Superintendent Update - September 2010

District Superintendent Dr. Bob Morrison, continues his monthly video series for updating the District community. He discusses Nancy Neal Elementary, Attendance Zoning, Frontier High School, and the latest educational accomplishments of Mansfield ISD in this September welcome back to school update.

(This video was shared on the District's YouTube channel earlier this month.)

Rumor Mill: Rezoning, Renaming, Rescheduling

It's been a while since we shared a post related to some of the rumors that float around the District community. Here are a few rumors that got our attention and are worth clearing up:


Rumor #1: Decisions have already been made for high school attendance zones and moving specific middle school zones around.

False - No process has started for High School rezoning. However, we will seek help from community for an Attendance Zone Committee in November/December for Nancy Neal Elementary that will open Fall 2011. (Dr. Morrison addresses the Neal Elementary attendance zone process in his September Superintendent Update video.)

We'll start the attendance zone process for High School #5 next year ahead of that school's 2012 opening.


Rumor #2: Ben Barber Career Tech Academy was renamed, "Frontier High School"

False - These are two different campus. Frontier HS was opened this fall as a school within a school located at Ben Barber Career Tech Academy. A little over 200 juniors are taking classes as Froniter HS students. Students from our four traditional high schools still benefit from taking career and technology courses at BBCTA going to and from their home campus.



Rumor #3: The middle school bell schedule is set to change next year.

Possibly True - This one was a bit premature. A proposed adjustment to the Master Schedule has been brought forth by the middle school principals. This could be a change to the block periods. However, the change has not been presented to the School Board. This will happen in October, and then they would have to accept the proposal before it could go in effect next year. Please note, the bell schedule start and end times would remain the same.

We hope this helps alleviate any concern that might exist. Send us your Rumor Mill items and we'll look into them here. You can send us one by commenting on this post or via email.

National Take-Back Day in MISD

On Saturday, September 25, 2010, the Mansfield ISD community is invited to join the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Mansfield Police Department, and Cook Children’s in a local and nationwide effort to halt the disturbing rise in addiction caused by the misuse and abuse of drugs.

Collection activities will take place from 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM at sites established throughout the country. The Mansfield drive-by drop off location will be at the Mansfield Public Safety Building located at 1305 E. Broad Street Mansfield, TX 76063.

The National Take-Back Day provides an opportunity for the public to surrender expired, unwanted, or unused pharmaceutical controlled substances and other medications for destruction. These drugs are a potential source of supply for illegal use, and present a poisoning danger to children as well as to public health and safety.

This one-day effort is intended to bring national focus to the issue of increasing pharmaceutical controlled substance abuse.

• Participants will be held anonymous and will not be subject to arrest.
• Prescription and over the counter solid dosage medications, i.e. tablets and capsules accepted.
• Intra-venous solutions, injectables, and needles will be accepted.
• Illicit substances such as marijuana or methamphetamine will be accepted.

Many Americans are not aware that medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the United States are increasing at alarming rates, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs. Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet. In addition, many Americans do not know how to properly dispose of their unused medicine, often flushing them down the toilet or throwing them away – both potential safety and health hazards.

"With this National Prescription Drug Take-Back campaign, we are aggressively reaching out to individuals to encourage them to rid their households of unused prescription drugs that pose a safety hazard and can contribute to prescription drug abuse," said Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler. "The Department of Justice is committed to doing everything we can to make our communities safer, and this initiative represents a new front in our efforts."

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Please note: You can search other collection-sites for locations near you.

Budding Meteorologist Breaks in Boren Board

This is cross-posted from the Technology blog:

J.L. Boren Elementary first grade teacher Stephannie Waller forwarded this video about the first day that an ActivBoard was used in her class.

This is Mrs. Waller’s description of the video:

Just wanted to send you an email/video of my first grade class from this morning when we had all the right cables & electricity, etc. so that we could use our Promethean Board in my First Grade Classroom at JL Boren. I have a student meteorologist for the week & this bright student saw that what was on the promethean board was what he saw every morning on our computer when he checked the weather, so he asked, “Can I check the weather on that?” Seeing that it was a very teachable moment & that he could teach every other student how to be a meteorologist I said yes. So he clicked it on & then I asked him to click on the Doppler Radar (it was raining this morning & they would actually have something to watch) & then asked him to enlarge it & from there he went to town, like a natural.

