Down River – Nov. 13, 2014
Forward, Please:
After sitting in on both the October and November meetings of our favorite school board, Keystone Central’s gang of nine, I am reminded of a quote a few years back from former Lock Haven University wrestling coach Carl Poff.
The university was slogging through the transition from one athletic director to another and there was venom seeping from under closed Thomas Field House doors.
Without revisiting that unpleasant LHU chapter, let’s focus here on ex-coach Poff who had been brought in to help with the transition. All he said was “everybody needs to row in the same direction.”
That’s it; if Lock Haven University’s athletic department wanted to move forward and leave the days of rancor behind, everybody had to be on board.
If the LHU athletic department can survive a long siege of discontent, why can’t Keystone Central?
Based on the open animosity too often on display at the last couple school board meetings, it’s going to be a challenge.
But district opponents have to understand that six members of the school board who have had a first-hand look at the work of Superintendent Kelly Hastings made the determination her contract should be renewed for another five year term.
Like it or not, school district critics, Hastings has the back of a two-thirds majority of the board. We’ll take Hastings at her word (we have no reason not to) that her goal is to make her supporters proud.
As for her opponents, those in the audience have a couple options: they can continue to attack her through social media which may or may not make them feel better, and/or they can try to find prospective board replacement candidates for the 2015 municipal elections. If they choose the latter, we would suggest they look for open-minded, reasonable people to pursue a school board seat, rather than encouraging any petty, one-issue, grudge-holding candidates.
As for her opponents on the board, the choice is yours as it is for the other six sitting members: put aside any past differences and “row” together to further the cause of our kids.
All of you, don’t ever forget, you’re there to help some 4,000 of our young people.
About Those Scores:
The Keystone Central School District should take some pleasure in the improved performance from its students as reflected in the recently released statewide school performance profiles.
And while district students achieved something just less than an overall improvement of 10 percent compared to the previous year, Keystone Central still ranks the lowest of area public school districts Down River reviewed:
Jersey Shore – 80.8%
Bald Eagle Area – 78.8%
Bellefonte – 77.8%
Williamsport – 74.6%
Philipsburg-Osceola – 73.32%
Keystone Central – 72.95%
So while district officials trumpeted Keystone’s 72.95 mark as opposed to 66.86 the previous year, there is still a lot of work to be done, a need for continued growth.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t note that test scores went up in eight of Keystone’s 10 schools; also that the lowest school score we could find was the Sugar Valley Rural Charter School with a mark of 53.8, a drop from 54.6 a year earlier.
Those Sugar Valley results certainly make one wonder why there is a growing outflow of students from Keystone Central schools to Sugar Valley.
And we agree with school board member Wayne Koch when he lamented the nationwide emphasis on testing, terming the whole system “out of hand.” He said the testing had been instituted as a diagnostic tool, but has turned into a school district against school district program.
This whole “teach-to-the-test” approach in education across the country is one area where Keystone should join its neighboring districts and lead the chorus to get this onerous time-consuming, stress-building reliance on testing done away with.
Happy Valley Has Landed:
A week ago we were wondering if the Sandusky affair documentary “Happy Valley” would in fact ever make it to Happy Valley, that insular Penn State/State College land of the Nittany Lions to our southwest.
Well, guess what? It will!
Down River stumbled across news relative to the next chapter as we all pursue the “truth” in the kingdom-toppling Sandusky scandal.
And the word is that Amir Bar-Lev’s well received documentary has been booked for a couple showings this Friday night at the State Theater in State College. This comes as good news as earlier media reports listed New York as the first showing site on November 19 with a national distribution to follow.
We learned through pennlive.com Tuesday afternoon about the State College debut and went online to snare the last couple remaining tickets for a reserved seat showing at the State Friday at 7 p.m. An open, unreserved showing will follow the same night. That’s it to this point.
Look for a full report here next week, not just on the movie’s content but also relative to which PSU big cheeses, past and present, show up or choose not to show up.
