Moving on from the recent debate over guns to other topics, the Sweet Home School District is focusing on some ways to mix things up for local students.
As we report on page 1 in today’s issue, the district is in the process of developing an on-line program for students who, for whatever reason, do not fit well into normal classroom instruction.
Although we’re a little behind the curve on this one – Scio has been running its very successful Oregon Connections Academy, which has some 2,500 students, since 2005 – our district is making a good move to recoup losses in the form of students and money.
To make this attractive to students and parents, though, it must be a high-quality program. There are so many options out there, including plenty of established home-school curricula and on-line schools such as Scio’s, that anything less than the best isn’t going to cut it. People who home school their children often are quite particular about the quality of education their youngsters are being offered.
This move by the district to on-line instruction, though, may be the link that might have been missing several years ago when then-Supt. Larry Horton attempted to generate interest among home-schoolers in what the district has to offer them, such as science and math instruction, art, music, athletics and extracurricular activities that parents often aren’t equipped to provide. Though there were nibbles, the response wasn’t overwhelming.
We speak from some knowledge of home-schooing, as two of our editorial staff have first-hand experience in this area, when we say that this could be a win-win for the district and for home-schoolers or people thinking of educating themselves or their kids this way.
Along the same lines, we believe the board should open district enrollment to students from other districts, as our report on page 9 outlines. As our story states, there is already a good bit of flow back and forth between ours and other districts, but this would loosen the restraints further and make it easier for a youngster in, say, Brownsville, to come to Sweet Home.
Just as home-schooling might be the best option for some students, so going to a different school may be for others. No school is perfect, but some have particular strengths and, by opening enrollment as other districts around the state have already done, Sweet Home gives students options and itself the opportunity to gain them.
In a sense too, open enrollment provides some competition, and competition breeds quality. If we want our students to stay in Sweet Home instead of going elsewhere, that’s an incentive to do a good job in the classroom.
A third story about school district activities, also on page 9, brings up a whole different scenario, with a lot more potential for controversy. That would be the school board’s efforts to develop a new policy covering the use of personal communications devices and social media by staff members, particularly relating to communication with students.
Given the difficulties the district has had in the last two years with inappropriate relationships between teachers and students, this is wise.
But the realities of today’s world and how people communicate are reasons for the board to weigh its options carefully here.
It’s worth noting that, before texting and Facebook became popular a decade ago, people functioned just fine without them. Students figured out what their assignments were, they showed up for athletic or music practice, they dropped in or made appointments to talk with their teachers. They got it done.
At the same time, too many students lack parental guidance and support, which often is supplied – for better or worse – by teachers. That’s where texting and other social media are a plus, since they give teachers and other staff members a way to communicate with students who otherwise might be skipping school or practice or otherwise behaving irresponsibly.
Unfortunately, that’s also where the danger lies. We’ve already seen the sorry consequences of staff members who step over the line in their communication and relationships with students, well-meaning or not. But those who make a practice of keeping their doors open when dealing with individual students or meeting them in public places, those who are discreet and limit their text communication to school business, are the ones who would be muzzled by a sweeping ban on such communication.
It’s not an easy decision. Lebanon’s policy of requiring any texts to students to be copied to their parents, cited by Supt. Don Schrader in our story, makes a lot of sense because it might (hopefully) prompt parents to become more engaged in the process of training their kids to be responsible.
At the same time, that proposal is fraught with some complexity because it makes teachers responsible to ensure that the number they’re texting a parent at would be, indeed, the parent’s number. If anyone thinks kids, who are adept at forging their parents’ signatures, would not be equally adept at coming up with “dummy” numbers, they aren’t living in the real world.
The point is, such communication indeed has some big advantages in today’s world and, although there are lurking dangers and problems, the board needs to take all this into consideration and proceed cautiously.