Superintendent Robert Boyle’s Opening Remarks
At School District’s Opening Day Employee Breakfast
August 25, 2008

Welcome to the teachers and staff that are joining the KGB (Ketchikan Gateway Borough) this year. There are 22 teachers and one principal. You made a decision that will have a great impact on your career. You decided to place your career direction . . . part of your history . . . with the KGBSD (Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District).

You made a great decision – this is a great place to practice your craft. We have excellent facilities, adequate funds, low student teacher ratio and up-to-date technology.

KGB is an involved community. The Borough supports us well. Last week, I met with Borough staff and Mayor Williams to discuss how the public transit system might augment our student transportation program. The City provides for programs that support children – PatchWorks is a great example of that effort. The Chamber of Commerce even supports the District. All the new teachers are invited to lunch on Wednesday. We have a strong cadre of parent volunteers that support many of our programs and your classroom.
You will find Ketchikan an excellent place to live.

Detailing out why you made a great choice in coming here to work your craft can be done by list. However, it is best done by listing people – naming names of those who make my comments real.

• We have a superb Board. They bring a wide array of skills to governance. Several are teachers. (They claim to be retired. But don’t believe it; they are still teachers at heart.) Several are self-employed business owners. They provide credibility to the community. And several hold positions with organizations in the community that provide them with insight to what makes the District effective. They work long hours and are subject to being second-guessed on many decisions. But what you will see in their work is a clear determination to improve the schools and, as a result, the over-all community. Their work sets the stage for what we do.

The KGBSD Board of Education: Russell Thomas, Chair; Matt Olsen, Vice Chair;
Choc Schafer, Treasurer, Carl Webb, Karen Eakes, Ginny Clay, and Michael Fitzgerald.

• Our buildings are in great shape. The Borough provides the building and we are fortunate in that the Borough is attentive to the needs of the District. However, it is our custodial services and maintenance employees that keep us well furnished. They are skilled and work hard to provide us with a great physical environment.

• Our food service program meets the needs of our children and many staff participate in that program.

• The administrative team — the principals, business office and District Office personnel — are very good. The principals have the same challenging position as in other places – parents, students, staff, and the District Office all pulling them in different directions. What sets ours apart is their ability to respond gracefully, with positive attitudes, and with a demeanor that fosters good will. I respect them all.

• The business office managed a $29,000,000 budget last year to within $48,000. From the budget and receipts, we made projections, received a $240,000 increase from the Borough in November, and at the end of the year – 7 months later – we had exactly $288,000. That is a 99.9% projection.

• The tracking of personnel records, building your house for NCLB, maintaining your duly accrued payroll, applications, updating files. Syd (Human Resources Manager) can type, email, answer the phone, file and smile all at the same time.

• Special services: we need them and we have them for testing, training, planning and monitoring our children with the most needs.

• What we teach and the training in staff development come from our Curriculum Department.

• We need safe schools and healthy students.

• Technology. Where would we be without email, the Internet and computerized data management?

(Staff in the above areas were introduced)

The key element in providing a quality program always comes back to: “How good are the teachers?” This is where the KGBSD excels. We have great teachers. For a quick example, Rebecca Bowlen, and David Miller.

The leadership of the KEA is very good. Some of us are homegrown, approx 35.
Some have been here for some time:

2 years,
3-5,
6-10.
11-15,
16-20,
21-25,
26-30.
(At each of these divisions, those employed in the district that long were asked to stand)

The KGBSD has 7 instructional buildings, 8 schools, 2 charter schools, 310 employees, and a $30 million dollar budget. The purpose of all that effort, organization, and money is to provide approximately 2,158 students with:
The “opportunity to acquire the skills and knowledge to succeed.”

That is the Mission statement of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District.

Fully stated it is: “Under the leadership of our School Board, Superintendent, and Administration, we will ensure that every student has the opportunity to acquire the skills and knowledge to succeed.”

How do we provide the opportunity for success? The first step is creating an environment that provides for the physical and emotional safety of children as they become KGBSD students. We do that quite well. The buildings are safe and we work with students, parents, and community to provide for their safety. We have special programs, PBS, handbooks, policies, and procedures to provide emotional security. This is a prerequisite to all we do: provide a physically and emotionally safe environment.

