2012-2013 School Year School Entry Immunization Requirements

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Visit the Health Services page to see the list of required vaccinations for the the 2012-2013 school year.

Building Trades Open House

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The Building Trades class of the Warsaw Area Career Center will be hosting an OPEN HOUSE from 4-6 p.m. on Thursday, May 24, 2012.

The house is located in Cherry Creek Manor, 1945 Masters Lane, Warsaw, IN  46580.  Watch for OPEN HOUSE signs.

This is the 30^th year for the Building Trades Program.  A total of 21 students, under the direction of instructor, Tom Heiman, worked on the home owned by Kerry and Dana Stogsdill.   The students were involved in framing, roofing, siding, window and door installation, insulating, dry walling, painting, trimming, concrete work, seeding and finishing lawn, and landscaping.

The home is a one story ranch style house on a partially finished basement with 9ft concrete walls.  It is approximately 3,400 square feet. The home is heated with a high efficiency gas furnace and has central air installed.  All windows are Anderson double-hung windows. The exterior is stone and vinyl with a large deck.

The students that worked on the home are Matthew Allen, Efrain Ayala, Alexandra Bailey, Jonathan Brown, Lucas Carey, Joshua Frantz, Oskar Gordillo, Braxton Hanft, Caleb Hofer, Conner Klosowski, Steve Landrigan, Joseph Smith, Camron Snodgress, Bryan Starr, Cameron Tusing, Tyler Waddle, Joseph Waikel, Chad White, Chris Wooldridge, Travis Yeiter, and Dalton Zellers.

Staff Appreciation Week Video

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To see how we celebrated Staff Appreciation Week, watch the video below.

Dim lights


Camp Invention

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Camp Invention is a one-week day camp for elementary school students who are interested in learning more about the field of science.  For a flyer containing all the details and the registration form, go to our elementary school websites:

Pierceton Elementary
South Whitley Elementary

Busy Year Ahead

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Whitko will be busy in 2012. Here are a few things we will be working on.

• Evaluating the Facility Committee Goal recommendation for renovating South Whitley Elementary School and building a new Pierceton Elementary building (Without raising taxes!)
• Instituting a new system of evaluation for all employees that focuses on student achievement
• Developing and teaching curriculum to match the new Common Core Standards
• Continuing our deployment of additional technology resources for students
• Raising our achievement levels for all students
• Reviewing our reading programs and the impact of the IREAD assessment
• Adding more mathematics to the graduation requirements
• Increasing our STEM offerings and
• doing it all while not losing site of the great relationships Whitko has

We will continue to be Big Enough to Deliver and Small Enough to Care!

Delivering Excellence for All.

Keep checking our Facebook for updates and breaking news.  

I hope you have a great 2012!

Sincerely,
Superintendent Steve Clason
574-594-2658 x1004
260-327-3766 x1004

Snow Make Up Days
In order to make up the snow days we have taken, school will be in session on the following days:

• May 11
• May 18

Receive School Delay / Closing Updates Electronically
Use your PowerSchool login to register for our automatic message system to be notified of weather delays and cancellations.  Once registered, be sure to keep your contact information current so the system works efficiently.

Facility Study Committee Recommendations

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During their January meeting, The Whitko Board of School Trustees accepted the recommendation of the study committee on facilities.  The major recommendations from our 25 year Facility Plan Committee are as follows:

• Whatever we do, finance the project so it does not raise taxes
   
• Keep the two elementary schools where they are in their respective communities
  • Renovate South Whitley Elementary
  • Build a new Pierceton Elementary (demolish the existing building when the new facility is ready)
  • Keep Grade 5 in the elementary schools
     
• Move Central Office to the middle school

The committee met several times and looked at a ton of data prior to this recomendation. Please see the Q&A Document for an explaination of various components and related data.

The Board's accepteance of the recommendation only means they will formally investigate the recommendation, seek professional and community input and then at a later date determine if they will move forward with a project of some sort.

Whitko affirms the work of the committee on the new evaluation model! 
 

With a 97.8% yes vote, the Whitko teachers affirmed the committee work on the new evaluation model. 

On behalf of the committee, I say thank you to the teachers for recognizing the hard work of the committee and for recognizing that we will continue to work on the document and the process until it is what's best for Whitko.

Many great comments were shared by teachers and are the very same comments and concerns the committee has been grappling with. I will list a few here and try to address some of the committee's thinking thus far. The committee has the entire list of questions and will be discussing them in future meetings.  

