A Service of The Arrow              Saturday October 15, 2000

    Do you know who all the teachers are in the school? Do all the teachers know you? This problem of a lack of connection between students and teachers, is one of the major issues that District 5 administrators will be focusing on the weeks and months to come. And next Monday, Oct. 16, this issue and many more will begin to be addressed in a series of planning meetings involving parents, district faculty, and local community leaders.

    "The first portion of the meeting will be sharing the results of the input survey," said Superintendent Harry Amend about the agenda of the Oct. 16 meeting for school planning. "The second part of the meeting is reviewing the procedures for the scenario planning process.

    "Each participant will fill out a response sheet that indicates which scenario they want to work on, and what level of involvement they wish to have in the planning process."

    In the past weeks, administration for District 5 has been looking into promoting a more connected atmosphere. Assistant Superintendent Dan Zorn has been in contact with specialists in the field of bringing a small-school-like aura into a larger school. At the end of the month, Zorn plans to go to Portland for a conference on bringing small school aspects into larger schools.

    "We have decided that the whole subject of connectiveness of students is going to be one of the pillars for our planning, whether we end up with one high school or two," said Amend. "The district is going to be studying different configurations that have been successful in schools."

    The main areas where the ideas of this ‘connectiveness’ have been implemented are in the vicinity of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn. and Portland, Ore.

    In the Portland area, research specialist Kathleen Cotton has been studying the effects of smaller school connections between students and teachers.

    She has found that on a general level, according to a 1995 study, students in smaller schools not only have better attendance, they also are less likely to drop out.

    One of the reasons students have better attendance and lower dropout rates, is the fact that students have more of an ability to connect with their teachers.

    District 5 officials are pressing for an atmosphere similar to this. Plans could include a pod learning-like setup, which involves having students stay in a certain wing of the school all day.

    "Whether we have one high school or two, they are still going to be good sized," said Amend. "We are going to be using the strategy of connectiveness; it is the key to cutting the dropout rate, increasing student happiness, and helping students feel like they are reaching their high school goals."

    On Zorn’s educational exodus to Portland, he plans not only to attend the aforementioned conference, but also to meet with Cotton, and a researcher from the Small School Institute, Kim Fike.

    Fike is building an office in the Portland area to study the schools there. When Zorn returns, the strategies that he will have learned will be suggested at the school planning meetings to come.

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