I believe we practice the concept of collegiality with each other in order to provide it to our students. I believe that is so very critical to what we do that I am going to test that environment. I believe in the quality of the KGBSD staff strongly enough to say some things today that may leave you scratching your head. I believe that I can do that because I believe inside these walls, inside this community of learners, I am in a safe environment. I have confidence in the people in this room that I can be myself without being ridiculed. That I can express my ideas without scorn. That I can explore with you the concepts of providing a great education to the Ketchikan students without being penalized if I am different.

The KGBSD staff are people whom I trust to debate, explore, plan, collaborate, and work within an environment that fosters student achievement. That environment provides a fertile ground for planning . . . for change.

We have a tremendously exciting year in store and you are going to be pleased to have these going on in your first year with us: We have new programs, changes, but we are in the midst of change.

The most significant is RTI – Response to Intervention . . . the most significant change in how we look at schooling in decades.

Some people, critics of the public school system, state that schools traditionally look to sort and catalog students. We call it graded schools. First grade, second grade, third grade and we grade students within the grades: A, B, C, D, and F - failure. We then graduate them in rank order of who has achieved the most. Some people say that sorting is the purpose of schools. Not to educate; but to sort out those who excel from those who fail. Imagine a conversation based on sorting. “What did you do at work today?”
“I successfully determined the work opportunities for 25 future citizens today by sorting them into top achievers and low achievers. I paid very little attention to their growth; I focused only on their ranking.”

In that traditional grading concept, schools relied on discrepancy to determine student support. We looked at a student and asked: "Have they failed more than is expected?" That is discrepancy. We expected you to fail, but you failed more than what our tests think you should have, so we will help you.

This year, we start to dismantle discrepancy with RTI. AIMS Web testing, differentiated instruction, intervention team planning, individualized reading plans for each student, and supplemental support materials all come into play. We do not have all the answers to implementing the RTI model. We are not practiced. We do not know all the nuances of this program, but we do have the belief that each child is entitled to, as our mission states: “the opportunity to acquire the skills and knowledge to succeed.”

We will not require them to fail before assisting them.

RTI is a real challenge for us. It is difficult to start into something that causes change. Change must take place in the RTI model. I trust everyone in this room . . . that their belief is to focus on what makes sense for students . . . that we are going this way. It’s a great way for you to start with us.

Schoenbar staff is embarking on a project that causes change. They are joining the Consortium for Digital Learning (CDL) to put a laptop into the hands of every teacher and student. This is scary. We not only assail the walls of the ivory tower of education. We can kick them down. We could do away with paper, put textbooks into museums, and change the context of classroom to that of where two or more gather.

Through a grants process, we are putting counselors into the three district elementary schools . . . a backup to creating an environment. We know hungry children do not learn. Those carrying emotional baggage around all day do not learn as well either.

Poor attendance, truancy, and dropouts are related. A-T-D. We need to improve our attendance rate – a great way for us to increase standardized test scores. Can’t teach ‘em if you don’t have ‘em. To improve attendance, we will more than likely do a number of actions that improve the environment.

Truancy cannot be ignored. We cannot ignore chronic absences. From K to grade 5, it is a parental issue. From grade 6 to age 16, it is a parental and student issue. We will pursue chronic absences and implement corrective measures.

Drop out intervention is very important to completing the mission: “Ensure that every student has the opportunity to acquire the skills and knowledge to succeed.” If alternative opportunities are needed, we must by our mission statement, provide them. Those of you involved in the grade 8/grade 9 transition programs at Schoenbar and KayHi, those of you at Revilla, thank you, your work is very important to our mission.

This year we implement the most dynamic calendar in Alaska. Not often that you can talk about a calendar as dynamic. However, we DID what the research says are the two most significant methods of increasing student achievement:
- Increase the length of the calendar, add more days;
- Increase the length of day, add more minutes.

The amount of time spent at school is one of the fundamental elements of school. Either of these concepts – lengthen the day, lengthen the year – should increase student achievement. We are doing both.

