Our society relies on the internet for education, jobs, and personal needs, yet our country’s digital divide has been an ongoing issue, affecting the 14.5 million Americans who don’t have access to broadband internet. This issue is not just limiting education access, but it’s also contributing to an ongoing workforce crisis. It’s time to recognize that equal access to high-speed internet is essential, and urgent action is needed.

The digital divide refers to the gap between those who have access to modern information and technology that support info-sharing and those who have little to no access. This gap can be attributed to various factors, such as socio-economic status, geographic location, age and race/ethnicity, and has significant implications for education access and workforce development in the United States.

According to a recent Pew Research Center Report, 43 percent of American households nationwide with income under $30,000 don’t have access to reliable internet services at home and 41 percent don’t have any sort of device/computer. Along with that, our country’s digital divide is especially evident in rural areas, where 60 percent of rural Americans view the lack of high-speed internet as a problem. This often stems from the fact that rural areas are less likely to be wired for broadband services, therefore resulting in slower internet speeds.

From seeking jobs to finding healthcare to furthering education to career readiness, high-speed internet has become essential to meeting basic needs and quality of life. Although we’re seeing more companies getting back into the office, 26 percent of U.S. employees still work remotely as of October of 2022 and it’s expected that 36.2 million American employees will be working remotely by 2025. Students who may also be full-time workers are finding themselves not only requiring reliable internet access to complete their coursework and studies, but to remain employed and financially secure.

Increasingly, district leaders are incorporating video into school-home communication. Many districts that tried video options out of necessity during the pandemic are seeing the benefits that video can provide for parent engagement and are expanding video options even as schools are back to in-person instruction.

Districts are finding that using video can improve school-home communication by making the process of engagement easier for parents. Video options can help with:

• Removing barriers to school-home communication.
• Providing educators with real-time connections with students’ families without the hassles of gathering everyone in the same location.
• Reaching parents who might be hard to engage otherwise. If a parent is working two jobs, doesn’t have access to transportation, or would have other barriers to coming to an in-person meeting, a video call can make the process easier for a parent.
• An overall shift in individuals’ behaviors and technological skills to rely on video tools.

Here are five tips for school leaders who want to incorporate video into their school-home communication strategies.

1. Make Connecting Simple: Choose Easy-to-Use Technology for Parent Teacher Communication

The more steps parents are asked to take to use new technology in your district, the less chance you have to get them to adopt it and use it to build relationships. When offering video options, make connecting as simple as possible for parents. Avoid choosing a program that requires a separate app to download. Give parents the option to connect to video meetings with an easy-to-use link. Making connecting easy and user-friendly will help lead to more positive interactions and calls. When the technology is difficult to use or requires too many steps, it can lead to negative views on your district’s video options and impact participation.

2. Leverage Data in Calls with Parents to Help Them Understand How Their Child is Doing and Set Shared Goals

During video calls, teachers can have the student’s record available and can share it on the screen to help parents understand how their child is doing. Incorporating student-specific data can be useful during the conversation to build a bridge between school and home and make parents feel part of the process as stakeholders. According to the Pew Research Center, many K-12 parents are concerned about the pandemic’s impact on their children’s education. In a recent survey, 61 percent of parents reported that they felt the first year of the pandemic had a negative impact on their child’s education. Sharing data and discussing it together can help parents understand how their child is doing and empower them to be part of the academic recovery process.

3. Use Screen Sharing and Visuals to Enhance Calls

Visuals can help enhance school-home communication, and using video can provide more flexibility for communicating information with parents. Video can allow an educator to share a screen during a meeting with parents to explain topics like test scores or a student’s academic progress, or attendance, or other data. Having options for screen sharing and visuals can make the meeting more engaging and productive for both parents and teachers.

4. Enable Recording and Logging to Save Teachers Time on Documentation

Teachers are balancing a lot every day and are often stretched thin. Using video meetings can cut down on the need for manual logging and documentation, which saves teachers’ time. Automatic logging of communication history can lighten the workloads of teachers. Today’s video tools can allow for an automated parent teacher communication log with recording and documentation, allowing teachers to focus on helping students.

5. Meet Parents Where They Are: Use Video as Part of a Variety of Options for Communication

Video should be included as part of a variety of options for engaging parents. Not all parents will want to use video chat options. By incorporating flexible options that meet parents where they are, such as calls, texts, emails, video, and in-person communication opportunities, K-12 schools can build and strengthen strong school-home relationships.

For parent-teacher conferences and other education-focused meetings, offering video meetings can be a great way to engage more parents in K-12 education. Video calls that are automatically recorded and stored alongside student data and communication records can also make documentation of meetings easier on teachers, allowing them to spend more time teaching and helping students. Using video for school-home communication can support schools’ efforts to engage parents as stakeholders in helping K-12 students have better academic outcomes.

