Monday - October 5, 2009
Good morning!  WOW!  What a great performance by the students of Northside at the TASA/TASB Convention.  They were more than just outstanding!  I was so proud of them and proud to be from Northside.  Thanks again to James Miculka, Director of Fine Arts, and all the fine arts teachers that worked with the students for months on the preparation for the presentation at the convention.  We will post the performance to our website as soon as possible.  Also, many pieces of artwork by Northside students were displayed at the Convention.  This artwork was truly outstanding and I thank these students for their work.  Truly, our students showed the greatness of Northside ISD!

Also, this morning I want to congratulate our schools that were recognized by an organization named Children at Risk.  This organization researched and ranked 57 public high schools in the six counties of Greater San Antonio.  At a press conference last Monday, Health Careers High School was named the #1 ranked high school out of the 57.  The researchers base their methodology on 14 measures of performance to evaluate how well San Antonio area public schools are preparing students for post-secondary success.  Among the criteria are four-year graduation rate, participation in advanced coursework, and performance on college entrance exams.  In addition to Health Careers High School being ranked #1, Clark High School and O'Connor High School were also ranked in the top ten.  Out of 104 middle schools that were ranked, our highest ranked middle school was Hobby Middle School at #14.  And out of 271 elementary schools, Thornton Elementary School ranked in the top ten at #6.  Congratulations to all these schools for this recognition, but especially to Health Careers High School.  Thanks to principal Jackie Horras and all the staff at Health Careers for the great job they do!

We have had many principals and teachers inquiring about the availability of Successful School Initiative (SSI) funds for Accelerated Reading Instruction (ARI) and Accelerated Mathematics Instruction (AMI).  These are funds the state has made available in previous years to districts which have been used for tutoring and other interventions to help students who are having difficulty be better prepared to pass the TAKS test.  On August 28, after school had started and budgets had been finalized, TEA informed school districts that the ARI/AMI funding would no longer be available through formula-based grants beginning with this school year.  The money will now be distributed through competitive grants and because the legislature added several new programs to be funded with SSI funds we will be affected.  For instance, one of the new grant programs is an Algebra Readiness Grant.  I was told we do not qualify for any of these funds because our students do too well.  Since our passing rate at ninth grade math exceeds the threshold established for funding, we will not receive any of these funds.  Interesting, penalized for doing well even though we had previously used some of the AMI funds for tutoring to help our students pass.

Recently, the Texas Association of School Administrators, Texas Association of School Boards, and the Texas School Alliance sent a letter to Commissioner Robert Scott at TEA regarding the potential detrimental effect these changes will have for students who are struggling to meet rigorous academic standards.  Both the cut in funding as well as the move from formula to competitive grant funding are drastic changes from previous years.  I do believe that Commissioner Scott recognizes our concerns and will do what he can within the parameters of the law to help school districts through this transition.  Nothing should be more important than helping school districts maintain the funding for these special funds which do so much in helping so many students be successful!

In the meantime, we have told principals of Title I schools to use their Title I funds to continue the interventions, and for non-Title I schools to use their Compensatory Education funds.  I have also asked our curriculum and instruction staff to work up some budget projections of need and then we will see if we can tap any local funds for the replacement of the ARI/AMI funds.  You would think that with the great strides Texas has made in student achievement the last thing the state would do is cut the funding and make the program a competitive grant program.

In closing I again want to reiterate how proud I am of Northside ISD!  Truly, we were represented so well at TASA/TASB by our students who performed and our staff who made presentations.  The "heart" of Northside was truly exhibited this weekend!

Thanks for all you do and have a great week!