Parkland Families OpEd, Indiana Law(LessonPlans), SUNY Microcredentials, How Smart is Your County?

We explore some interesting news articles about active shooters, posting lesson plans for the year, microcredentialing and how smart is your county in New York State?

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Welcome back to education matters New York. This is your host, Wayne Ackles. And welcome to this week's episode, which will be a news roundup for the past week. And we'll take a look at some articles that I've curated in the coming weeks. We do have guests that will be joining us, very excited to what those guests will bring to the show and the understandings of some different topics that I think you'll find interesting. So let's get into our examination of the headline. So our first headline, actually is an opinion piece that was in the UN Education Week. And it was written by three folks that lost family members of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and parkland. And the family members names are Tony monta, monta alto, April Shen trop, and Debbie Hickson, Mr. Montalto and Miss Sian trop both lost a child at Parkland. And Ms. Hickson, her spouse was the athletic director and he was killed at Parkland as well. And any story relating to active shooters school safety in general always have a great deal of interest for me is that was an area that was forefront in my mind. I was a teacher during Columbine and administrator during both Sandy Hook and the tragedy at Parkland. So it's something that has always been in the forefront of my concerns as a school administrator. And I tell people, it was one of the few things that gave me sleepless nights. So one of the things that this piece does is it goes through and and tries to get people to take a look at their school and ask questions. So that hopefully mistakes that were made in the Parkland tragedy can be avoided in your school district. And they talk about their they they mentioned briefly there, the Stan with Parkland association that they've created. And they go into kind of a checklist or a set of questions to add schools that parents could and should ask their local school district in. So I'm going to walk through these and talk a little bit about them, and just give you some perspective on them as someone that has had to implement a lot of these things and have seen these change over time. And the first one is does the school have an active shooter policy? And and I there wasn't much follow up in the piece itself about what they meant by that. And what I took that to mean is, you know, is there an active shooter plan? That's on the books for a school district school building? In order to implement it in the case of an active shooter? I would say that, you know, from a policy standpoint, I think the policy is that they're, you know, is not no one wants a school shooter. And so that's why I believe that what they mean by a policy is what what is supposed to take place. In the worst case scenario when, if, if an active shooter is present on a school campus, and this is something that has been that has Floxed and evolved over time, post Columbine, the thinking was to shut off the lights, pole blinds, and move to a corner of the room. And to try to be as quiet as possible. The next iteration became, you know, don't worry about blinds, etc. But get to a corner of the room make the room look deserted with a lock door so that hopefully a shooter would just pass by. And over time what is has started to emerge is the case of changing the way that we approach this in order so that it's not just a hide in the corner scenario, but also one where students or teachers if they feel that they're safer if the shooter is about to enter the classroom via door, for instance, is to if they can exit from a window and escape. And if that's not possible, because they're on a second or third floor to then if the room is not barricaded first barricade but also to fight in order to have a better chance of survival. And it's difficult talking about these situations because no one wants to, you know, imagine their child, you know, fighting for survival. But unfortunately, I think it's something that this has evolved. And, you know, now there's that is kind of the practice wisdom of the approach. They're also, one of the other questions that they asked in the piece is, you know, does the school train all staff members and active shooter scenarios? And when I initially read that, my first thought, well, of course, everyone knows what they're supposed to do we have faculty meetings on this. And then it occurred to me that it's actually a fairly fair question, because, you know, if someone is a custodian, they may not have something like this forefront in their mind. I know that the custodians and the custodial staff that I've worked with across different districts had a pretty good sense of their role and responsibilities, because the plans had gone out of their way to do that. But for those that are administrator, friends, and, and my teacher friends out there with lesson plans, having that emergency file, or having those emergency instructions available for subs, that's not a small thing, because if the worst is going to happen, they may, you know, that might happen on a day where someone has a sub, and the more information you can empower that sub with the better chance for everybody's safety during that. So something to keep in mind, something to think about with your substitute training programs, etc. To make sure that they're well aware of what to do there. The next one, and this has become fairly standard, you know, does the school have a single point of entry during school hours. Now, this can be difficult, especially for high schools. And for those of us that have worked in larger suburban buildings. This is often difficult to have a truly single point of entry. Because