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5 ways a more equitable school-home communication system helped our district

Each year, we share our 10 most-read stories. Not surprisingly, many of this year’s Top 10 focused on innovative ways to engage students, digital resources, and online and hybrid learning strategies related to post-pandemic teaching. This year’s 3rd most-read story focuses on edtech insights from every part of a school and district.

In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• Why back-office systems are an essential element to successful learning
• 9 priorities for a future-focused education system
• Some good news (sort of) on post-pandemic learning gains

There are lots of promising innovations in tiny pockets of the education system, but decades of advocacy and investment have failed to see those innovations scale. How can we better predict which innovations flourish and which founder?”

My last blog post argued that new value networks are the missing enablers for disrupting the conventional model of K–12 schooling. But the concept of value networks can do more than explain why disruptive models struggle to take root. All organizations live within value networks. And analyzing an organization’s value network makes clear whether and how it will approach potential improvements and innovations.

What are value networks?

Clayton Christensen defined value networks as “the context within which a firm identifies and responds to customers’ needs, solves problems, procures input, reacts to competitors, and strives for profit.” For a company, a value network might include its customers, suppliers, distributors, investors, and the competitive and regulatory landscapes that shape its business model. Similarly, most US public schools sit in value networks defined by government agencies, families, staff, unions, voters, vendors, and the regulatory and competitive landscapes in which they operate. 

Value networks determine what an organization must prioritize to survive and thrive. Because value networks shape an organization’s priorities, they also dictate which improvements and innovations it will pursue and which it will fumble, ignore, or even resist.

A few important clarifications are worth noting. 

First, an organization’s value network isn’t just another way to refer to its stakeholders. There’s overlap between these terms, but there are also important distinctions—mainly in how the terms are commonly used. The term “stakeholders” often emphasizes all the groups that a school system should pay attention to, regardless of how much influence any given group has over the decisions of the school system. In contrast, I use the term “value networks” to draw attention to which external entities actually have more or less power to shape an organization’s priorities through resource dependence, regulation, democratic governance, etc. 

Second, value networks are not the same as social networks. Many schools participate in social networks—such as the CAPS network, the League of Innovative Schools, or the Digital Learning Collaborative—that facilitate sharing ideas and practices. Participating in a social network may connect an organization with funders, suppliers, partners, or other entities that become part of its value network. But whereas social networks facilitate the exchange of information, value networks provide the resources and authorization that an organization needs to survive and thrive.

Now consider a few insights that come from seeing different forms of K–12 schooling through the lens of value networks.

Competing priorities within K–12 districts

By design, a school district’s governance structure aims to give a degree of power to a wide array of stakeholders. People from different neighborhoods and groups from across the political spectrum all have a right to meet with administrators, speak up in school board meetings, and vote in elections. Local businesses, advocacy organizations, and community groups shape public opinion and influence voters. Local, state, and federal education agencies—also influenced by democratic governance—mandate processes a district must follow. Additionally, employee unions influence districts through collective bargaining. 

These competing interests from different elements in a school district’s value network are what often make the status quo so calcified. A school district’s value network becomes like a system of forces with vectors all pushing in different directions. District leaders get caught up just trying to maintain equilibrium and stability as they navigate the politics of their value network. In principle, a district’s democratic governance and its mandate to serve all students in a region helps ensure that all stakeholders have some power to influence its priorities. But when an organization’s value network produces a set of divergent priorities, the organization gets stuck trying to be all things to all people, yet struggles to do anything exceptionally well. 

Meanwhile, innovations that don’t align with the dominant priorities of the value network don’t last long. Strong leaders may be able to pursue them for a season. But if the innovations don’t deliver success in the way the dominant value network influences define success, those innovations will ultimately wither. 

The charter school advantage

Value networks also illustrate why charter schools can often innovate more easily than district schools. For one, the general principle in much of charter school legislation has been to give charter schools greater autonomy in exchange for increased accountability. Thus, charter schools generally have less prescriptive directives from the overseeing government agencies in their value networks. But beyond their relationships with governing agencies, charter schools also have an opportunity to create greater alignment across the rest of their value networks. 

Charter school founders launch their schools with a particular vision for education: In one school, that vision may be rigorous college preparation for low-income students. For others, it may be an emphasis on arts or science and engineering. With a specific vision in mind, charter school founders then recruit board members, donors, staff, and families who share their vision, and may even encourage stakeholders who don’t share their vision to go elsewhere. Thus, they assemble value networks that align with their visions. That kind of alignment just isn’t possible for a district school with more state policies to follow, a publicly elected board, a mandate to serve all students living within a given boundary, and unionized employees. 

