GO HAWKS!!!!!

Where do I start???
Last Monday Snow, Tuesday Snow, Next Monday MORE SNOW!!!!!

I appreciate the flexibility of students, staff and parents in these times of snow and rain and flooding!!!

End of the Semester/quarter is today! HS Parents please double check your students schedules to make sure they are the way you want them. Students have three days to change their schedules.

I may have mentioned my crazy idea for wanting to move to one to one computers for all students 6-12 next year. Mr. Elliott and I visited a school yesterday and saw how they rolled their program out. One thing a person there said that stuck with me is, “It is not a question of if your school is going to have one to one computers it is a question of when!” It is getting to be more and more common for schools to move to this set up. Van Meter and South Hamilton are schools that are close that have one to one computers. One benefit is that we would no longer need computer labs. (Our computer labs are in need of upgrading at this time!) Some of the controls are that each computer is filtered from school and home. The school we visited had the control of logging off the machines at 1:00 am until 5:00 am. The students screens can be brought up at anytime. Would students be able to handle this responsibility? I think so. Maybe keep the sixth graders computer at school for the first semester or have them take them home on limited days starting out! One thing the school said that was interesting was that the students take very good care of the machines because they are the one’s responsible for them. Of course the big question is how are we going to pay for this? Or where is the money going to come from. The SILO fund is where a lot of the schools are getting their money. The SILO fund is the one cent local option sales tax money that schools receive. The money can only be spent on infrastructure. The best way to describe that is buildings, buses, and items costing more than $500.00. That is the short version. They lease the computers over a three or four year period. We also receive some Microsoft settlement money at the HS which comes to about $50,000. Then I wanted to look at the schools website thinking the school must be really cool. I looked at the sports schedules and they were from 2008-2009!

I know it is scary thinking about having 365 kids all with a lap top, especially for us parents who cannot figure out how to get our cell phones off speaker phone when we receive a call in a meeting!! (If you have not had that happen you know someone who has had that happen to them!!)

Student engagement is the big plus when going one to one. The opportunities are unlimited!!!!

They had t-shirts that said 1- Community, 1- Vision, 1 Mission, 1 Computer for every Student.

Please send me any questions or concerns on this one to one topic!!!

Secondly thanks for all the input on the survey (Last time I heard it was up to 328 responses). We are in contact with the Dept. of Education. The Dept. of Ed. is coming out with new information daily!!!! We will keep you posted as soon as we know! The school board is the ones who would need to vote on any changes.

My apologies to the MS Girl’s BB Parents, there was a mix up on the start time. The old conference had a rule all MS games start at 4:30. The new conference likes to start the games at 4:00 but there are exceptions!!! We will try to get these out each Monday morning on the announcements.


Have a great weekend!