Thanks so much, the kids LOVE this, I love this & the learning possibilities are limitless!

Scenes similar to this one were repeated at Phase I elementary schools across the District last week. It will be exciting to see how MISD teachers and students will use these tools throughout the year.

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(Note: This interactive white board demonstration video also got the attention of the American Meteorological Society and ended up being included on their blog last week.)

Presidential Speech Decision-making

In response to questions being raised regarding President Obama's back-to-school speech to students on September 14, we wanted to provide some background on the chosen District procedure.

The Mansfield ISD administration made the choice to use permission slips to assist our campuses in preparing proper facilities and equipment to accommodate students who wish to view the speech live. The permission slips were not intended as a way to prohibit students from watching the speech. As we have stated in prior communications, we feel the speech can be used by our teachers in future classes as it fits with their lesson plans. This is the only event during the year where we attempt to show a live broadcast to a large group of students at the same time. We set the September 10 deadline to give our campus and district administrators a reasonable amount of time to adequately plan for this potentially large-scale live broadcast event in MISD.

In our discussions with parents this year and last, we realize this event carries a special emotional and/or political significance in our community. We are making every effort to be sensitive to the wishes of all parents in our decision-making, although we realize we cannot satisfy everyone’s specific wishes.

Thank you for your understanding, patience, and for being part of our school district.

(Updated: September 10) We learned on the afternoon of Thursday, September 9 that the speech will occur at 12 PM CST. Since this falls within the lunch times for schools, we are working through the realities of lunch logistics with our Student Nutrition Department and the campuses in preparation for Tuesday’s live broadcast.

Welcome fun for our new staff

Last week, new district employees attended the Mansfield Training of Professionals (M-TOP) two-day program. The program is designed to give incoming teachers the fundamentals and important information they need to start the year off right and be successful in the District.

M-TOP was held at two Mansfield ISD high schools. Mansfield High School was the location for sessions from Human Resources and Communications and Legacy High School was used for Curriculum and Instruction. Based on some early feedback, the sessions were pretty successful in helping new staff get a good start while having a little fun.

Check out the photo gallery from the two-day event.

To our new employees, welcome to Mansfield ISD.

Visit the Staff Homepage for more employee information.

(And yes, that was an inflatable slide inside Legacy High School. A special thanks to all who opted to jump in and join the fun.)

Cows and construction don't mix

"Oh didn't you hear? We have cows."

And that's how it started. Last week, new assistant superintendent for student services and support, Lamar Goree mentioned our little cattle issue at the construction site for the Mansfield ISD Center for the Performing Arts.

Construction workers from Thos. S. Byrne Construction Services tipped us off to the cattle problem at the site located behind Ben Barber Career Tech Academy. After some field investigation work and armed with a digital camera, Goree and Dr. Ed Foster, Director of Career and Technology, located the cattle as well as their owner. (See the photo evidence above.)

Approximately 30 head of cattle have been roaming the land between an area owned to the North and East of the MISD property and our construction site. We are having a fence built between the two properties and construction has commenced on the $40.4 million facility. Yep, the cows have to be moooooved. (Sorry, I couldn't help it.)

Mansfield ISD Center for the Performing Arts
The Mansfield ISD Center for the Performing Arts will be a 149,650-square-foot home of the Claude Cunningham Performance Hall and John Washington Professional Development Center.

The performance hall will accommodate 5500 people with an additional 500 on the stage. This would allow for a seating capacity of 6000 to accommodate our high school graduations and other large-scale events. The main feature of the professional development center's design is one large room that can accommodate up to 500, but can also be divided into six separate rooms for training. This large professional development room could host other events that are currently being housed outside the district. The MISD Center for the Performing Arts is scheduled to open in the spring of 2012.