This doesn’t mean charter schools are inherently more innovative than district schools. Some charter schools are pretty similar to their district school counterparts because their value networks resemble those of districts. Meanwhile, some district schools have instructional models that diverge markedly from conventional K–12 schooling. Consider, for example, Village High School in Colorado’s Academy School District, Springs Studio in the Colorado Springs School District, or Innovations Early College High School in the Salt Lake City School District. Why do some district schools develop innovative models while others maintain the status quo? Because innovative schools have value networks that prioritize their innovations.

Toward a better theory for understanding innovation trajectories

The lens of value networks moves us toward better categories for understanding innovation trajectories in K–12 education and other fields. There’s a long history of promising innovations failing to scale across public education. To this day, approaches like competency-based learning, flexible pacing, project-based learning, and other learner-centered practices often remain confined to “bright spots” lauded for their potential, but confined to the exceptions, rather than the rule. 

Instead of bemoaning a monolithic bureaucracy holding education innovation back, a theory of value networks can better predict which innovations can emerge in a given context. From there, new value networks might emerge to support a range of value propositions across communities and states. Doing so will require not just spotting and heralding innovations, but understanding the value networks from which they emerged in the first place.

Related:
Only out-of-the-box solutions will fix the real problems in schools

With 22 schools and 8,000 students—nearly all of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch—we have to cover a lot of area in our district. We’d been using a number of applications to maintain open lines of communications with our parents and guardians. We knew that some were working, and others weren’t, and we wanted to create a more unified school-home communications approach.

In 2020, our new superintendent brought a robust communications platform with him when he joined our district. As soon as we saw the platform’s various functionalities and how it eliminated the need for all of those disconnected communications strategies, we were hooked.

Here are four reasons why we decided to consolidate all of our district communications on a single platform:

1. Get everything in one place. With our one new platform, ParentSquare, we were able to eliminate numerous systems and apps. We also eliminated our appointment signup tools and, other than one newsletter, we no longer use Smore. We’ve been able to eliminate all those individual applications and programs. We did receive some pushback from our elementary schools related to one app we phased out, but we were able to address that by showing them just how much more they’d be able to do in the new platform. Once we piloted our communications platform and showed them firsthand, the elementary teachers realized it was true.

2. Speak their language. We have a large population of English language learners in our district. With our school-home communications platform I can write in English and then have the parents read it in their preferred language, such as Spanish. It’s automatically translated for them and then the reverse process happens when any responses are sent back to me that were initially written in Spanish. This has eliminated the need for a translator for basic conversation and it was a real “a-ha moment” for many people in our district.

Related:
Has your district unified school-to-home communications?
Why we use a multilingual districtwide platform for personalized communications

3. Keep student data private.  When I took over the aspect of district communications, I didn’t fully understand the importance of student privacy. From a technology director’s perspective, privacy is about not giving out passwords. But from my vantage point, it’s also about who does or doesn’t have the right to access a student’s information. When you use some apps, those permissions happen at the building level (e.g., I’ll just add a grandma or grandpa for this student) without really understanding whether that person should have access or not. Today, our communications platform is integrated with our student information system (SIS). That helps us better understand who should or shouldn’t have access to the student communications and do a much better job of keeping student data private.

4. See who is (and isn’t) communicating. Our platform generates reports that show me who’s communicating the most and who needs to be communicating more. For example, we’re using newsletter templates and eye-catching graphics on the admin page to show teachers how many posts they’ve sent, identify anyone who is “over-sending” messages and determine who their biggest communicators are. We’ve been using this method more and have also worked the data into our principal’s meetings. 

Making Changes on the Fly

When we looked at our audience and how we were communicating with them, we knew we needed a robust app that teachers, administrators, and parents could use on their mobile phones. We also needed something that was easy for teachers to use on their laptops, versus on their iPads or phones.

We piloted the program first and used that time to gather feedback and determine what specific district settings would be best. This was a good approach for us because we were able to make changes on the fly and pivot as we learned what was and wasn’t working for our stakeholders. And it ultimately led to a successful implementation, rollout, and use of our new unified school-home communications platform.

Public education remains the nation’s great equalizer, giving every child the best chance for success in life. A chance that can turn into an assurance if school districts provide a solid foundation at every step in a student’s path toward graduation and beyond. Unfortunately, too many children right now are standing on shaky ground.

As the superintendent of Meriden Public Schools (MPS) in Meriden, Conn., I can tell you not one of our 8,500 children emerged from the pandemic completely unscathed. The academic and emotional fallout took its toll on everyone. However, it’s been especially hard on students who need extra support, including English learners, students in special education programs, and those who have been disenfranchised from or disengaged with education in general.

Over the years, MPS has developed strategies to help our administrators, teachers, and staff become stronger advocates for their students and to more effectively engage community partners and families. Our goal is to ensure education works for every child, regardless of their circumstances.