if you have campus privileges for your students, you know, there may be a door that they can leave and return. You may have you know, I'm thinking in one of the districts where the athletic department was a place that a number of coaches that worked outside of the district, they often met with the athletic director in a different part of the building. And, you know, that was an area that needed to be manned. And it was, you know, it was another point of entry. One of the things that's difficult that has emerged, you know, since I would say Columbine, is, you know, trying to reimagine schools, because schools were built, first of all, to be opening welcome places, but also with a great deal of fire safety in mind. If you, you know, where to look at the number of areas that someone can leave a building from, you know, those are potential entry points as well. And that was part of the way schools were designed in order to promote safety that people could get out of the building in a hurry if, if that was needed. So most schools have gotten themselves to a spot where they have a single point of entry, the ones at least that I can think of that I've experienced, both as someone that has run that particular building, or have gone to other buildings for meetings, many of them again, they had the single point of entry, with a camera and buzzer system that allows, you know, the person on the other side to see who's there, you know, get a good look at them before they allow admittance. And I know at one of my districts, we went so far as to harden the entrances a little bit in terms of getting film on some of the glass, again, to keep it from being shatter resistant. It wasn't bulletproof per se. But it did help in again, hardening that area so that it would make it much more difficult for someone that was trying to force their way in. One of the other things that they talked about in this opinion piece is, is there a way for students and staff to report threats? And I think that's something that is always an important piece, and I would go so far is that that's also a cultural piece for building. Part of that is Having students feel comfortable approaching adults to share information or share posts that they've seen. And to take those posts credibly, the incident that happened recently in Michigan, I think one of the things where that school might be in a spot of potential legal trouble is the decision to send that student back to class with the information they had. Again, I try not to second guess another administrators decision, because I'm not there when the decision was made. Just looking at it from an outsider who has had a lot of experience dealing with these kinds of situations. And there are different ways to approach this in which you can potentially remove a student without necessarily going to suspension rule, and get parents on your side in the process. And that is something in looking at the Michigan situation that just happened a few months ago, where again, I think that school potentially may have some issue, again, because there was no search conducted before sending them back to class. And the information was disturbing enough that someone raised it as a threat. But back to the idea of reporting those threats. And one of my districts, there was a a tip line that came in via the internet, it was something that people could access with their smartphones or email. And that was helpful. And it did. Often, it wasn't just active shooter type of things that that that would highlight, it was more of potential trouble that may escalate into something beyond just words between a couple of people. And so it was a good way to get out in front of some of those issues as well. This was another one that I think is always difficult for schools. And the way it's phrased in this article is how parents are notified when a threat has been made against the school. And this is tricky. Notifying and keeping people people's identity, you know, hidden is often a big part of that. This is tricky, because often the threat is made against individual students whose privacy has to be protected. And releasing that information can only happen to the students that were involved, and the word usually gets out. But, you know, when schools are addressing this, we often talk about it in a generic sense. And you know, the level of threat varies depending on the situation. So it's often tricky, is to the best way to approach this. And sometimes there's been you know, I've been involved in situations where upon investigating the suppose a threat that was potentially coming from outside the building, the threat was not much of a threat, and there was more buzz than, you know, more smoke than fire, if you will, and it's very difficult to tamp that down. So it takes some skill in terms of communicating with your community to let them know that there was the potential of a threat, it was investigated and, and that everything is okay. And some of that comes from trust. And, and also, you know, being timely in your communication and, and being upfront with people as best you can. One of the other pieces that came up in this opinion piece is who can call a lockdown. And I think that was something I was in a district where basically anyone could get on the PA and call lockdown. And that was a change. As I said earlier, this has been something that was in flux, because in the early days, that was something that was really the sole discretion of the administrator of the building or their designee, you know, an assistant principal, etc. They could call that and the move has been in recent years to change that to where anyone that sees a potential threat can get on the PA and call for the lockdown. And there's some there's some, again, some wisdom in that in terms of being timely and making people aware of the threat at the time. This one was an interesting one that was on