A Record I am not Interested in Breaking

Northbound on Holmes. Two miles
south of Schrock Road at approximately
4:30 in the afternoon.

Now that we are in the thick of the winter weather season, I thought it would be a good time to review how we go about deciding when and if we should make a change to the school day. Admittedly, I had an 'Oh no, what have you done?!', moment a couple weeks ago when I bragged to anyone who would listen how easy we have had it up to this point. Murphy's law, anyone?

Nevertheless, I did get a chuckle out of a recent article in the Des Moines Register titled, 'Iowans are mad about the snow, and happy to let you know about it'. But what really got my attention was the same day article, 'The controversial decision every school faces: When should classes be canceled?' Before we go any further it is important to note that student safety is without a doubt the number one and highest priority whenever making weather related decisions to cancel, delay, or dismiss students early. Yet at the same time, we need to talk a little bit about politics before we talk about process. Because I promise you, we get plenty of 'feedback' and 'input' into our decision making!

Don't think politics are at play in these decisions? Consider the fact the word 'controversial' is in the title of the aforementioned article. As right as we think we may be on either side of making the 'should we stay or should we go' decision, only means someone else will think exactly the opposite. Further, as the district in the above article probably learned the hard way: it isn't all that easy or fun being on an island (deserted that is!). Look, a school district can be right on the money with a very defensible position for not disrupting a regularly scheduled school day. But right or not, how many phone calls does a person have to swat down to prove that point? Further, how meaningful is that day of instruction in light of the environmental factors that are most certainly at play? My colleague, Dr. Zellmer of South Hardin puts it this way when he posted the following on Twitter after the January 18th event:

Ah yes, the January 18th event! This was the day we decided to dismiss school early because the forecast indicated snow was on the way. Not just a little, but a lot! This particular decision was made a bit trickier for school superintendents since most of us were at the winter meeting of the school executives of Iowa in Des Moines. Trying to determine whether or not to cancel or dismiss school from more than 100 miles away is very complicated when you can't observe conditions on the ground first hand. As it turns out, our decision to dismiss was ill informed since the snow didn't start until about 5:00 p.m. While I may have looked silly for making that decision, our weather forecasters certainly didn't help the situation out much!

To make matters a bit worse, we cancelled school again on January 22nd, when promised by our weather forecasters that snowmageddon (basically a made up word so I'll say it's spelled correctly) would arrive by 7:00 a.m. Uh, it didn't really start snowing hard until later in the afternoon. Strike Two! Well, maybe not so much. I mean after all, we did have a little freezing rain that made for some slippery roads, parking lots, and sidewalks. But I will say this: even though an argument could be made both of those decisions were made in error, based on the same set of circumstances I would make them again (of course the same set of circumstances without the retrospect of hindsight). The fact is, I'll never regret cancelling or dismissing school based on the information I have to work with at the time. I might, however, regret NOT cancelling or dismissing school.

So then, a bit about my process. Typically planning for a weather related event begins between 24-48 hours in advance when we receive weather bulletins that outline the parameters of what to expect. The further out they are, the less accurate they tend to be, and as we have learned recently they are sometimes still not very accurate! Once the event starts, understanding conditions out in the open spaces of the district is critical. This means getting out and driving, which most of the time means I am on the road around 4:00 a.m. My typical route covers roughly 25 miles and encompasses portions of all bus routes, running from the southern to the northern part of the district. It generally takes about an hour to complete the circuit. I can promise you this: the conditions in town are usually not at all the same as conditions outside of town!

Somewhere in the southern part of our district.

While I am on the road, so are all my colleagues in other districts. In most cases, we'll confer the evening before to see if it is advantageous to call for a delay instead of an outright cancellation. Timing is everything, and sometimes we need a little bit more of it to see how the weather system develops. I deplore calling for two hour delay and then turning around and cancelling school! I understand how disruptive this is for families, but sometimes that extra time makes the difference.

The final decision rests entirely with the superintendent of each individual school district, but it should come as no surprise these phone conferences are designed to share information and experience from one locale to another, and in some cases create consensus. It is not uncommon for school districts to present a united front when it comes to weather related cancellations.

Here we are then. Today is January 28, 2019 and we have again cancelled school. Based on the wind and condition of the secondary roads it appears, at least this time, to have been the right call. The trouble is, we are not out of the woods by a long shot. Beginning tonight and continuing to the end of the week the bottom is forecast to drop out of the thermometer. Meteorologists are saying we should expect 'generational low temperatures' with wind chills colder that -50 degrees. It is safe to say with weather predicted to be this dangerous, we will be considering our options.