1. Start with student data, focus on the child. At the MPS central office, we review attendance, discipline, and referral data as well as Getting to Know You surveys to identify students performing below proficiency, at risk for behavior issues, or over-aged and under-credited. From there, we send indicators to the educators with boots on the ground, helping teachers and instructional coaches build one-on-one relationships with students to address their specific education needs, provide assistance through academic accommodations, and guide them on the right path toward graduation and eventually college or trade school or competitive employment.  

Just as important as it is to prevent struggling students from slipping through the cracks is to support those with greater potential.  School-based mentors who understand their students’ goals can recommend AP classes or dual-credit courses that provide the challenges they need while preparing them for the next step in their education.

Educators and administrators have to understand not every child has the luxury of an advocate at home. For many of those who do, their caretakers want to do more, but may not be aware of the options available or are burdened with challenges of their own. We need to be there for students who don’t have anyone saying, ”What reading interventions are available for my child?” or “My child should be in a higher math class.”

2. Support the teachers who are supporting your students. Educators strive to ask our children the right questions to determine if they’re struggling with their mental, emotional, and physical health so they can be connected to services.  Many of us ask similar questions of teachers who hide their own stressors to care for their students.

Related:
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In post-COVID schools, let’s redouble efforts to support students

New data and analysis released by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) finds ample opportunities for improvement in states’ teacher and principal evaluation policies. With educator quality as the most powerful in-school factor that contributes to students’ academic success, an essential component to supporting student recovery in the wake of pandemic-related learning loss must be ensuring all students have access to effective teachers and administrators.

Evidence-based teacher and principal evaluation policies, when well-implemented, have great potential to help individual educators strengthen their practice, promote overall improvements in the quality of the workforce, and—most importantly—support increased student achievement.

“Strong, well-implemented teacher and principal evaluation systems can make a big difference for both teachers and students,” said Dr. Heather Peske, NCTQ President. “It’s disappointing to see that states have continued to back away from evidence-based evaluation policies and practices over the past several years, especially when we need to ensure every child has access to great teachers more than ever.”

The new NCTQ report, State of the States 2022: Teacher and Principal Evaluation Policies, presents data and analysis on policies from all 50 states and D.C. covering essential, evidence-based components of teacher and principal evaluation systems. Despite increased state adoption of evidence-based evaluation policies over a decade ago, the most recent data documents a continued decline in the number of states with teacher and principal evaluation requirements in place that research shows have the potential to drive significant improvements in student learning. 

Key findings in the NCTQ data include:

• Fewer states require that objective measures of student growth be included in a teacher or principal’s evaluation. Helping students to grow academically is core to the role of all educators. Between 2009 and 2015, most states adopted policies that required educator evaluations include some objective measure of student growth, such as student state, district, or school assessment data or data from student learning objectives. However, while 43 states had this requirement for both teacher and principal evaluations in 2015, that number has since dropped to 30 states for teachers and 27 states for principals. While the pandemic may have interrupted assessments, recent declines in student results should reinvigorate states’ focus on student growth.

• Fewer states now explicitly allow or require that student feedback be incorporated into a teacher’s evaluation. Teacher evaluations that include multiple sources of data, including from student assessments, teacher observations, and student surveys, create a fuller, more accurate picture of a teacher’s performance. Despite evidence that feedback from students is an important component to include in assessing teacher quality and to gauge students’ experiences, only five states now require that student surveys be included in a teacher’s evaluation. Support for including survey data in principal evaluations has also declined, with now only eight states requiring surveys or feedback from students, teachers, parents, and/or peers be included in a principal’s evaluation.

Related:
Prediction: The future of teacher evaluations is video
Post-COVID plans should focus on program values and evaluation

Over the past several years, K-12 school districts experienced the limitations of legacy systems. With the recent government funding available for pandemic recovery, a window of opportunity opens for K-12 schools to modernize and bring resilience to their spend management systems.

Automating your school district’s spend management solution should be a top priority. Market uncertainty has shown that faculty and staff spending data is often dispersed and hard to track, meaning you are missing complete spend visibility. This lack of reliable, consistent data is leaving school districts vulnerable to risks.

Join an eSchool News panel of experts as they discuss understanding and managing your school expenditures with a single platform that captures employee spend, when and how it happens, and how investing in a digital spend management solution can help enable school districts to increase efficiency, transparency, compliance, and control.

Key Topics:

• Streamline processes and eliminate manual tasks and piles of paper
• How automation helps reduce risk associated with managing and tracking employee expenditures
• Improve compliance utilizing proactive strategies and policies
• Establish trust though transparency and fiscal accountability
• Manage your cash flow and all parts of your accounts payable process in one system

Local leaders must play a critical role in closing the digital divide for 18 million American households that have access to the internet but can’t afford to connect, according to a new report.

The urgent prompt comes from EducationSuperHighway, a national nonprofit with a mission to close the broadband affordability gap. The organization released its second No Home Left Offline report on the action needed to accelerate Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) adoption.

