we held a simulated DWI crash at the high school. Words cannot express my gratitude to the many emergency volunteers, students, staff, Town Board and School Board members who participated in this very important activity. Part of being a teenager is making poor decisions, learning from them, and moving on.  Drinking and driving, or getting into a car with someone who has been drinking, is a poor decision that just cannot be made. With the Senior Ball tonight and graduation right around the corner, please help me help our children to make the right decision.

Speaking of the Senior Ball, I am very excited to be attending this evening. I have a beautiful date who has attended 17 dances with me going right back to before we were even married. The dance and the All-Night Party at the high school should be a great time. Thanks to all of the parents and companies that have donated time, food, and prizes for this event.

On a very positive note, I had the pleasure of attending the Senior Breakfast with one of our students with special needs. I asked her about her dress and if she was looking forward to attending the dance. She is very excited. I then asked if I could get my picture taken with her, and she told me that I had to ask her boyfriend first!

I also got to meet a senior who will be the first in her family to receive a High School Diploma. How could my day end on a more positive note than that?

Have a great weekend-

Chris

Happy Mothers Day

Time to give thanks to all of the moms.  Speaking for myself, I would say that my mom is a very special person, and I probably wouldn't be where I am today if it was not for her guidance and up-bringing. Thanks mom!

On another note, we are happy to announce that West Genesee has once again been named "One of the Best Music Communities in the Nation".  Congratulations to Mr. Davern and all of his staff for providing our children with quality music programs.

If you have been keeping track of the sales tax situation, our sales tax revenue will be trimmed over the next few years. This is not ideal but is certainly better than receiving nothing; which is how the proposal started.  We will manage our budget and slowly trim it down to reflect the change in revenue over the next couple of years.

Enjoy the weekend.  Next week is the Honors Dinner and then the Senior Ball!

Chris

Did You Know That Our Varsity Softball Team is 7-0!

As we count down the days until the budget vote, which will lead us quickly to graduation, it is time to reflect on all of the great things that are happening.  For starters we have plenty of people signed up to help us re-vamp our anti-bullying program(s) into one K-12 message and to brainstorm ways to help lessen the bullying that is happening.

While it is very clear that the majority of bullying is happening on the Internet and cell phones, we are developing some strategies to involve parents more to help make them aware of what their children are doing and give them skills to help their children to make better choices when they choose to bully. I am excited that we will develop something powerful and pertinent.

The Junior Prom is this weekend also and our attendees are a excited as ever.  Please keep an extra thought in your head that all of our attendees make good choices and get to and from the Prom safely. 

We are also pleased with our Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Camillus-NY/West-Genesee-Central-School-District/358918496938?ref=ts. We get more followers each day, and it is a great place to get information about the school.  Check it out.

Before I get back to budget work, I wanted to let you know that I am going to start a new segment on Twitter called "Did You Know".  It will be the first tweet that I send each day and will include a fun fact about something in the District. 

All for now.  Enjoy what is looking like a very nice weekend.

Chris

Some Thoughts Before Break

I wanted to send you into the break week with a few deep thoughts and maybe a few shallow ones as well. This post is lengthy, so don't tell my former English Teachers at Westhill or St. Ann's that I can actually write. Thank you.

1. DWI Simulated Crash: On May 14 at 7:30 a.m., we will be holding a DWI simulated crash in the grass stadium at the high school. This will be similar to what we did last year with the seniors, except we are going to add the juniors so that we can do this exercise every other year instead of every year. More details will follow but this important exercise was beneficial last year, and I expect much of the same for this year. Anything we can do to remind our students not to drink and drive is time well spent in my book. We will have a section for parents and community members if you would like to see our community volunteers and school officials at work.

2. Anti-Bullying Task Force: Recently a girl in Massachusetts was "Facebook-ed" to death by her peers. When Channel 3 asked me what we do as far as anti-bullying efforts, I was quite embarrassed to tell them that we have over 30 programs K-12 but yet bullying remains. I have always believed, and still believe, that teaching kids not to bully starts at the dinner table and ends at their school desk. 

