While many look forward to a relaxing summer, Superintendent Jeff Swensson said there will be a few projects the district will be working on in order to poise the district for continued improvement.  The first Swensson said will be meeting with state legislators among them state Senator Mike Delph and Representative Jerry Torr.  The district along with its attorneys is currently working on a draft of the bill that they hope to have presented to the state legislature in the 2013 session.

“We want to share in a friendly, swell way, what we think the legislation should look like.  Now obviously (Delph and Torr have) the authority, but it’s certainly better if you’re going to have a meeting, it’s always best to bring the agenda, create the agenda or have a hand in the agenda because then the topics that are most important to you from your leadership position tend to have an opportunity at least to be heard, considered or whatever the right thing would be,” Swensson said. “We’ve already started working on that draft.”

Swensson said the district is currently sharing that draft with district attorneys and superintendents from other districts with the goal to present the bill to Delph and Torr by early summer.  Although he said Delph and Torr will carry separate bills in their respective houses of the legislature, the topic, high performing school districts, will be the same.

Another goal going forward into the summer is to prepare administrators from schools throughout the district to work with their respective teachers and department chairs in implementing the evaluation process with next year’s RISE standards handed down by the state. Swensson said there really won’t be much of any changes to curriculum, but rather a look at how instruction can be improved so that teachers can reach students intellectually in the most effective ways.

“For the curriculum it won’t really be affected by RISE, but what really will be affected is instruction because in theory, if (a teacher) spends his time perpetually lecturing, there’s nothing wrong with lecturing, but per se, there’s not really one instructional strategy, which lecturing is one, that has been proven by research to work all the time with every student, with every subject, et cetera,” Swensson said.  “RISE is intended to deliver what Carmel Clay Schools has always intended to deliver which is a variety of instructional strategies.”

Social studies teacher Karen Taff said that from a teacher’s perspectives, one always is making adjustments to how they instruct.

“I think teachers are always revisiting their craft and the difference with RISE is that visions and adjustments have to be made with an eye towards being able to quantify virtually everything that you’re doing in class into some sort of numerical calculation,” Taff said.  “That is new territory for most teachers.”

Taff said her main concern going forward is that the time associated with collecting data in order to measure RISE standards will force valuable classroom time to be sacrificed.

Taff said, “It’s like every time you go to the doctor you get on the scale and take your blood pressure and now every time you get in class (there’s) temperature taking.  And that’s fine, but keep in mind there are only 60 minutes in an hour, so if you spend you time doing that sort of standardized test taking, what are you sacrificing?”