Education Notebook

Article: Rochester Math and Science Partnership honors notable teachers

Three area teachers have been highlighted by the Rochester Area Math and Science Partnership for what that organization calls dedicated leadership and commitment to helping students.

This year's award winners are: ViAnn Olson of Rochester Community and Technical College, Beverly Nelson of Stewartville Public Schools and Anne Solberg of Zumbrota-Mazeppa Public Schools.

"They really push their students to excel and they have high expectations for their kids," RAMSP Executive Director Kim Norton said.

Continued...

Also, here is more information from the press release about each teacher. (Text
unedited from release):

Anne Solberg:  Ms. Solberg has been teaching 6th Grade in the Zumbrota-Mazeppa Middle School since 1990.  She has had previous teaching experience in the area of Special Education.  She also shares her love of music with students by co-directing 20 years of school musicals and as a volunteer piano accompanist for middle school vocal performances.  Mr. Solberg instructs all 6th grade students in math as they use a rotation system.  When benchmarked against the 13 other schools in the Hiawatha Valley League Conference, her students have continued to achieve the highest math scores of all schools – with more students reaching proficiency.  Additionally, the number of students reaching the proficient level in math has increased as they move from 5th to 6th grade.  Her nominator attributes her success to maintaining high expectations and rigor for every student – 91% of her Title 1 qualifying students were able to reach the proficiency level.  She motivates students in a quiet, supportive manor and instills confidence in their ability to become “good” at math. Ms. Solberg serves on the curriculum committee, helped identify “gold standards” for their math curriculum and was one of the first teachers to request and utilize Smart Board technology in her classroom.  She partners with IBM in their mentor and Engineers programs and has attended RAMSP trainings.  – Nominated by Supt. Richard Meyerhofer
 
Dr. ViAnn Olson: Dr. Olson has12 years of teaching experience at the high school level and 21 years teaching in the Mathematics Department of the Rochester Community and Technical College (RCTC).  Dr. Olson has taught everything from developmental math through second year Calculus, Differential Equations and Linear Algebra.  Among Dr. Olson’s many activities and achievements is as a 20-year host for the MathCounts competition for area middle schools.  She had developed workshops on Math Anxiety and programs on how to use the Cybertablet tool and new curriculum models.  She has demonstrated a commitment to staff development, including work to revamp the WSU teacher Education curriculum and worked with department colleagues to assess the needs of struggling math students.  She is open and accessible and provides group study sessions if additional learning opportunities are needed.  – Nominated by Dr. Barb Mollberg
 
Beverly Nelson:  Ms. Nelson teaches High School Biology, Advanced and AP Biology,  Anatomy & Physiology, and Biotechnology in the Stewartville Public Schools.  She has been with the district for 16 years and has 5 years of pervious experience at Wyckoff High School.  Her experiences include teaching summer school, curriculum writing, Dept. Chairperson, Senior Class advisor and work on the Student Scholarship Committee.  She also supports the school as an announcer at track meets, a scorer in gymnastics meets and has been an assistant Speech coach.  Her strengths include imbedding reading and math skills as part of the science content area and uses strong continuous improvement components and tools in the classroom including: L to J strategies, tracking” essential key concepts” of students, uses pre & post testing strategies, PDSA, plus-delta, graphing and more. Her students consistently score above the state average in Science on the ACT test and she was recently nominated by a student for the U of M Outstanding Science Teacher Award.  Ms. Nelson participated in the Mayo summer fellowship and Molecular Biology summer class programs, was one of the first teachers to “book” the Mayo/RAMSP Partnership Mobile Science Lab, and participates in the IBM Engineer Day.  She also uses the IBM learning program, the MN Learning Village Partnership.
 

Article: Teachers unions, school districts negotiate in 'unprecedented' times

(Ed: Hey sports fans, I'm linking to today's articles about negotiations with teachers contracts, but I'm also posting the original article, which was broken into two for the print edition to work around our "no jumps" rule.)

Troubling economic times are leaving the future salaries of Minnesota’s teachers a bit lighter than during the past six years, according to negotiated contracts between school districts and teachers unions.

Minnesota’s public school districts and local teachers unions are currently negotiating two-year labor deals, which must be agreed to by Jan. 15. So far, 61 districts out of 341 have settled, leaving many, including the Rochester Education Association and Austin Education Association, still completing through their own contract talks.