When I sat back and looked at all of the programs that we have (many at substantial cost), it got me thinking that we need to assemble a group of people to review what we do have and refocus the message with one strong program and one strong message that we can use K-12 and in the community. I am assembling a "task force" consisting of Board members, administrators, teachers, support staff, students, and parents to help evaluate what we currently have as tools, which tools are best, and how to shape policy to reflect our changing times and our desire to curb bullying. I hope to have something to bring to the Board by the early Fall.

As a kick off to this task force, Stan Davis and recognized name in Anti-Bullying practices will be holding workshops for administrators, staff, students, and the community on May 24-25. I encourage you to participate if you can. More information will follow on our web site http://www.westgenesee.org/.

3. The Big Picture: As many of you know I was able to have a closed door meeting with the Commissioner of Education. This meeting was held with only a small handful other Superintendent's present. Media and photos were not allowed. We spent about an hour and twenty minutes just talking about education. I listened intently, asked a few questions but walked away figuring that much of what was said was going nowhere.

Shortly after the meeting I received a "field-memo" from the Board of Regents explaining proposed changes to the New York State Education system. Most of these changes were things that the Commissioner discussed at the meeting. In my experience if something makes it to a field memo it pretty much is going to happen in some way, shape, or form.

Essentially he told us to prepare to accommodate "nontraditional methods for program completion." These methods include credit recovery (NovaNet), independent study for up to 3 elective credits, credit accrual (no seat time necessary to complete a course but some type of test, etc...), shorter assessments, more computer based assessments, allowing students to graduate as soon as they have completed 22 units of study, virtual schools, and flexibility of certifications (especially in Special Education and Middle Schools). He gave no time line for any of the items but the English 11 Regents exam scheduled for January 2011 will be a day shorter, so I think they mean business.

Should all of these ideas actually be implemented, it is going to change education in New York State in an exciting way. In the hands of irresponsible leaders these changes are dangerous tools to lower standards and push students through the system. I intend to use these tools to help those learners who struggle or who need a different way to complete without sacrificing the high standards that we have for student success.

The high school is experiencing this challenge already with the use of NovaNet. Fortunately they had a good plan when implementation began and they are now making changes as new situations arise. My suggestion to all of us is to be think proactively on the other items that the Commissioner would like to implement, and to create practices, policies, and programs before we are directed to do so. It never hurts to be a PILOT school.

4.  If you are one of the 400,000 million people on Facebook, we have a new Facebook fan page.  It is a pass through for information about the school and events, and it is another great way to stay connected to the school. You can reach the page by going to http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Camillus-NY/West-Genesee-Central-School-District/358918496938?ref=mf .

5.  The fight continues to keep our portion of the sales tax from the county.  Right now the two proposals call for a 75/25 split between the county and city (nothing to the schools) or a three year phase out to schools.  I hope that they choose the phase out if they only have the two choices. Enough said.

Thanks and have a safe and enjoyable break.

Chris

If You Don't Stand for Something, You Stand for Nothing

As we read the papers and watch television lately we are innudated with all of the negative news surrounding school budgets. Each story tells a tale about the philosophy and leadership styles of each of our communities in the county. One theme holds true for us and all of our neighbors, though, and that is the goal of reducing budgets while having the least impact on students. 

In some schools such as ours, the reductions will not impact student programs and services to a great extent next year.  In other districts this is just not possible. It should be understood that as school leaders we do not wake up in the morning and think of ways to reduce programs and staff. As school leaders we are charged with guiding our schools through good times and bad, and this is one of those bad times. 

While you as a reader may not care what toll these decisions are taking on the people making them, I can assure you that the stress caused is incredibly significant.  Whatever opinion one might have about a school leader in any given community, we are still human beings. My hope is that as things begin to turn around, the stress level will decrease. 

Many of you have also read about contracts being re-opened or contracts being negotiated with staff to try and save money. The same will hold for me as well. I intend to walk-the-walk, and I promised my groups that I would not accept a percentage raise greater than what any of our groups are getting. At the end of the day, it is the Board of Education that decides my compensation, but they understand my feelings. 

I was taught long ago that leading by example is more powerful than anything I could say.  I will continue to lead by example.

I will be attending another meeting regarding sales tax, and I will make sure to update you as soon as I return. This issue is significant and will affect us in a very negative way if we cannot retain some portion of what we have been receiving from the county. Your calls and e-mails to legislators about this issue are helpful and have had an impact.  Thank you.

Chris