I'll close with this little factoid. During the second year of my tenure at Hudson we had 7 weather related cancellations, which is a record under my watch. I certainly hope we don't break that record this year. Stay warm and dry, everyone!

The One Word: Disconnect

Not big on the whole 'New Year Resolution' thing, I started participating in the 'One Word'  challenge a few years back. You see, I'm not about to give up my morning coffee or eating whatever I want to eat. Those are the kind of things that make life enjoyable, am I right here? Nonetheless, I'll concede one point: I have started to 'exercise'. I put that in quotes because I am not really working up too much of a sweat. My exercise consists of walking and an honest attempt at 10,000 steps daily. When the weather cooperates, many days I am able to walk to and from work. During these cold winter months, getting out of my office and seeing what is happening in our schools is a great way to get in a few extra steps. Although I'll admit my step count pales in comparison to what most teachers are getting in their daily work!  

But yes, the 'One Word'. In the intervening years I have enjoyed seeing people at games and other school events who have come up to me and shared what their one word was. As a recap, my word last year was 'Opportunity'. In a nutshell, the theme here was to look forward each day for opportunities to make a difference in our school district. I also invited our students and teachers to take advantage of the long stretch of uninterrupted instructional time that occurs between January and spring break each year. Indeed the gains in student learning are staggering! From that vantage point, I believe they were successful.

This year however, I want to use the word disconnect. Now, I don't mean to disconnect from society or anything quite so drastic as that. Quite the opposite actually. I intend to disconnect from my device when not at work or needing to work. Last spring I discovered an add on computer software that enables a user to physically shut off, or pause their email. While the email is shut off, it means that your inbox appears empty. Once the user turns it back on or unpause it, all the email flows into the inbox. So, on Friday afternoon when I leave work for the weekend, I have been turning off my email. I have found it to be quite liberating! So liberating in fact that I have decided to expand this practice to evenings as well. Pausing, or turning off the flow of email completely eliminates the urge to check email! 

For those of you that know me well are aware that my work day isn't complete until my inbox is empty. So once I get home in the evening, I was constantly checking and returning email messages so I didn't fall behind. You want to know what I have realized? There isn't one email that I receive between 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. that needs to be addressed right then. So here is how I proposed to disconnect.

When I leave work at 5:30, I'll turn off my email. If I drive to work that means I'll be home around 5:33. If I walk, I'll be home around 5:50. Then I'll put my bag and my phone in my office and walk away. Believe me, if someone needs to reach me (they know who they are); they know how to get to me! So there it is: disconnect! I hope you can find a way to disconnect from your devices too. I am sure that I will find it much more exciting to be in the moment and enjoy what is going on around me! I sincerely hope you have a great 2019. Stay warm and buckle up, the winter we have been looking for has finally arrived!

Greatest Hits: 2018!

The end of a calendar year is always ripe with television specials reviewing the big news of the last twelve months. It is somewhat awkward to do so in a school since the holiday break only marks the halfway point of a school year. But in the spirit of the season, I'll give it a shot. This isn't meant to be an all encompassing reflection and the only promise I'll make is that I'll forget some! Before proceeding with my thoughts on the year we are ending, I'll concede that you probably won't agree with all my selections! So then, our twelve month look back includes events that happened not only in the school year that we are currently in, but a look at second semester last year as well. For the sake of nostalgia, I'll just turn my calendar back to January of 2018 and see if there are a few events that stand out to me. If you think I've missed something big, be sure to let me know. After all, everyone has a different opinion on the year that was!

January 4, 2018 was a pretty important day in the year for our school district. While most people will view it as an ordinary day at our school, they would be correct since there would have been nothing that stood out. In fact,  for all practical purposes January 4th was merely a mark in time on our school calendar: the beginning of the second semester. However, on that day I held two very important meetings. The first was a meeting where we made the first crucial steps toward reforming our hot lunch program and really got the ball rolling. We would go on to launch a new hot lunch program on August 23rd that has so far met and surpassed our expectations.

The second was a meeting with our architects where we discussed the upcoming feasibility study and parameters of that work. We'll talk more about that in an upcoming post, but we are currently in the bid window for Phase III of the elementary renovation project. We have been in a constant state of renovation, repair, and remodel in our school district for several years. Certainly all of these projects are great for our school and show signs of progress. But Phase III is shaping up to be the biggest in a couple of decades!

This fall, Hudson Schools debuted their very first dance team. The first performance was at
halftime of the boys basketball game right before winter break. 

