Education Notebook

2 Rochester High School principals announce departures

(From today's paper. For the sake of interest, the other principal left in Rochester, John Marshall's Tim Limberg said he isn't going anywhere for next year.)

Two of Rochester's three high school principals will leave the district at the end of the school year for positions in the Twin Cities area, the Post-Bulletin learned Tuesday morning.

Mayo High School Principal Tim Dorway has been offered the principal job at Chanhassen High School, while Century High School Principal Chuck Briscoe will leave Rochester to become the associate superintendent for secondary education at Anoka-Hennepin public schools.

Both administrators in April received regional principal and administrator excellence awards.

'Chasing a dream'

Briscoe said he has been "chasing a dream" of someday becoming a superintendent and this position will help prepare him for that.

"The stars just kind of aligned," said Briscoe, who completed his student teaching years ago in the Anoka-Hennepin district.

Article: High schools raise spirits, thousands of dollars in three weeks

(Ed: The article appears in Wednesday's Post-Bulletin. I'll update with a link when it goes active.)

They set out to raise money but ended up raising spirits.

Rochester’s three public high schools capped their annual holiday fundraisers this week. Each of them raised between $12,000 and $21,500. The high schools held separate celebrations Tuesday afternoon.
Century High School raised $21,500 for Ronald McDonald House and Bear Creek Services, which helps people with developmental disabilities and traumatic brain injuries.

Five people who live in Bear Creek group homes went to the school Tuesday for the celebratory activities, including a student-teacher dodge ball game, dance team performances and a tongue-in-cheek wrestling match between the Bear Creek Bear and the Century Panther.

It might have looked like nothing more than two teenagers wrestling around in mascot suits, but not to Julie Beck, executive director of Bear Creek. “This allows (the Bear Creek residents) to feel like members of the community,” Beck said. “All of the energy, all of the things the students are doing. In some ways, a few hours can change a lifetime.”

Jimmy, a non-verbal adult who lives in a Bear Creek home, showed his excitement once he spotted Santa Claus sitting with the Century band. Others residents joined in at different times, dancing with students who were performing on the gymnasium floor.

“It doesn’t occur to them that they are the only ones up there beside the students,” Beck said. “The kids don’t laugh at them. They laugh because of them, because of the innocence (of the adults).”

The giving continued in classrooms across town. Mayo High School raised more than $12,000 to benefit the Dorothy Day Hospitality House, and John Marshall High School students brought in $18,000 for Christmas Anonymous.  Students from Lourdes High School also participated in Christmas Anonymous, which buys items for needy families during the holidays. Families shop at the Christmas Anonymous store, held at Christ United Methodist Church.

“It’s a really good feeling. It makes you feel good as a person,” said Rachinna Khan, a senior who helped organize the effort at John Marshall.

Keeping the mood light, Tuesday’s celebrations also including head shavings and pies in the face. A few JM students showed their commitment to the cause by waxing off patches of their hair. Khan said senior Will Hertel might have got the worst of it by choosing his chest.

“I think Will was bleeding a little,” Khan said, laughing. “I felt bad for him.”

Away from painful wax treatments and mascot fights, the outreach efforts show students what truly matters during the holidays, said Rita Hendrickson, director of campus ministry at Lourdes.

“It is important for young people to know what it’s like to serve another in need. There’s nothing like it,” Hendrickson said. “I think in a world, with our culture that is all about me, it is imperative to build the kingdom to say, ‘No. It’s about them.”

Article: Cancer takes back seat for Century High teacher

Here's our story about Century High School teacher Sonia Ellsworth, who is currently battling breast cancer. While we have to break it into two stories for print, here's the original version for the Web. I've also included the links to the articles.

LINK: Teacher of the Month: Cancer takes back seat
LINK: Ellsworth decides to 'plow through the issues'

Teacher of the Month: Cancer takes back seat for Century High educator

12/16/2009 9:05:02 AM

When Sonia Ellsworth's morning alarm sounds, she stays in bed awake for another 15 minutes.

	Teacher of the month This month: Century High School teacher Sonia Ellsworth has been named Post-Bulletin Teacher of the Month for December. Ellsworth is currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer, which she has been battling for almost four years. Nominating teachers: The Post-Bulletin and Newspaper In Education invite you to nominate a K-12 teacher who is making a difference. Selection criteria include personal initiative, going beyond the call of duty, innovative methods and encouraging students to achieve academic goals.

She doesn't think about the breast cancer that has recently metastasized through her body, reaching her liver and brain. She doesn't think about outliving her own expectations after being diagnosed three years ago.

Instead, she thinks about teaching science to ninth-graders.

Ellsworth, a science educator at Century High School, has been named the Post-Bulletin Teacher of the Month for December. She is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, and while she has endured at least two surgeries and several rounds of chemotherapy since her 2006 diagnosis, she remains in the classroom.

