The meeting was preceeded by tours of Gearity Elementary to familiarize folks with the renovations to the physical plant recently. Volunteer students were the tour guides.

There were several other business items including a Library Board Appointment, numerous personnel actions listed in the agenda, acceptance of donated equipment, and several financial actions including approval of the 1998-99 Spending Plan.

The part of the meeting that caught the eye of volunteer note takers here most was three proposals for new programs to be included in the Heights High Course Description Guide and enable student scheduling coming up for the 1999-2000 school year.
 

1.  Cisco InterNet Network Training Course.

The proposal was presented by Thelma Williams of the Heights High Career Prep department. Cisco Systems is one of the world's largest manufacturers of networking products. Established in 1984, the business does $18.5 billion per year. Faced by the lack of trained employees, Cisco has implemented a series of training academies. (For example, there are 190,000 unfilled jobs right now in this field.) The academies began in California, and there are currently about 40 in Ohio.

The mission of the academies is to train students in technology and enable those student skills to be applied in their home districts. At Heights High, the academy would be a 2-year career prep program to design, build, and maintain local and wide area computer networks. The course work would be hands-on and project-based. There would be a second semester senior year project. Heights High teachers have added to the baseline Cisco curriculum to fit our districts needs. Cisco encourages such adaptation.

The total program cost is about $50,000. The maximum enrollment accumulated over 2 years is presently 25. The program could accomodate more students if more space can be found and outfitted.

The Board only committed to the current space and costs. They did express interest in expansion if students showed appetite for the course and community support is evident.
 

2.  GLOBE Elective Math and Science Environmental Course.

Heights High Science Teacher Anthony Zaccardelli presented the proposal. GLOBE is a nationally recognized environmental science program which involves students and scientists working together worldwide via the Internet. Students do field data collection, log weather data, perform professional data reduction, and upload the data to international databases to provide ground verification for satellite data. Currently, there is no environmental science course at Heights High where data collection, and interpretation is required. The proposal is for two elective courses taught in back-to-back block format: GLOBE Science and GLOBE Math. This is an example of inter-departmental team teaching in math, science, and technology.

GLOBE is a Vice President Al Gore initiative, which partners math and science education using the WWW for authentic data collection, analysis, and sharing. There are 5000 schools in 83 countries involved.

There are 3 teachers at Heights High and 2 at Monticello Middle who are currently trained in the GLOBE program. Free ongoing training is hosted by NASA Lewis. The proposal asks for $4000-$6000 in equipment and starter kits for the High School. The program is hoped to be implemented in the Elementary and Middle schools in the future.

The Board approved the course addition and costs.
 

3.  21st Century Communications.

Dr. Ackerman pointed out that the initiative for this program came from Dr. Masem. Juan Torres, a consultant who has communications technology and to a lesser degree education experience, presented the program.

This curriculum initiative has High school and Middle school components. The goal is two fold: 1) to provide students with marketable high technology multi-media production skills, and 2) to better staff and produce media materials for the underutilized free cable-TV channel and other media by the district. A new Advanced Communications Lab (ACL) is some of the necessary infrastructure.

The coursework would involve:

7th grade: All 7th graders would take a 9-week course on the history of communications and media literacy, revamping the current Communications course.

8th grade: An elective 18-week course would be offered replacing the current Life Skills course and providing an alternative to Vocal Music.

9th-10th grades: New electives involving video and CDROM production and learning related computer skills.

The costs for the programs are estimated at:

$5000-$8000 per middle school for revamping the current communications course and adding equipment such as a camera, monitor, and other video equipment,

$200,000-$400,000 for refurbishing 2 rooms at Heights High,

$50,000-$100,000 for equipment at Heights High, and

$50,000-$200,000 for television studios at the middle schools.

Miscellaneous comments:

The educational cable access channel can be an outlet for these courses.

The courses will not be targeted to the AP students.

The video lab will be available to other departments, since it will not be used all day.

The lab will be a major resource, like the media center.

It will be a learning resource for the staff as well.

It was not clearly presented how facilities like Rox Middle's new technology center with a media production component could save costs.

The presentation did not discuss the 7th grade curriculum lose due to such a new required course.

The Board approved inclusion of the Cisco and GLOBE courses in the course description guide. If student interest is not sufficient, then either course may not be offered. The course description guide must be printed during the winter break.

The Board will consider adding an insert page to the guide about the 21st Century Communications courses in January after they see a tighter budget for the program.