Fairbanks Elementary School Principal Mark Lotycz, left, received an award on behalf of the school from Mark Jones, associate executive director of the Ohio Association of Elementary School Administrators, for being designated as a “hall of fame” school during a Fairbanks board of education meeting Monday night. Jones said the school was ranked in April among the top 11 best schools in Ohio.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Jacob Runnels)
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The leaders of Fairbanks schools reflected on their goals for the 2017-2018 school year and have a lot of work planned for next year.
At Monday night’s board of education meeting, the principals of the Fairbanks elementary, middle and high schools presented the progress on goals they set at the beginning of the school year.
Fairbanks Elementary School Principal Mark Lotycz said his school’s goals involved meeting “all the indicators of the report card.” He said the school made five out of seven of those indicators, and the staff “isn’t happy until we meet that seven out of seven.”
“We had some nice scores, but we also want to get better there,” Lotycz said.
He said he also hopes to raise the school’s test scores next year, noting how students are excelling everywhere else but are lagging in third grade math.
“I’m really proud of our goals, but we’re not satisfied with them,” he said. “We’re proud of them and we’ll get better and we have gotten better.”
Lotycz said his school capitalized on incorporating blended learning and holding regular teacher meetings.
He said the “professional development” of the school’s staff members will have an increased focus for next year.
“We’re going to try and make our staff meetings more where teachers have choices,” Lotycz said. “There will be stations they can go to get their own professional staff development or something that may pertain to them.”
He said teachers will be encouraged to observe other teachers outside of the school to improve how they handle the classroom.
Fairbanks Middle School Principal Joey Newell said his school met some of its goals this year, including holding regular staff meetings and focus on collecting and shaping data.
“We’re trying to identify the shortfalls and implement interventions to close those gaps sooner than later,” Newell said.
He said he wants to create many opportunities for teachers to collaborate and share experiences with each other, as well as “provide students with real-world experiences and applications.”
Newell said he wants to make sure students are meeting their “yearly growth” and improving their test scores. He showed how his school has to improve its students’ math scores.
“It’s about taking more steps forward and pushing people out of their comfort zones,” Newell said. “It’s okay to fail but we need to understand why so we’re moving forward.”
Fairbanks High School Principal Tom Montgomery said his school needs to be focusing on its use of data, as “I’m not proud of it and our staff isn’t happy with it.”
Montgomery said the school’s goals this year included highlighting student achievement and to prepare its students to be contributing members of society. He said this was done well through community partnerships to give experience to students.
He said he hopes to improve the school’s ability to help students find careers, as “career pathways have been taken out of our high schools.”
“We have plans to do mediation throughout the year,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery said his students have missed on integrated math components this year, and he hopes to correct that.
“Our nemesis seems to be math,” he said.
He said he’ll have conversations with Superintendent Bob Humble and Newell on how to improve their students’ math scores.
Also at the meeting, Humble said the district has decided to replace the sound system for the high school football stadium.
Humble said the replacement will cost about $18,457 and will be installed by Paladin Protection Services.
He said the sound system is at least “between 15 and 20 years old,” and isn’t clear to hear when in the visitor’s section or the concession stand. He said the athletic department has been talking about it for a while now, with Humble deciding to get it done this summer.
“Ever since we put the track in, it sort of cut the line over to the speakers that were on the visitor side,” he said. “We weren’t able to, at that particular time, do anything with the sound system because we didn’t have the money to do it.”
He said the sound system should be ready by the first game of the season, which will be a jamboree scrimmage against Jonathan Alder High School Aug. 17.
Also discussed at the meeting:
-The board approved of the purchase of a utility tractor and flex-wing mower for $61,829.21, due to the district’s existing equipment being outdated.
-The district’s new website will be online by the end of the week. Humble said the district is still using Apptegy for its services, and it will still cost $35,170 over a five-year period, saving the district more than $1,000 a year compared to its old website host. He said the release date was moved to the summer so students could come back to “everything being fresh” for the new school year.
-In relation to the May meeting, the board will discuss cell phone allowances at a future work session, which has yet to be planned.
-The board approved to place its emergency tax levy on the November ballot. The levy proposes to raise $1.67 million each year for five years. It was approved by voters in 2013.
-Mark Jones, associate executive director of the Ohio Association of Elementary Administrators, presented an award to Lotycz for Fairbanks Elementary School being recognized as a hall of fame school in April. He said the school was placed among the top 11 elementary schools in the state, as well as the top of the top 11 schools.