here is well. It's phrased as has a school of thought about it When rifle fire occurs, that sets off smoke detectors etc. And I think part of what they're trying to get at is, you know, you, you have to look at multiple possibilities, because if you've looked at, I hate to say it, but the long history of school shootings from around Columbine forward, there have been some times where students have pulled fire alarms as part of the ruse to get people out into the open to open fire. And also, you know, the point of this article was that the discharge of the firearms might create enough smoke to to create a fire alarm to go off. And, you know, that creates another another layer in your planning, and that that's important to make sure that any of the particular active shooter plans that I was a part of, there was a piece in there that if the fire alarm was to go off, you were to remain in place unless you were told, usually by law enforcement that that you could exit the building as a result of that. And finally, the last piece that was highlighted in this article was, you know, is more than one administrator in charge of the active shooter, and I think, again, what they're getting at is that more than one person can direct. What can happen in the case of an active shooter within a building, so that if the principal is incapacitated, or the principal and an assistant are both incapacitated, is there someone else that can take over in terms of following through and working with law enforcement, etc, because, you know, everyone should know the plan. And, you know, especially those that are in charge of the building, and those that may have to be the incident commanders, etc, there is a lot, again, a lot of responsibility. And it's not just a matter of calling for the lockdown. It's working with law enforcement, and then eventually, you know, reuniting families. I mean, it's it's a pretty involved situation, when one of these active shooters, or the threat of an active shooter happens at a school. So I do somewhat cheerier topics. This one comes from Indiana. And again, I pulled this from Ed Week as well, this week, and there was a bill in the Indiana legislature. And I happen to see in my LinkedIn account, when I was starting to research for this week, when this bill broke, there are a number of teachers and other educators that I follow on LinkedIn where we're talking about this bill. And basically, it was the basic gist of the bill is that teachers would have to post a year's worth of lesson plans and the materials that they were planning on using at the beginning of the school year. Now I'm going to come at this from a couple different directions. I'm going to come at it from the area that I think based on the reporting and based on my experience is probably where this has been generated. But I'm also going to come at it from a little different angle, in somewhat more supportive of legislation like this, so bear with me, as I go through this. So where I think this legislation is coming from, frankly, is that it's a chance for parents that might have objections, to curriculum to particular works, whether it's books or topics, to have them in the light, and then have a chance to make a run at the school and the district about that choice of curriculum. And the choice of books is is many times the case, sex ed curriculum is one of those things as well. But schools, generally speaking, have found a pretty good way to navigate that in terms of, you know, having students if they choose to opt out of that education. And I, you know, this is one of many laws that have been proposed recently, and it ties into one of the earlier episodes that I was talking about. There's concerns about critical race theory. And frankly, there's always an undercurrent of, you know, what are the schools teaching that might be that might rub counter to values that we have in our household. And that is something that has gone on as long as there has been public education. This bill seems to be a little bit outside of I think what is realistic. I think also it it fails to understand education in the sense that it should be dynamic in that when learners struggle, for instance, good educators change course and stay longer on a topic or change course on a topic in order to help with the understanding and meaning of that. Now, let me flip the script on this just a little bit, though, and and also come down on the side of where some of this and again, I don't think this is what is motivating this legislation. But I, in talking with parents, especially during the pandemic, and even prior to the pandemic, this is actually an issue where I think one of the things that I probably heard time and time again, both from parents as at when I was an administrator, but sometimes also as a teacher, was, gee, we were trying to find the information on the assignment, the topic, etc. And we just can't find it. Overall, I think schools do a really good job. But there are occasionally those pockets of individuals. And I've had to speak with those in my time as an administrator, that are not always as upfront as they could be in sharing what they're doing. And when things are due and posting of grades and those kinds of things that parents are looking for in order to hold their own kids accountable. And one of the things that where we can always do better as putting that information out there now, do I think this is what this bill was aimed at? No, I don't. But I think whenever that information is, is available, and we help ourselves as educators, and we say, well, we've got nothing to hide, here are the assignments for the year. And many school boards have, they've adopted book adoption policies, meaning, you know, when a book is being used by the district, it's gone through a vetting process, both that involves the teachers and the school board. So again, it takes you know, so that there's