The Wicomico County Board of Education is maintaining a blog on the Daily Times web site at delmarvanow.com. Recent posts include news about the JMB High School Boys’ Soccer State Champions and a CSI night at Salisbury Middle School. A total of 22 posts have been entered over the two months that the blog has been in existence. Any effort to improve communication about our local schools is a positive sign.

Another local teacher has tarnished the profession of education once again. It is unfortunate that a few adults who are entrusted with the education of our children make choices that take advantage of the youth they are instructing. Based on the listings on a web site titled Bad Bad Teacher, it appears that the headlines expose poor judgement on an almost daily basis. Our local bad teacher already made the list.

The Wicomico County Board of Education has posted a schedule of open houses as our local schools prepare for back to school time.

Beaver Run Elementary
Thursday, Aug. 21, 2-6 p.m.

Charles H. Chipman Elementary
Thursday, August 21, 2-3 p.m.

Delmar Elementary
Friday, Aug. 22, 2-3 p.m.

East Salisbury Elementary
Friday, August 22, 1:30-4 p.m.

Fruitland Primary
Friday, Aug. 22, 1-2 p.m.

Fruitland Intermediate
Friday, Aug. 22, 2-3 p.m.

Glen Avenue Elementary
Thursday, Aug. 21, 1-2 PM.

North Salisbury Elementary
Friday, Aug. 22, 2-4 p.m.

Northwestern Elementary
Friday, Aug. 22, 3-4 p.m.

Pemberton Elementary
Thursday, Aug. 21, 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Pinehurst Elementary
Friday, Aug. 22, 3-4 p.m.

Prince Street Elementary
Friday, Aug. 22, 2-4 p.m.

West Salisbury Elementary
Thursday, Aug. 21, 4-6 p.m.

Westside Primary
Friday, Aug. 22, 1-2 p.m.

Westside Intermediate
Friday, Aug. 22, 2:30-3:30 p.m.

Willards Elementary
Thursday, Aug. 21, 6-7:30 p.m.

Wicomico Early Learning Center
Thursday, Aug. 21, 2-4 p.m.

Pittsville Elementary and Middle
Tuesday, Aug. 19, 6-7:30 p.m.

Bennett Middle
Thursday, Aug. 21, 6-8 p.m.

Salisbury Middle
Thursday, Aug. 21, 7 p.m.

Wicomico Middle
Thursday, Aug. 21, 1-4 p.m.

Mardela Middle and High
Thursday, Aug. 21, 4:30-6:30 p.m.

James M. Bennett High
Thursday, Aug. 21, Back-to-School Night for freshmen 7 p.m.

Parkside High
Wednesday, Aug. 20. PTA Back-to-School Night, doors open 6 p.m.

Parkside Career & Technology Education Center
Tuesday, Sept. 23, 4:30 p.m.

Choices
Thursday, Aug. 21, 4-6 p.m.

Changes to the schedule can occur, so check the WCBOE link for updates.

There has been an abundance of news regarding various areas of the Wicomico County Board of Education lately. From the retirement of some long time employees, to the progress of the Bennett High project, we are seeing a lot of change going on. The students of Prince Street School finally got to move into their new facility in April, and the ceremonial ground breaking took place at the site of the new JMB high school. For many months, the completion date for the high school had been quoted as 2010, but in the latest news article, that has changed to 2011. The change in the completion date isn’t new. Brain Foret, the Director of Facility Services, offered 2011 as the completion date over a year ago. Apparently nobody let the PR department know that, because all of the press releases during the past year gave 2010 as the date, until now.

Another interesting detail of the plans for JMB High School as well as Bennett Middle is that both of the new buildings are being built for a capacity that is roughly equal to the current enrollment. The plans for Bennett Middle allow a capacity of 930 students, which is only slightly above recent enrollment figures and is the same as the current State Rated Capacity, which probably includes the half dozen or so portables on the grounds. Pemberton Elementary is one of our recently renovated school buildings, and the playground of that school is already home to two portable classroom buildings.

All of this leads me back to the retirement of Alan Brown, who reported at the October 2007 Board of Education meeting that he had recently met with officials at Peninsula Regional Medical Center. This seemed odd to me at first, but then he offered one of the details that came out of that meeting. PRMC was seeing record numbers of births at the hospital. Obviously, the BOE needs to be able to project enrollment figures for the future, and the statistics from PRMC’s maternity ward probably help accomplish that. The problem is that the WCBOE has done nothing to increase the capacity of our schools, and nothing will be done in the next five years while we focus on the construction of two schools named Bennett.

