A/B Block Schedule.

Allow me to tell a story. The story is about a school district who had grown accustomed to a particular scheduling method for their high schools. In an effort to improve academic standards, that district makes the tough decision to change to a new scheduling system. Many parents, students and staff are critical of the new system and say that it will lead to poor academic performance. In essence, we should stay with the old system. Some go as far as to say that we are ruining the educational experience for our high school students on an experiment. The story I am telling is of the decision Mansfield ISD made over ten years ago to switch to the then-revolutionary system called Accelerated Block.

Now, six weeks into this school year, we are hearing many of the same comments from that change many years ago. Ultimately, the change to A/B was made for the same reason the district decided to change to Accelerated Block at one time - to increase the academic aptitude of our students. All signs point to the fact that our high school students need assistance in preparing for college.

The student editors of the Mansfield Legacy High School newspaper, The Rider, commented on A/B Block in their first issue. They said, "The A/B schedule will be beneficial; all it takes is a little getting used to and simple organization." You can read the full article here - (careful, it's a big file.)

The switch to A/B block is just one piece of this puzzle. We have also signed on with the AVID program in our middle schools, and soon in our high schools, to teach students study skills and time management techniques. In addition, we offer tutoring to all students in core subjects to keep them up to speed in classes they find difficult.

If students find A/B block more academically challenging, this is not necessarily a bad result. We do not intend to overload any of our students, but we do intend to increase our academic standards and expectations in the district.

Questions about the new Raptor system?

Since the start of this school year, parents and visitors have been asked to scan their driver's licenses upon entering our schools. This might have been a surprise to some and hopefully, it was not too much of an inconvenience.

We have received several questions about the V-Soft Raptor system and would like to clear up a few questions that are out there.

#1 Is the Raptor system storing visitor's personal/private information? This is not the goal of the Raptor system. The system checks the visitor's information versus registered sex offender databases covering 48 states and Mexico. The single purpose of this system is to alert school administrators and Mansfield ISD Police to the fact that a registered sex offender is visiting one of our campuses.
#2 Isn't information about sex offenders private information? No. Records identifying sex offenders is very public and easily available to anyone with an Internet connection.
#3 I don't believe any sex offenders live in my area. Why should my school have this system? Information posted online by local law enforcement proves out that sex offenders live throughout our school district, and we are not unique in this fact.
#4 Why put Raptor on our campuses? The district responded to requests from parents who wanted a system like this installed. We do believe it further enhances the security of our students on our campuses, and have been pleased with its operation thus far.



















#5 What does the person at the front desk see on their screen after they scan my license? An image is posted above(and on the District site) showing exactly what the front desk staff member sees.
They see: a photo(to verify a match), the name, a driver's license number and a birth date. Nothing more, nothing less.

As with any new system, there has been an initial adjustment period for campuses. So far, it has operated extremely well. If you would like to read more, the District Release is here and at the official Raptor site is here. Please feel free to post any comments below.

Checking in...

Thanks for checking in on our Mansfield ISD Blog. We established this blog in the spring with the intention of starting regular posting this fall.
It has been an eventful year to date. We have seen several events unfold in the first few weeks of school - the tragic death of a student from Summit High, the joyous opening of two new schools(Legacy High School and Carol Holt Elementary), the implementation of the district-wide Raptor security monitoring system, the naming of T.A.Howard's Kathy Meek as the Region XI Secondary Teacher of the Year. The list goes on and on of joys and challenges.
It's also worth mentioning that as of today(Sept14), the district has enrolled almost 2000 additional students, as compared to the same day last year. This means we are rapidly approaching 30,000 total students.
We intend for this blog to be a current and interactive experience for our school community. If you have any ideas for items you'd like us to include here - email them to blog@mansfieldisd.org or post them here.

Why Blog?