more sets of eyes on it. And again, it creates more transparency. And that's helpful, especially in these situations. So the last topic that I want to get into today is something that has been on the radar for some time, and it has finally come to light. And on the 15th there was a press release made both by the governor and by the SUNY system, about the micro credentialing of different courses of study across the across SUNY campuses throughout the state. And it's not all Sunni's. It's not all community colleges. I happen to when I was researching this, my local community college was not one of the campuses listed. I researched my alma mater, Geneseo. And there were credentials there some of the micro credentials. So basically, what a micro credential is, for those of you that aren't aware of it is they're designed to be completed in a shorter timeframe than a college degree, taking one or two semesters to complete and providing immediate evidence of skills mastered by a college transcript or digital badge. And that's right from the press release of the 15th. And for those of you that have done any kind of, I forget if it's called Google University, I think that's what it's called. I could be wrong on that. I know LinkedIn has some courses. I've done their course on SharePoint and trying to get better versed in the use of SharePoint. This is something that has been in the water table for a while now. I remember a district in the region was offering these digital badges for professional development around particular professional development skill sets that have been cultivated in their work. And it's, I think it's a fascinating, you know, examination of where we're at right now, as you know, a learning and consumers of learning population. Because as the workforce becomes more mobile as Job Hunters and job providers are trying to find each other, more and more there there is this need to have someone that can demonstrate that they can do the job without necessarily maybe a four year degree behind there. And as the, you know, the the job market becomes an ever moving target, this chance to gain these micro credentials, really could be a game changer. And I think it's something that, generally speaking is a positive move. I think anytime that you can change the way that learning happens, so that the student benefits, and in this case, the working public who is trying to demonstrate a certain skill set, if they can show that through micro credentialing, that is less expensive than a full four year degree. I think that's a positive outcome. It's interesting, there's, if you get a chance, I would recommend going to the SUNY website and seeing the 400 and microcredentials that are out there. And they're in a variety of weather business. I saw some physics, archaeology, so they're there in, you know, rigorous academic fields. It's just that it's going to be a much more compact set of time and a focused set of experiences that will guide that learning. So with that, I'm going to move to one last article in this was just kind of an interesting one that was on the WS YR, which is one of the Syracuse new stations, was actually cultivated by NEC stars Stacker, it's a media service that helps some of the, quote old media or old school media like television and newspapers, with content on their websites. And what they had was a an article about the, in their eyes, the 50 counties that had the best and least educated populaces and I found it interesting. Basically, what they used as the main statistic to help guide this list is the population that was 25 years and over with a bachelor's degree or higher. And then within that, they then went on to talk about less than a high school diploma, what percentage of the county's population and this is all from census data that's been collected from the most recent census, high school graduate, some college or associate's degrees, a bachelor's degree or graduate or professional degrees. And so then what, you know, the main stat for the county becomes the population 25 years and over with a bachelor's degree or higher. And Onondaga County scored well in it, which is I think part of the reason that ws yr ran the article. What I found interesting was Monroe County, which is around the Rochester area, and has a tremendous influence of colleges and high tech businesses was not represented, at least in this article. And I'm not sure why and neither was my home county of Ontario County was not. So 50 of the 62 counties in New York State were listed. But there were definitely some glaring omissions from that study. And with that, that is this week's curation of the news articles. As I said, in the coming weeks, we will be having some guests, we may also have some reclaiming your life episodes in there as well. What I do want to I want to give a shout out to a former student of mine who sent me an article and back probably it was during one of the first or second podcasts I talked about Miss understanding that social emotional learning was often being confused with critical race theory. And one of my former districts she forwarded me an article that was going around on Facebook, that some of the social emotional work that Fairport had undertaken was a Trojan horse to bring in critical race theory. And I thought I might be able to get into that in more detail on this episode. But as I dove into the organization that was fronting this article, there was a lot to unpack there. And so this might have to be a standalone episode at another time. But I did want to give that a shout out to my former student that shared that article with me, and it did create a lot of I'm sure there's going to be a lot of discussion and debate in the coming days and weeks around that. So thanks again to her. With that, I will wrap up this week. This week's episode of education matters New York. Have a great rest of the week and take care