The standard nationwide calendar is 180 with 6.5 student hours per day. In Alaska it is 180 with a minus of 10 days for in-service or a minimum of 170. We went to school 170 days last year. We are scheduled for 181 this year. By close examination of the bus routes, the daily schedule, and any place that could be adjusted, as much as 30 minutes per day of additional teacher/student contact time was added to some calendars. Thirty minutes for 181 days is 5,430 minutes. At 300 minutes of teacher/student contact time per day that is 18 days of new daily time. Added to the 10 calendar days, we have increased the contact time by the equivalent of 28 days. This was not done lightly. Rough calculations are that is costs $138,000 per day to operate schools.

Now the challenge is: what do we do with that time? How that time is used is more important than having the time. That is your challenge: How to best use every minute of time you have with your students.

So, from K to grade 12 we are practicing school reform . . . change is in the air.
• RTI
• Increase in the year
• Increase in the day
• School Counselors in the elementary
• Technology in Schoenbar
• Transition from Schoenbar to KayHi

An exciting year. You have chosen well – to team up with a strong professional staff that understands well how to create an environment that provides:
The “opportunity to acquire the skills and knowledge to succeed.”

We have challenges. Soaring fuel prices, an uncertain student count, place a shadow on our plans. The worst-case scenarios could put the funding of these program changes in jeopardy. Together we can face those issues. Small actions combine and build into large results. We have gone room to room and adjusted temperatures down 2 degrees. The fuel savings, if realized, have the potential of being significant. Last year we consumed 261,000 gallons of fuel. Diesel costs have been as high as $4.15 per gallon. That would be $1,083,150 this year. One of every $30 dollars of our entire budget. Two degrees will reduce this.

What good does it do to save fuel if our electricity consumption soars? I have asked our building administrators to remove the unnecessary electrical appliances from their buildings. It’s a small thing, but with over 900 computers in the district, turning them off every night may mean the difference between having the supplies we need to having what we want. I urge you to, on a daily basis, take the small steps. Turn off the lights, close an open door, recycle paper when you can, to cut costs in order to put our efforts into better use.

The next step is long term. Monitor closely attendance issues. Consider attendance an educational issue just like other handicaps such as dyslexia. Engage the Intervention Teams. Use the services of our Home School Liaisons to build stronger attendance habits with all students. A-T-D – attendance is connected to truancy and is connected to dropping out. We had 100 dropouts last year, according to the formula used by NCLB. Some of that is arbitrary. For example, a Kindergarten student may be considered a drop out by NCLB. But how can that be? And we will recover that student in grade one. But, if we consider the 70 some students in middle and high school that stopped coming to school as recoverable and multiply by $7,000 per student, that $490,000 in additional funding would solve many of the fiscal concerns we have today.

Your challenge is to build an instructional environment that causes student achievement. I believe that achievement, if experienced by all students, as stated in our mission statement, will lead to meeting the challenges we have.

What did I say that might put me at risk? Two main points:

• One. We have fiscal issues that may limit our ability to engage in our mission statement and I cannot control the key factors. However, collectively we can take steps to address those concerns. I need, we need, each and every one of us in this room, to take the small steps that make a big difference.

• Two. We are engaged in fundamental change and I do not have “all of the answers.”
We are examining how we will serve students by adopting the RTI model and I do not have “all of the answers.”

• That I cannot forecast all the issues . . . That I need you to be successful.

• The CDL program at Schoenbar, what are the total implications? “I do not have all the answers.”

• What are the instructional changes that will be implemented due to the increased time? I cannot answer that.

I can say: “I do not have the answers” in front of our Board, in front of the 310 members of our staff believing the collective question will be: “How can I help?”

That is why you have made an excellent decision to join the KGBSD:
o your great working conditions,
o professional high caliber colleagues,
o a supportive, encouraging Board,
o involved parents and
o strong community.

In addition to these, you will be involved in current research-based actions designed to cause increases in student achievement.

I need, we need, each and every one of us in this room, to make it work. I have a great deal of confidence that it will work, that we will meet our mission and provide the “opportunity to acquire the skills and knowledge to succeed“ to each student – one student at a time, one program at a time, one day at a time.

Welcome to the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District. Have a great year.