You may wonder why Mansfield ISD, a public school district, would choose to blog. The basic idea behind the Your Mansfield ISD blog is that if your home is located within our district boundaries, our schools are your schools. And let's face it - a school district is a large organization with lots of moving parts. It can be intimidating, when you really think about all of the local policy, state and national legislation, etc., that go into our final programs. Our goal with this blog is to simplify many of these complexities and also key you in on many of the great things that are going on.

One other important element, we invite your feedback on this site through the commenting feature. Comments will be moderated. To read our comment policy, click here. If there's something you'd like to see us blog about, send an email to blog@mansfieldisd.org .

Regardless of why you're here, we're glad you stopped by. Check back soon for new posts.

Blogging Policy

Blogging policy
Welcome to Your Mansfield ISD. If you’re thinking of joining in the conversation, take a look at our blogging guidelines below.

New to blogging?
A blog is literally a web log – an online record, or log,of someone’s thoughts and opinions updated frequently. The majority of blogs allow visitors to join in by adding their own responses (or comments) to posts by the author (blogger.) Most search engines now offer an option to search blogs, and many individuals choose to get their news and information from blogs.

If you want to respond to a post, click on the link underneath the entry. This will bring up a page where you can submit your comment.

Commenting on Your Mansfield ISD
Your Mansfield ISD is available for all visitors to add their comments to posts. Please keep these comments relevant to the entry in question, and bear in mind that very long comments may put off fellow users!

All posting of comments on this blog are at the discretion of the editors. The intent of this policy is not to keep any negative or critical information from being posted, but to protect the privacy and rights of Mansfield ISD staff and students. To clarify, we will not post comments that reference specific employees or students. It is our policy to review all comments before publishing, partly to reduce the possibility of spam comments and partly to ensure comments are in line with our blog commenting guidelines set out below.

We will update comments as often as we can during our operating hours – 8:00 AM-4:30 PM Monday to Friday (or as deemed necessary during off-hours.)

Blog commenting guidelines
We welcome your comments and look forward to what you have to say. However, we will not publish comments that:

• Break the law or encourage others to do so. This includes respecting copyright and fair use laws. If you are talking about somebody else’s work, reference this or the person, and where possible include a link.
• Contain abusive or inappropriate language or statements. This includes remarks that are racist, homophobic and sexist as well as those that contain obscenities or are sexually explicit.
• Easily identify students and/or staff in defamatory, abusive, or generally negative terms.
• Do not show proper consideration for others’ privacy or are considered likely to offend or provoke others – i.e. don’t pick fights or goad others into inflammatory debates.
• Are spam – i.e. repeatedly posting the same comment or comments that are simply advertising/promoting a service or product.
  

In addition, comments and/or links within your comments should be relevant to the post. Comments containing links to websites falling into the categories above will not be published.

We reserve the right to not post comments or remove any comment at any time, for any reason – but hope in practice that this won’t be necessary. Bottom line: Don't scare people and be smart.

Feedback
We welcome your feedback. If you have a comment or wish to report an inappropriate comment, please email us at blog@misdmail.org.

The disclaimers…
Your Mansfield ISD is authored by Richie Escovedo in his capacity as Director of Media and Communications at Mansfield ISD (MISD) along with designated authors.

The comments are our own and don’t necessarily represent the MISD’s official positions, strategies or opinions. The Mansfield ISD is not responsible for the content on Web sites linked to from this blog.

This post was last updated on September 8, 2010

What is a blog?

The word "blog" is short for “weblog.” Weblogs began in the mid-90s as a way for individuals to keep online diaries, or journals, of their activities. The popular site Xanga listed only 100 blogs in 1997, but boasted more than 20 million blogs in 2005.
Most search engines now offer an option to search blogs, and many individuals choose to get their news and information from blogs. The good news about blogs is that they are generally an unfiltered information source managed wholly by the blog owner. The bad news is that the information on any blog is only as good as that blog's editor.
Blogs have had significant impact on political campaigns, news gathering and have allowed individuals to share information with the world easily and informally.