April 16, 2018
Your daily synopsis of education news
Effingham school officials show off new teaching model
The Effingham Daily News wrote about a recent event where Effingham school officials showed off the district’s new teaching model, "Leadership, Creativity and Innovation."

The model was developed and put into practice the previous school year at the high school and junior high. 

It consists of five pillars: control, empower, collaboration, application and celebration. When put into practice, the pillars are meant to produce better outcomes for teachers and students. 

"It's a huge celebration for Unit 40," Superintendent Mark Doan told the Effingham Daily News. "This program has taken a lot of hard work."

The event last Thursday was a chance for Effingham School District to showcase their model to other area schools to provide them with ideas to take back to their districts.

IASA will be bringing you more on how the model works and what effect it is having in the school district in a podcast this week with Doan.  

Springfield 186, Sangamon County teaming up to offer medical clinic
Springfield School District 186 and Sangamon County have teamed up to offer their employees a supplemental insurance service designed to reduce costs and address medical problems before they require a hospital visit, according to The State Journal-Register. 

Both employers are partnering with Springfield-based insurance company Troxell and Memorial Health Partners to offer the new service, called Memorial Choice Health Services.

District 186 has about 2,500 employees and Sangamon County has about 700 employees. The service also will be available to the employees’ families, according to the newspaper.

Superintendent Jennifer Gill spoke to the newspaper about the plan. 

“We felt pooling our resources was beneficial,” Gill said. “Although we have the bulk of employees, we felt that coming together and issuing a request for proposal gave us the best possible offering from the community. Memorial had the best return of investment.”

The partnership will allow employees from the school district and county to visit Memorial health care clinics and physicians without a copay, hopefully incentivizing people to visit a Memorial clinic for health problems before they become more serious and require an emergency room visit or hospitalization.

Illinois could do a better job funding career and tech education
The Peoria Journal-Star had two stories over the weekend about career and technical education. 

The newspaper covered the SkillsUSA state conference in Springfield. The hands-on competitions, split between high school and college divisions, range from baking bread to building cabinets, from processing a crime scene to producing a television video, to firefighting and, as the program calls it, nurse assisting.

Chris Arvin, global manager for organizational development at Caterpillar Inc., Illinois could do a better job of funding career and technical education.

“Success is when we’re filling positions with our workers and they’re staying in the state,” Arvin told the newspaper. 

Educators share how budget cuts have affected their classrooms
The New York Times invited America’s public school educators to show the newspaper the conditions that a decade of budget cuts has wrought in their schools.

Here’s one example:

North Las Vegas, Nev.

Kelsey Pavelka, teacher at Wilhelm Elementary

Salary: $33,000 with three years of experience

Annual out-of-pocket expenses: $1,000

I have six laptops for 42 fifth-grade students (in one classroom) with many broken keys and chargers. My students are supposed to use these to prepare for their state test, which requires typing multiple paragraph responses. I crowdfunded to get 10 Chromebooks with all the keys on the keyboard, so they could learn to type on a machine that works.

Legislation proposed to change school shooter drills in Illinois
IASA wants to make members aware of proposed legislation that could change school shooter drills in Illinois, if signed into law. 

The change is in an amendment to SB2350 , sponsored by Sen. Julie Morrison, D-Deerfield. The underlined section is the change in the law proposed in the amendment.

The legislation is currently in the Senate Assignments committee.