The ACP is a $14.2 billion federal broadband benefit funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that provides eligible households with a monthly discount of up to $30 per month (up to $75 per month for households on qualifying Tribal lands) and a one-time $100 discount toward a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet. 51.6 million households, including 17.7 million unconnected households, are eligible for the ACP, yet only 13 million (25% of those eligible) have enrolled.

Over the past year, closing the broadband affordability gap has become a national priority. The report finds that our nation’s Internet Service Providers have stepped up, and 74% of ACP-eligible households are covered by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) offering a high-speed internet plan for $30 per month or less, making the plan free with the ACP benefit.

Despite 12.9 million ACP-eligible, unconnected households having the opportunity to take advantage of free internet, the report outlines the complex awareness, trust, and enrollment barriers that prevent households in the nation’s most under-resourced communities from enrolling. It also announces new data, tools, and best practices to help states and cities overcome them. Key report highlights include:

• 51.6 million U.S. households are eligible for the ACP, yet only 13 million households (25% of those eligible) have enrolled.
• The ACP has the potential to connect 17.7 million households that are ACP-eligible and unconnected.
• The ACP enrollment process is a significant challenge for eligible households using the National Verifier. 45% of applications are rejected, and many more fail to complete the 30-45 minute enrollment process.
• Cities in every state are proving that we can do dramatically better. The national best practice for ACP adoption is 61%, and large cities, such as Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Tulsa, have already achieved adoption rates of over 45%.
• 74% of ACP-eligible households are covered by an ISP offering a “free with ACP” plan (i.e., high-speed internet plans for no more than $30 per month). That amounts to 37.9 million eligible households, including 12.9 million that are unconnected.
• Two-thirds of eligible households are already beneficiaries of one or more government benefit programs that automatically qualify them for the ACP, giving states a targeted channel to raise ACP awareness and help participants enroll. 

Related:
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The U.S. needs billions to close the digital divide

Schools do so much for a community. They provide a safe place for children to learn and grow each day, filled with educators who truly care. However, as a parent or educator, it’s important to understand that many schools aren’t being used to their full potential.

When utilized properly, local schools can uplift safety in your community, providing a place outside of traditional school hours for children and families to feel secure and supported.

The task of neighborhood safety shouldn’t fall solely on teachers and administrators. However, these individuals who have regular contact with local youth can spearhead the initiatives that promote safety in the community.

If you’re not sure where to get started with that kind of promotion, let’s cover a few ideas that can increase the role schools play in community safety and security.

Community Outreach Programs

One of the best ways to utilize local schools is to transform them into community centers when classes aren’t in session. School outreach programs provide countless benefits for kids and teens. They bring resources into the buildings that keep young people engaged while providing a place of safety after school. Some of the biggest benefits include:

• Continued education on specific issues;
• Behavioral changes;
• The promotion of civic engagement;
• Improved student outcomes.

If you’re not sure how to transform your space into a community center, think about what your neighborhood really needs. Some teachers could volunteer to teach specialized classes. You could open up the gym to offer sports programs to kids and adults alike. Professionals from the community might be willing to come and teach parents about things like financial health and self-care.

Related:
5 school safety questions your district should be prepared to answer
Learn to align your communication strategies with school safety

With no end in sight to this teacher crisis, some districts across the country are filling instructional gaps utilizing non-traditional teaching and learning models.

School districts nationwide are facing unprecedented teacher shortages, with thousands of classrooms unstaffed as the school year begins. Filling these vacancies with certified teachers is a critical need.

In this eSchool News webinar, you’ll hear how districts are working on innovative solutions education leaders can put into place for a single class, school, or the entire district to launch this school year with a fully qualified and certified instructional team.

Experts will discuss:

• Filling vacancies immediately with certified remote teachers for a single class, school, or the entire districts
• Filling critical instructional gaps, expanding course offerings, personalizing learning, or reducing class size with blended or fully online programs
• Empowering learners with tools and resources necessary for high quality education

Related:
Is there a national teacher shortage?
How to solve the teacher shortage remotely

The other day, my friend’s high school daughter complained, “It’s not fair!” “What’s not fair?” her mother asked. “Everyone is cheating!” her daughter replied. “They started doing it during COVID, and now it’s a habit.” Unfortunately, academic dishonesty is just one example of the many negative consequences of the COVID pandemic.

In hindsight, we have ample evidence that remote learning during COVID increased hardships for PK-12 students, both academically and non-academically. Some students lacked necessary resources. In one study, even after all students were provided with a laptop computer, internet access, and headphones, low-income students’ school attendance and engagement were consistently less frequent than their higher-income peers (An, 2021). Food insecurity also increased during COVID, partly due to the hiatus of school breakfast, lunch, and take-home snack pack programs (Parekh et al., 2021). And worst of all, children at home during COVID were twice as likely to experience physical abuse and three times likely to experience emotional abuse during the pandemic than in prior years (Park & Walsh, 2022).