Every day.

"It takes my mind off of it," said Ellsworth, 41. "I was going stir crazy after about a week or so at home. It was good for me to get back here. ... When I'm (at school), I generally don't think about the cancer."

When she isn't pondering that day's science lab, Ellsworth wants to ensure that her own two children, 12-year-old Jonathan and 9-year-old Stephanie, are ready for school. She blocks her own struggles from her mind.

"I try not to think about (cancer) right away. It's really not a good way to start the day," Ellsworth said.

It's that positive attitude that teachers and students mention when asked to describe the more-than-19-year teaching veteran. The Post-Bulletin received 23 recommendation letters describing Ellsworth's courage and praising her teaching ability.

Eleventh-grader Allie Streiff called Ellsworth one of the most influential people she has ever met.

"She is someone that doesn't let any of her problems get in her way of teaching every day," Streiff wrote.

Forced from classroom

The first round of chemotherapy forced the Century High School teacher homebound in 2006, from mid-February until the end of spring break.

But she returned to school that year and finished the last few weeks. Since then, she has kept steady attendance.

The first days were dark, Ellsworth said. But soon after, she decided to "plow through the issues."

"You can go home, shut the door, close the blinds and sit and stew about it, but you feel worse. And you try those things for awhile, but it goes nowhere fast," Ellsworth said. "Worrying about it didn't fix anything, it didn't change anything. You can choose how you respond to it."

The past three years have been a self-described emotional roller-coaster for Ellsworth, her husband Duane and their two children.

Three surgeries. Several rounds of chemotherapy and more than a dozen different treatments in all. When a glimmer of hope arises, another test delivers a crushing setback: Infected lymph nodes or metastasized cells.

But as long as her Mayo Clinic doctors tell her another option exists, Ellsworth remains positive.

"Whenever something bad happens, as long as I know there are options, I'm OK," Ellsworth said. "I'm afraid that when we get to the point when we run out of options, I don't know what I'll do."

How long will those options remain? She isn't so sure.

After Christmas, when others are prepping New Year Eve plans, she will be eagerly waiting for medical tests. Doctors found in October that the cancer metastasized "all over the place," Ellsworth said.

"One of my doctors was looking at the scans, looked at me, looked back at the scans and said, 'It's almost impossible to believe that is the same person," Ellsworth said.

'Shoving a boulder'

Many parents and students heard "cancer" and didn't think they would see Ellsworth around much after the 2005-06 school year. Others see her in the classroom now and give a double take.

Century High School Principal Chuck Briscoe recalled thinking Ellsworth wouldn't be teaching much longer after a fundraiser in spring of 2008.

"I just hoped to heck that through some miracle she would be back in the fall and that was last year. Through setback after setback, it's an amazing thing that she's still here," said Briscoe, who called Ellsworth a source of inspiration. "The neatest thing about her is she has never complained and she certainly has every right in the world to do so. She has lot of chances where she could have complained or given up but she never has.

"Knowing some of the stuff she is going through, when you think of your own problems it feels kind of a pebble in a shoe and she's shoving a boulder around," Briscoe said.

Not only a job, a passion

Last week, Ellsworth helped her ninth-grade physical science students prepare for a test. Similar to any classroom, a group of inquiring minds formed at the teacher's desk, a line comparable to the corral at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

It's hard not to catch a double meaning in signs posted on the classroom's walls: Believe in yourself -- you can do it. Push aside the fear of failure. Prioritize: What is most important?

One by one, each question gets answered, each student gets helped. Above all, that's what gets Ellsworth through the day. Not her own personal fight, but the struggle to educate students of the Internet age.

It's all about helping a struggling student finally have that "aha" moment, Ellsworth said. She describes her work as not only a job, but also her hobby.

"If I get some ideas across to as many kids as I can, or even to that one kid who thinks they don't understand anything about science, that's what keeps me going," she said. "They may not remember exactly what they learned. They may not remember the exact lesson, but my hope is they take away some of those skills."

Most ninth-graders don't know too much about lymph nodes, tumors and metastasis.

"Here, I can focus on what I'm doing," Ellsworth said. "(Cancer) doesn't matter when I'm here."

Rochester schools: Budget talks take first swipes

Student council? Liasion officers? Media specialists? All could face the budget guillotine in Rochester public schools.

A committee of district staff and community members are debating how the district should carve $4.5 million from next year’s budget. On Monday, staff members presented suggestions that were generated from school sites. No votes were held and the process will continue through February, when the school board will make the cuts. The budget reduction task force will meet next Dec. 2.

Here is today's article.