 How to take into account "bad years" when looking at student data.

The achievement data will eventually be a three year rolling average which should mitigate the issue of one bad class on a given test day.

How can we work at limiting the subjectivity like in K-2 or classes without state testing?

My first statement here will be to reiterate my stance that while we are trying to get as objective a results as possible, we are talking about people both as instructors and as students. People are subjects, not objects and we better have subjectivity in what we do. Professionals are professionals because they have the expertise to make those hard calls that our objective data may not be able to make. (Okay, I feel better now.)

In K-2, we will work on inter-rater reliability with the running records. The old ISTEP writing prompt could be given to anyone trained and within a few repetitions they were able to rate like an English pro. The same things will happen with those assessments. Will it be perfect?  No, but then you've given ISTEP - is it perfect?

In non-tested areas, we are working with a consortium to ensure many eyes go into the evaluation and then the test questions are being reviewed to ensure the same things that ISTEP does - like rigor, analysis, and standards alignment.

Once we are a couple years into this, I think we'll all feel better. RIght now, it would be so much cleaning if everyone had a test...or better, NO one had a test.

This whole test thing, at least the inordinate amount of focus on it, needs to go away and we need teachers to feel free to teach. That is our attempt in the evaluation document.

RIF language needs to address the seniority issue.

RIF is not really part of evaluation but it was in the last document so we put it here so everyone knew where to look. The concern of many is now that the law says we can only use age as a tiebreaker, then only senior staff members will be looked at for reduction.

I hope that is total balogna. I realize there could be some financial incentive for some corporations to say, Sorry folks, you cost too much," but that is just not the Whitko way. The Board would not support it, the administration would not support it.

Fact is, I expect the more senior teachers to be better than the less senior teachers. The intent of our evaluation process is for us to grow and be more professional every year. The only ways a more senior teacher would be looked to be reduced is if they were not still growing so a younger teacher was doing better in students learning or if it were a case of an instruction area being dropped entirely.

Why Danielson and not RISE or a combination?

The committee started their first couple days of meetings looking at about 8 different models including RISE. When they began working through the models, Danielson seemed the best combination of a match to our educational pedagogy and our philoshpy. We looked at possible combinations but felt we wanted to stay true to one philosphy and one process. Like getting new textbooks, once we get through it as written, we can go back an tweek the areas. That would be a good time to look at others again.
 
What about special education? Classroom placements of kids.

Two things here.  One is about how to evaluate the special needs teachers themselves. The committee is working on this. We are waiting for later this month as a group of special educators across the state has been meeting to develop their process. We thought this would be a good place to start and then build ours much like we are building the non-tested areas.

Second, the placement of kids. We are not going to artificailly change how we place kids to change evaluation outcomes. The committee recoginzes that students with special needs whether from poverty, identified as special services required or high ability all come with a variety of issues. Some will automatically grow more and show less achievement. Some will have high achievement and low growth. Some may need different indicators as their growth and achievement may be slower. Again, it goes back to the fact these are people, not widgets, and we'll do our best for our students! 

Some questions related to leadership positions and compensation.

Great ideas about coaching and other committee positions being leadership and not stipend positions. This will be sorted out by the negotiations team, as well. That can't officially start until August, but we'll begin informal discussions soon and take your questions and ideas to both evaluation and negotiations.

As far as can you get to the top if you are not already there. That, too, will be fleshed out by the negotiations team but the intent is to make the plan get teachers there. Whitko has no agenda to save money on this process. It may, depending on the positions you hold and the evaluation you receive, take shorter or longer time to get to what was the top.

Several other comments were shared about making sure we applied things with fidelity and transparency.  You Bet! Look for PD coming your way soon! 

Lastly, there were many positive comments about the work of the committee and they thank you for those comments. It has been a difficult process. 

We will continue to make the best evaluation process we can  - one that will grow our teachers to grow their children.

Excellence for All is not just our motto, it is the philosphy that drives our evlatuion process as well. Thanks for being part of it and helping to mold your and our children's futures.

Belief Statement

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All Children Can Learn.

Vision Statement

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Our school corporation and schools are committed to “Excellence for All” students by focusing on educational programs, aligned curriculum, authentic assessments, and differentiated instruction that provides the conditions necessary for all of our children to be successful in our schools and beyond our schools.  Furthermore, we are moving the standard for our schools from being “good” schools to being “great” schools.

Mission Statement

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Our mission is to educate each and every child who attends our schools to become successful life-long learners and positive contributors to the betterment of our collective societies.