Without a doubt, remote learning during COVID was distressing for students, with 71 percent of parents in one study reporting that the pandemic had “taken a toll on their child’s mental health” (Abramson, 2022, para. 2).

It was a stressful time for teachers, too. One study found that teachers experienced higher burnout rates, depression, and anxiety as a result of the rapid transition to remote learning and its extended duration, which led to feelings of isolation, lower work commitment, and higher teacher turnover (Gutentag & Asterhan, 2022).

All of these factors contributed to a substantial decline in student learning during COVID. One year into the pandemic, Kwakye and Kibort-Crocker (2021) reported that 23 percent of low-income students received a failing grade during the pandemic compared to 8 percent of average- and high-income students. After two years, federal achievement data revealed significant drops in third-grade students’ overall math and reading scores across the United States (Camera, 2022).

So now, we’re all back at school, but things have changed. In addition to lingering fears of COVID, the national trend toward disrespect for authority has increased student discipline issues, and the rash of school shootings in recent years has rendered school safety a huge concern (Kurtz, 2022; Oshin, 2022).

Moreover, controversial curricular reform efforts in social studies, science, and health have exacerbated the re-opening of schools, with community feelings of distrust, protests at school board meetings, and parents pulling children from public schools in favor of private and home school options (Sparks, 2022).

Related:
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7 educators share back-to-school action plans

Having a campus-wide communication ecosystem is imperative, and school district leaders have no higher priority than to create secure and informed campus environments.

Being able to initiate a controlled emergency notification protocol to alert, notify and monitor directly from a mobile device, classroom audio system, or interactive flat panel is essential.

An eSchool News panel of experts, including Brent Thrasher, Instructional Technology Coordinator at Overton County Schools and Todd Eddy from Galaxy Next Generation, offers insights into how to make better decisions, prevent risk, and strengthen communication between faculty, administration, and first responders during an active threat.

Topics include:

• How to immediately notify teachers of a lockdown through software alerts.
• How to instantly notify law enforcement and first responders.
• How to monitor communication within your entire ecosystem using one software platform.

Related:
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The eSchool News K-12 Hero Awards recognize the dedicated efforts of education professionals across K-12 departments, including IT, curriculum, instruction and administration. 

Sponsored this year by JAR Systems and SAP Concur, the program received an influx of inspiring nominations that highlight the innovation and selflessness of educators in schools and districts across the nation.

Listed here is the second group of the program’s finalists. The first group of finalists was featured on eSchool News last week–find them here!

Jump to: Jim Perry, Jones County Public Schools, Juliann Koehn, Cory Matsumiya, Kim Kaspar, Kirk Langer, Laura Johnson, Mark Hess, Michele Bledsoe, Mira Campbell, Neal Kellogg, Scott Mitchum, Shawn Braxton, Spartanburg School District One, Steven Langford, Tiffany Brinkley, Twin Rivers Unified School District.

Nominee: Jim Perry, Stapleton School
Nominated by: EmpowerU, Inc. 

Jim Perry came to education as a second career and has brought such dedication and fresh perspective to his staff, students, and district at large.

Jim wanted to support student well-being and resilience in the face of the disruption and set-back in social-emotional learning that COVID created. Jim embraced EmpowerU immediately. He took the self-regulation and resilience framework and adopted it at a school-wide level. As classroom teachers led classrooms through turn-key lessons and helped students apply what they learned to their goals and challenges, Jim took it even further by having assemblies to showcase the learnings happening in each classroom.

He believes in EmpowerU so much that he helped to present to the larger Baldwin County Public Schools district on the benefits and major changes that he is seeing in his staff and students. His enthusiasm for creating a safe social emotional learning environment is very admirable and his students are so lucky.

Jim is a vibrant a leader like Jim Perry, and Stapleton is thriving under his leadership. We love Jim Perry!

Nominee: Jones County Public Schools
Nominated by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)            

Jones County Public Schools: Forward-Thinking K-12 Heroes of the Pandemic

Jones County Public Schools in North Carolina has a unique pandemic story. It all started in September 2018. After Hurricane Florence devastated the community and destroyed one of the district’s schools, Jones County Public Schools set out to rebuild its school infrastructure, which now includes a brand-new, high-tech, solar-powered K-12 campus. To complement its forward-thinking vision, the district sought a blended curriculum solution that offered a full suite of digital resources accessible from a single platform. District leaders formed the Jones Curriculum Council (JCC), a committee of teachers tasked with researching and evaluating top-tier curriculum solutions. HMH’s connected solutions scored highest on the JCC’s rubric. The district formed a partnership with HMH—purchasing HMH Into Math, HMH Into Reading, HMH Into Literature, and Waggle programs, along with professional services, which are all accessed via Ed, HMH’s learning platform.