While the number of districts still negotiating is higher than the last go-around in 2007 — at that time 81 districts had already settled — school districts and teachers unions have agreed to smaller raises than before.

The average settlement is coming out at about 1.1 percent for the first year, more than 50 percent less than the 2.41 percent than 2007-2008. Eight districts have agreed to two-year salary freezes, including southeastern Minnesota’s Zumbrota-Mazeppa.

Teachers there felt that increasing salaries would only lead to more job cuts, said high school teacher Kevin Nelson, who is also a member of Education Minnesota Zumbrota-Mazeppa’s negotiating team.
It wasn’t an easy decision.

“It boils down to there are ‘X’ amount of dollars to be spent. If you take a big raise, you’re going to be cutting teachers,” Nelson said. “For every dollar that we end up spending on salaries ... that means you’re going to be cutting some place.”

On Wednesday, the funding waters became murkier as state finance officials forecasted a $XX million/billion shortfall at the state level. Public school districts receive most of their funds from the state government.

The bleak funding picture has left an “unprecedented” degree of uncertainty entering the coming year, said Tom Dooher, president of Education Minnesota, the statewide teachers union. Dooher, obviously concerned about  also said the state needs to correct what he called an inequitable funding system for school districts.

“I think we have to look at education as an investment,” Dooher said. “If we don’t make that investment, it’s going to be more difficult to retain and attract the best people.”

In Rochester, top-level administrators and Superintendent Romain Dallemand already waived salary increases for the current year. Other employee groups in Winona Area Public Schools agreed to freezes, too.

Officials from Rochester public schools and the Rochester Education Association wouldn’t release terms that have been floated so far. But in negotiations with other bargaining groups last year, it was believed that the school district first proposed terms that included a widespread wage freeze in the second year.

Whatever the terms this year, Rochester Education Association Kit Hawkins said the two sides are hopeful that a deal can be reached. She said they are willing to do “whatever it will take” to make sure the district isn’t penalized by the negotiations deadline, which would fine the school district $25 per student, or roughly $409,625.

Austin Superintendent of Schools David Krenz also was optimistic that a deal will be made between the district and Austin’s teachers. While funding problems have plagued school districts in the past, Krenz said people in all industries have been stretched thin economically.

“The tone (of negotiations) has been very much with that in mind,” Krenz said. “Our teachers understand that it’s not just schools (having trouble), but it’s the general public.”

Even still, Wednesday’s news won’t help matters.

Interviewed before Wednesday’s state budget estimate, Hawkins said the previous funding shortages in St. Paul haven’t helped matters. “When state leadership doesn't provide you with funding, it’s going to trickle down to the district,” Hawkins said.

LINK: Budget forecast leaves districts with 'unprecedented' uncertainty (article)
LINK: Negotiations could leave teachers feeling the freeze

Article: Local school districts looking to be buoyed by levies

Here are two articles I wrote about the Austin, Byron, Blooming Prairie and Zumbrota-Mazeppa proposed referenda. The second article breaks down each levy in terms of taxpayer impact and how they compare to each other. The first article compares the amounts to the state averages and also has a Rochester angle.

Link: Area districts look for extra taxpayer funds
Link: Breakdown of local levies

Byron, Lanesboro, Mabel-Canton and Spring Grove continue their best Don Larsen (Mark Buehrle?) impressions on No Child Left Behind's annual benchmarks

Four local school districts remain perfect on No Child Left Behind's adequate yearly progress. Since the measure was established in 2003, Byron, Lanesboro, Mabel-Canton and Spring Grove public school districts have each passed every year.

While No Child Left Behind's benchmark system can be debated, and a person can argue that larger schools are worse off due to student sample sizes (an article today and in the following bog post will examine just that), we should still tip our hats to the districts who have been able to make AYP, especially those who have done so every year.

Here are some other districts who have made it several years, with the years missed in parenthesis:

Kasson-Mantorville (2005)
Lewiston-Altura (2004)
Southland (2006)
Zumbrota-Mazeppa (2006).

(Apologies to the youngins who aren't familiar with Don Larsen, or the old-timers who bristle at putting Mark Buehrle in the same sentence.)