Staff members generated suggestions, and then principals from elementary, middle and high schools reviewed those ideas and proposed the following recommendations:

Elementary Schools

• Reduce lights, heat, shut down buildings to evening activities.
• Reduce instructional supplies by 10 percent
• Reduce custodial staff to: 3 custodians at large buildings and 1.5 custodians at other buildings (8.5 custodial positions).
• Reduce Paraprofessional time by 10 percent.
• Reduce Special Area Staffing: Eliminate Media Specialists (para covers check out for prep); reduce art to 30 minutes; reduce travel time.
• Reduce Administration by 10%
• Reduce/Eliminate Gifted Services
• Eliminate Quarry Hill field trips and planetarium field trips. No new programs (freeze funding for any new curriculum).

Middle Schools

• Instructional supply budget by 10 percent
• Eliminate extra duty activities ‐ student council, yearbook, math coaches, middle school play, jazz band, visual aides
• Reduce basic staffing allocation by 5 percent.
• Reduce Administrative Staff by 10 percent.

High Schools

• Reduce/raise heat/cool by 3 degrees in each building.
• Offer early retirement incentive for staff
• Run HSCC bus for only one block for each high school
• Summer staff work four, ten hour days (energy savings)
• Eliminate one high school swimming pool
• Reduce athletic budget by 3.5 percent
• Increase student activity passes to $35 for year
• Eliminate one paraprofessional position at each high school
• Close buildings over holiday breaks
• Eliminate police liaisons
• Reduce high school administration by 10 percent
• Reduce total full-time teaching staff by 5 percent, as based on total 2009‐2010 allocation.

LINK: Elementary, Middle and High School proposals (.pdf)
LINK: Budget cuts take first swipes

If a budget cut suggestion is brought forward in a forest, but no one is around to hear it...

Here's an article from today's paper, about Rochester opening the budge cutting process. This version is longer than the version running in the paper or online because it had to be edited for space. (It's already pretty short, but it happens sometimes on front-page stuff.)

Anyway, here's the longer version:

The size of Marsha Peterson’s second-grade class climbed to 29 students this year and she doesn’t see how more students could fit.

Peterson’s concern about class sizes came Monday as Rochester public schools opened the public comment period for budget reductions. The district needs to cut about $5 million from the 2010-2011 budget. Earlier this year, Rochester schools carved out $9.3 million.

Peterson said her classroom is still reeling from those cuts. She proposed making cuts at the district or administrator level. Specifically, she mentioned eliminating the position for director of elementary and secondary education. The high-level district job went unfilled for much of the summer, until the district decided to hire Diane Ilstrup and Diane Trisko to fill the post, on a part-time interim basis. Peterson also recommended eliminating the budget for all travel reimbursement and also professional memberships for district staff.

Her comments echoed Monday, simply because few others showed up.

At John Marshall High School, attendance was sparse for the first 30 minutes, except for two women who identified themselves as district employees. They sat down to register their input, but stopped once they were informed that submissions couldn’t be anonymous.

“The district must not value our input,” said one of the women. She also refused to be quoted by name.

Last year, when submissions were anonymous, district staff sifted through hundreds of suggestions, some of which were simply unrealistic. The impractical ones called for mass firings of all top administrators or widespread cuts to all extracurricular programs. This year, the district has tried to limit time spend working through those types of suggestions.

After an hour on Monday, only two others turned out. Attendance was similar at the session held at Century High School.

Teacher and parent Chuck Handlon showed up at John Marshall, but was frustrated that board members or district staff weren’t on hand to discuss the budget in detail. When he was previously asked to suggest possible cuts from his classroom, he remarked that his labs are already running frugal. If the situation got dire enough, Handlon said he would rather see the district remove extracurricular programs than cut more from the classroom.

“It’s sad because at this point in my career, I didn’t think I’d be seeing things going backwards,” he said.

LINK: Few turn out to suggest budget cuts (shortened version)

Century High to students: Get a watch. Use it.

Century High has started a program to punish tardiness -- every time a student is late to class, he or she is assigned 25-minutes of lunch detention.

Here are some stats. Last year at this time, about 300 students received at least one tardy each week. Of those, 100 students were late multiple times. The school has about 1,600 students. This year, that number has dropped to about 120 students, with 25 kids being late multiple times, according to statistics provided by administrative assistant Kurt Verdoorn.

So apparently, the program is working. Granted, students aren't happy about it. As someone who recalls racking up the tardies as an upperclassman -- I'll never know why getting to KFC was so important, but making it back to fifth hour wasn't -- I can see the problem. Actually, in fifth grade I missed the bus enough times (and had to walk), that my fifth-grade teacher gave me an alarm clock. Rebel without a clue, I guess.

It makes perfect sense that staff members would want students in class, rather than roaming the halls, straggling late into class, or off in the parking lot doing whatever kids are do in the parking lot.

Anyway, most students said they should get some leeway during first hour, but that the program is otherwise fair during the school day. I have a full story coming in Wednesday's paper. I'll update this with a link when it goes live.