The record birth numbers at PRMC last fall mean that in four or five years the enrollment at our elementary schools will also begin to reach record numbers, and there is no plan to handle this increase, unless you consider moving in more portable classrooms as a plan. Wicomico County already has 75 portables in use at various schools according to a recent inventory for a total of 68,000 square feet. It has been reported that the new Prince Street building is approximately 77,000 square feet. That means that we have roughly the equivalent of an entire school in portable classrooms. There are also 30 portable buildings covering 34,000 square feet that are currently being used as office space in the Central Office Annex and Facility Services.

Based on recent enrollment figures, Wicomico County schools are operating at 102% of their State Rated Capacity, and there is no plan to increase the capacity with permanent structures for at least the next five years. Both of our kids will be out of school in six years, so I guess I am glad that we won’t be impacted by the increased overcrowding that will be occurring in the future, but I do worry about the impact that the situation will have on the students and teachers of Wicomico County schools. The quality of education in Wicomico County has a direct impact on the quality of life and the property values in our area, and unless something drastic is done to improve our school facilities, that quality has only one direction to go. Down.

Every year, schools and PTA groups try to solve the need for fundraising through various programs with inconsistent results. From gift catalogs to cookie dough, we have all begrudgingly signed that check for something that we really didn’t need. The internet has provided many new opportunities for fundraising, and Schoolpop is a site that has been successful in showing organizations how to raise money for schools. Schoolpop is an innovative fundraising program that allows supporters to contribute to their school through their everyday shopping. The Schoolpop fundraising program directs a percentage of everyday purchases, sometimes up to 20%, to the school, and members are encouraged to shop through Schoolpop with special coupons and discounts. Schoolpop lets you support your school with purchases of products you really need through well known stores such as Target, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and Staples. Schoolpop also offers a special Visa card that rewards your school with 1% of all of your purchases along with a free $20 contribution with the first purchase. Visit Schoolpop.com to start a fundraiser for your school. You will be surprised how easy it is to shop and earn money for your school.

The Wicomico County Board of Education announced the selection of Dr. John Fredericksen as superintendent effective July 1, 2008. Dr. Fredericksen will relocate to Wicomico County from a suburb of Minneapolis, MN, where he currently serves as Assistant Superintendent. The next phase of Fredericksen’s 35 year career will bring him and his wife to a region of the country that is closer to other family members. The Osseo Area school district that Dr. Fredericksen is leaving has a student enrollment about 50% larger than Wicomico County. Fredericksen was one of five candidates that was interviewed in person by board members. The appointment of Dr. Fredericksen brings to a close the two year process that was managed by the superintendent search firm Ray and Associates. According to the search firm:

Thirty-four candidates completed an application for the post, including six from Delmarva. There were no applicants among current employees of the Wicomico County Board of Education.

According to Robin Holloway, president of the Wicomico County school board:

Dr. Fredericksen’s demonstrated instructional leadership, student achievement focus and district level experience in working successfully with the community made him a very strong candidate early on.

The new superintendent will begin the term of his four year contract after the end of the current school year.

Despite aging facilities, inadequate classroom space, and increasingly difficult social environments, the teachers and administrations of Maryland schools have achieved the rank of 3rd in a recent survey by Education Week. Check out the results in Quality Counts on the Education Week web site.

I have two kids who are preparing for the back to school season next week. They are excited to see some of their friends that they have not seen over the summer. I am just hoping that the upcoming school year will not provide us with too many disappointments from the schools of Wicomico County. My daughter was talking about schools in Talbot County the other day because her grandparents had told her that every student in Talbot County high schools gets a laptop computer. Talbot County has a program called the One to One Laptop Initiative. Through this program, every 9th grade student in Talbot County gets a laptop computer that they will use until graduation. The plan is to extend the program to 8th grade students in 2010. Talbot County is using a combination of government funding, grants and community donations to make this program possible.

My daughter is entering Parkside High School this year, and she is concerned that she won’t get a locker for her belongings because another student told her that sometimes there weren’t enough lockers to go around. She is just leaving Bennett Middle School where some classes could not bring textbooks home because other classes had to share them. We have seen an extremely high turnover rate among teachers, and I also heard a rumor that some classes at Bennett Middle may have as many as 36 students in a classroom this year. This makes it difficult to get excited about the upcoming school year, but like many parents, we will be active in the PTA and hope for the best.

I will have to spend some time trying to rationalize a solution to the continuing decline in the quality of education in Wicomico County. My first theory would be that a combination of fiscal restrictions due to the revenue cap and the physical restrictions of our overcrowded school buildings are the main contributors to this decline. We are surrounded by school districts that provide a more attractive venue for teachers, and it makes me admire even more the teachers who have remained dedicated to the students of Wicomico County. So tomorrow we will join hundreds of other families on Back to School Night to pick up schedules and meet teachers. Hopefully we will have good things to say in June, 2008, after 180 days of school in Wicomico County.