As Jones County leaders will tell you, this dynamic, one-stop-shop of connected solutions and professional learning services positioned the district well to face the unique challenges presented by COVID-19 and the 2020-2021 school year. HMH’s blended curriculum enabled the district to navigate the shift to remote and hybrid better than most districts.

Every day during the pandemic, Jones County educators provided synchronous instruction to in-person and virtual students daily, a task that would be difficult, if not impossible, without a genuinely digital-first solution. Each class was recorded for parents to review anytime, and in-person students collaborated and engaged with their virtual peers.

It was the innovative thinking of JCPS leadership that set the district up for success. Following that initial decision to focus on digital and with the start of the pandemic and beyond, Jones County principals, teachers, and students all embraced “a new normal.” With HMH’s blended curriculum and data tools, teachers in Jones County were able to streamline instruction and personalize learning for each student, without having to purchase extra materials or sign in on multiple platforms.

HMH and JCPS developed a safe plan to capture the Jones Country experience on video and spoke with some teachers and students using HMH connected solutions during COVID-19. The footage acquired was edited into a series videos demonstrating the power and benefits of HMH’s digital-first, connected solutions in a hybrid learning environment.

Nominee: Juliann Koehn, Epic Charter Schools    
Nominated by: EmpowerU, Inc. 

Epic Charter Schools offers online learning to more than 30,000 students in the state of Oklahoma. For years, the school had been searching for ways to reverse the pattern of disengagement, build motivation to complete schoolwork and get students over that finish line at graduation.

With no school counseling team — and teachers weary from other new programs and systems — EPIC needed a partner it could trust to serve Tier 2 students.

Juliann Koehn, Social and Emotional Learning Specialist at Epic, worked to bring EmpowerU to the district and enrolled over 400 students in the program during the 2021-22 school year.

Over 91 percent of Epic students who completed EmpowerU saw a positive impact on well-being, academic engagement, and outcomes, and Juliann is committed to bringing those same results to as many students as possible.

Juliann is passionate about the need to equip students with the tools to be successful and sees the potential in each of them. She works tirelessly to educate others about the importance of programs like EmpowerU to help students become more confident, self-directed, and reach their goals both in and out of the classroom.

In the first few weeks of the 2022-23 school year Juliann has rolled out EmpowerU to over 550 Epic students and counting!

Nominee: Cory Matsumiya, Kamehameha Schools           
Nominated by: SAP Concur         

Kamehameha Schools, headquartered in Honolulu, HI, is the largest private school network in the nation, with a sole mission to educate native Hawaiian children. 

Cory Matsumiya, Assistant Controller, has been with Kamehameha Schools for 15 years.  Cory was the original “owner” of SAP Concur and the primary champion for getting the solution implemented. 

It’s with great pleasure that SAP Concur nominates Kamehameha Schools and Cory Matsumiya for the eSchool News K-12 Hero Awards. 

Cory, part of a team of 3, which he refers to as the “3 Musketeers,” implemented SAP Concur in 2015 in an effort to drive efficiencies, control spending, and optimize visibility for an organization with 4,000+ employees.  Cory exudes an innovative and forward-thinking mindset when it comes to doing the right thing for the organization.  He embraces opportunities to make his team more efficient by automating and streamlining processes, is always eager to find ways to improve current processes, and is more than willing to share his experiences with others to help them do better.  We are grateful for our partnership with Cory and Kamehameha Schools!

Nominee: Kim Kaspar, MSW, Aurora Public Schools’ AWARE Program                     
Nominated by: Hazel Health       

Hazel Health (Hazel) nominates Kim Kaspar in honor of her dedication to ensuring her students receive care based on what’s best for them, not what’s easiest for adults. Providing access to mental health care has been a priority for Aurora Public Schools’ AWARE Team even before the pandemic. However, as districts nationwide experienced a shortage of qualified health care professionals, the pandemic’s impact on students’ mental health created an unprecedented need to expand access to care quickly. Based on this need, Aurora Public Schools was in the implementation stage when the Director of Mental Health and Counseling unexpectedly had to take a leave of absence.

Understanding the importance of expanding care in the wake of the pandemic, Ms. Kaspar stepped up to move the work forward. Ms. Kasapar not only ensured the partnership was successful but pushed Hazel to innovate its services to align with Colorado state policy. In Colorado, students 12 or older do not need consent from a parent or guardian to access mental health services. Ms. Kaspar understood that students might not be comfortable getting permission to receive the care they critically needed and pushed Hazel to align its services within the district accordingly.

To ensure the partnership’s success, Ms. Kaspar took the Hazel team from school to school across 30 sites to present to the staff responsible for student care. She helped overcome objections and foster collaboration between the schools and the Hazel team. One aspect of the partnership in particular that she highlighted was the ability for Hazel to transition student care to long-term providers as needed. She said, “I hate for kids with mental health challenges to tell their stories to different adults.” She values that Hazel makes the experience seamless for students—whom she puts first at every turn. Now, Hazel sees consistent utilization of its services across the district, primarily due to Ms. Kaspar’s efforts.

