Superintendant's Corner

The Odessa School District staff committed to having Great Expectations for students and each other during the 2012-2013 school year. This commitment produced amazing results in what students learned, how they behaved, and what they accomplished. As the 2013-2014 school year begins, we are committing ourselves to go Beyond Great Expectations. We are committing ourselves to making sure every student is given every chance to be successful.

The teaching staff will spend Monday, August 26, working with Greg Benner to continue the positive behavior program RTI (response to intervention). Benner is an independent consultant working with school districts who use the RTI model. Odessa is in its fifth year of using the model. Benner worked with the secondary staff last year and was asked to return. A grant is funding his day in Odessa. He will focus on dealing with students with more intense problems, both academically and behaviorally.

The program has been very successful, with the number of disciplinary issues in the school dropping over 90% since the program started. As a staff, we continue to refine the practices we put in place to teach and reward the behavior we want in our students. We will not stop doing the things that have worked, but we are going to expand our efforts to focus on behavior that is far out of the norm.

We are fortunate that most of our students come from supportive homes and will be successful wherever they are. We also know we have students who do not have this advantage. The difference between having Great Expectations and Going Beyond has to do with the success of the students who need us most. Every student has the innate capacity and ability to learn how to self-manage if given the tools and the expectation that they can. Each of us has to recognize and reward the behavior we want. During in-service days we will focus on these efforts.

All of the Odessa staff will be together on Tuesday, August 27, for an all-staff in-service day, and school starts on August 28. Breakfast will be from 7:30 to 8 a.m., with the first bell at 8 and the tardy bell at 8:05. Then we will be off and running. The start time for school is five minutes earlier this year, so that we can gain extra time for early-release days. This year, early release will be every Wednesday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. This schedule will not start until September 4, so students will end the first day of school Wednesday, August 28, at 3 p.m. Preschool will start after Deutches Fest.

Some things everyone will see when they return to school are a newly painted gym and changes to the elementary and high school office entrances. Newly hired high school English teacher Laura Caler and high school social studies teacher Larry Moffet both have new carpet in their classrooms. The gym and multipurpose room floors shine like never before, and the multipurpose room no longer has orange mats on the walls.

Staff and students will have a new, managed Wi-Fi system and changed rules about having and using personal technology devices. We have a newly commissioned computer lab with 22 computers replacing the old, slow thin-client machines.

We also have some new faces on the staff. Jennifer Singer and Miranda Taylor, who both served as substitutes last year, were hired as paraprofessionals along with newly hired Lindsy Starkel. Tamie Shaw has joined the custodial staff. Laura Caler has joined the certificated staff, and Jeff Wehr has returned to the high school science room.