Category Archives: Education

I noted with considerable amusement the comments by Mr. Guthrie and Dr. Barber in last week’s rebuttal to the Mountain Express editorial about the McKinstry debacle: School District did the right thing.

It is humorous to see how quickly the District plays “the strategy card” in defending their race to raise-and-spend the $60M levy proceeds on “green” technologies.  That defense is based around the argument that BCSD decisions were driven by “unprecedented community input”.  The fact is that the community DID turn out in droves for long, interminable sessions of surveys, comments and Q&A.  And, there was a very rigorous process of collecting community comments…  only this is what the community said:

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Many of you, who follow the District, know that I’ve had a long-term interest in the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) test scores in the Blaine County School District.  I’d noticed an anomaly in our average scores a few years ago and have made it a bit of a hobby (along with tracking college admissions) to see how we are doing annually.

Even though we talk a lot about measuring our successes relative to the annual administration of ISAT tests, the reality is that for our college-bound graduates their SAT scores (along with GPA ) are the most important measures of their readiness for university-level work.   Continue reading →

“The purpose of the Special Meeting/Work Session is to discuss the Dual Immersion Program and Hailey Elementary School enrollment,” states the notice of the BCSD Board of Trustees work session scheduled for Thursday, May 24th from 12:00pm until 1:30pm.

The Dual Immersion (DI) program is currently under consideration by the BCSD Trustees as how to best manage it. Recently the DI program coordinators presented to the Trustees four different options for managing the DI program into the future:

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There is an article in today’s Mt. Express regarding the process to apply for membership in the science instructional materials adoption committee. Terry Smith solicited and quoted my opinion. I made another comment online.

What do you think of the recent BCSD process to apply for membership on the science instructional materials committee?

School District Administrators have organized one of the promised Parent Math Nights.

From BlaineSchools.org: “The content of the evening will be focused on 4th and 5th grade math. All parents are welcome to attend.”   Continue reading →