Our winter months kept us all indoors through spring break and beyond. All the while, our feasibility study and master planning was well underway along with plans to bring on a new food service program to our schools. The next big event in our school district occurred on May 20th, 2018 when we bid farewell to the Class of 2018 at graduation. By my count, we had 44 students cross the stage that afternoon to receive their high school diploma. Board President Karyn Finn challenged our graduates to dare greatly in her remarks to the class. 

Once we dismissed school for the year on June 1, we quickly moved into our summertime projects. We had contractors moving into the building quite literally as students and teachers were exiting for the summer. Indeed we were very busy as Phase II of the elementary renovation project consumed a bulk of the summer. There were some great lessons learned from this project that will be applied to our Phase III work, which hopefully will begin sometime this spring!

August 1st is usually a good sign that school will be starting soon, and this fall we welcomed six new faculty members to our ranks. These new faculty brought with them a blend of experience and included former alumni, teachers with special skill sets that enabled us to expand course offerings in the high school, and a new expanded elementary music teaching position. We also enrolled 745 students this fall, increasing our enrollment by 25 over last year. It is also worth noting this is the highest enrollment number in a decade when we had 748 in the fall of 2008. Hudson saw quite a bit of residential development this year, which also attributed to our enrollment growth.

Perhaps the most memorable event of the year is the football team winning the Class A state championship. If not the most memorable of the year, then certainly of the fall? I'll leave that debate for others. Certainly there were other notable events and accomplishments in this year that was. If I have erred in anyway and left some out, please help me jog my memory! In the meantime, I'm looking forward with much optimism for a great 2019 at #hudsonschools!

Your hometown Pirates are the Class A state champions!

Phase III Checks a Lot of Boxes

Our school district is currently in the bidding window for the biggest project since construction of the high school: Phase III of the elementary renovation. The journey to get to this point has been long and included multiple trips back to the drawing board, reorganizing our priorities, and asking for community input. We began planning for Phase III over a year ago, and in February of 2018 we engaged with a community stakeholder group to consider the future of our school district and specifically facility needs as we anticipate enrollment growth. Since those cold February meetings, the school board has been focused on developing a plan that addresses some of those priorities, while at the same time working within the confines of an unforgiving budget. During our deliberations the school board has come to realize that not all our priorities are going to be met and that there will always be a 'next project' right around the corner. However, with an 'all in' budget of $5 million, we'll find out on January 15th just how far we'll be able to go, and how much we will be able to accomplish. 

The number one priority as outlined by our survey of the community and focus group is to address deferred maintenance in our facilities and have a refreshed image of the school district. Rounding out the top three are locker room improvements and enhanced building security. In all, there were nine identified priorities with a price tag that was just staggering. But as the saying goes, the only way you eat an elephant is one bite at a time. If you are interested in reading the full report, click here.

As a start, our Phase III work will complete what was begun in Phases I and II; the replacement of windows, lights, and HVAC in the lower elementary wing. We learned some valuable lessons in Phase II when we were faced with the difficult problem of determining how best to tackle some air quality issues this past fall. Investigations into the cause included pressure testing the facility and incorporating those findings into the scope of this next project. That has led to this next phase including the addition of a dedicated outside air system which will exchange the air in and out of classrooms creating positive pressure outflows.

The centerpiece of this project is included in the photo rendering above and meets the 'refreshed image' and 'improved security' priorities. A new elementary entrance will include enhanced security features that force patrons to enter the facility by first going through the office. Eliminating the blind entrance at the 'front door' to the elementary school was a big priority. At the same time all other entrances at both the elementary and high school attendance centers are scheduled to be replaced with a key card access system. Also, by relocating the elementary and middle school offices to this location it will enable the spaces currently being utilized for this task to be re-purposed into classrooms. Rooms like these will be needed as our enrollment grows.

What is unseen in the depiction above is what is happening on the other side of that facade. As a start, we plan to expand and renovate the commons, while at the same time creating an accessible entrance to the competition gym on the north side of the valley. Also, the restrooms and locker rooms are being renovated and updated, meeting a priority that was very high on the list for our students. Truth be told, whenever I have the pleasure of giving tours to prospective families, the one area I try to avoid is the locker rooms. Finally, the plan includes opening up the media center, creating great collaborative space for students and faculty to work together. 

Those are the highlights. How much and how far we will be able to go in order to make this project a reality depends on how the bids come in, which is scheduled to happen on January 15th. In the meantime, if you are interested in viewing the plans or seeing additional renderings please stop by my office. I would love to show them to you, share our vision, and answer any questions you might have. Following the receipt of those bids, the board will hold a public hearing on this project at 6:00 p.m. on January 21st in the board room. At that meeting, the board will make a final decision on this Phase III project.