Nominee: Kirk Langer, Lincoln Public Schools      
Nominated by: Lightspeed Systems         

Kirk is responsible for keeping the students and faculty of Lincoln Public Schools connected and engaged through technology to ensure that learning isn’t disrupted. Kirk leads a team of 65 experts, and under his guidance they have accomplished feats such as the procurement of 3,680 brand new MacBook Airs for certified staff, and organizing extensive cybersecurity trainings for staff to keep the district and its students safe. His passion and dedication to bettering his district through the use of technology is commendable and makes him a worthy recipient of this award.

Nominee: Laura Johnson, Apex Learning Virtual School   
Nominated by: Edmentum           

Before schools shut down due to the global pandemic, most students had little to no experience with digital learning or online school. Many schools found themselves having to adapt to a virtual setting to survive. As a certified teacher through Edmentum’s Apex Learning Virtual School (ALVS), Laura Johnson is dedicated to ensuring every student thrives in a virtual environment. The pandemic tasked her to meet an influx of students who faced new sets of challenges, while maintaining high standards and helping students cope with new learning environments.

For 14 years, Laura Johnson has taught a variety of subjects, including social studies, psychology, and music and art appreciation–all virtually within ALVS. She started as a part-time teacher while she was still at a brick-and-mortar school, where she drove 38 miles each way to teach. Eventually, Laura became the first full-time teacher with ALVS, and she now connects with students all over the globe.

While ALVS has provided rigorous and engaging online curriculum to students in grades 6-12 for many years, the pandemic made ALVS see a sudden influx of 5,000 new virtual students. As one of the school’s experienced teachers, Laura volunteered her expertise and contributed immensely by stepping in to assist with interviewing, hiring, and training 125 new part-time teachers to meet the demand.

Laura was also heavily involved in the ALVS/Eastern Shore of Maryland Educational Consortium partnership where she and other educators provided instruction to more than 400 students to meet state standards, and ensured lessons complied with management’s outlines. She supported getting this new grant program off the ground, delivering quality digital instruction and modeling new ways of teaching, and connecting with students for the state. This program will continue this year with the same group of motivated educators thanks to the successful contributions of Laura.

Laura’s mantra for being a virtual teacher is “you need to care.” During the pandemic, she faced new challenges, such as students being reluctantly thrust into a digital program out of necessity, and not out of motivation or opportunity. However, Laura went out of her way to make connections with these students. Through phone calls that allowed her to get to know them and discover what motivates them, she took the extra steps like providing individualized feedback on assessments and checking not just for completion, but for understanding. For all assignments, Laura responds with affirmative feedback with “glow or grow” information, meaning what students need to be aware of for future assignments or shares what they did great.

Laura shared that some students who joined her office hours or who reached out to schedule time to speak with her did not really need help academically; instead, they just wanted to talk and have someone listen to them. As a parent, Laura knows the value of a teacher who truly cares about each individual student and that is exactly how she chooses to impact students’ lives and educational journeys—by making those connections, whether students are 38 miles or 1,038 miles away.

Nominee: Mark Hess, Mary Helen Guest Elementary School
Nominated by: Epson

Mark Hess has served in a variety of roles since he was hired in 1993 by Walled Lake Consolidated School District in Walled Lake, Michigan. Prior to COVID-19, Hess was the executive manager of instruction, technology, and data analysis and was one of the key developers of the district’s initiative to revamp its instructional units to focus on the latest research on high-yield teaching strategies, power standards, and embedding technology in each unit. When everyone had to shift to remote and hybrid learning in 2020, Hess’ initiative helped schools and staff feel well-prepared to make the transition because many already had confidence when using technology and openness toward instructional technology. In addition, the district already had computers and document cameras for teachers, who took them home to assist in presenting content during remote teaching.

For the 2020-21 school year, Hess’ district position was dissolved following new district leadership, so he returned to the school building as the principal of Mary Helen Guest Elementary School. As the school leader, Hess learned new ways to support his teachers with the ups and downs of the constantly changing school year. This included finding opportunities to offer effective and efficient professional development and encourage teachers to share best practices with each other. Additionally, investing in the best-in-class technologies has always been a priority for Hess. This includes Epson BrightLink Interactive Displays and Document Cameras for every teaching space. Classrooms throughout the district are outfitted equitably with technology and have an adequate infrastructure teachers need for engaging learning environments.

The 2021-22 school year presented new opportunities for Hess as the elementary school was renovated over the summer and every learning space was updated to active learning environments. Hess ensured teachers were prepared and informed about ways to utilize their new classrooms. Teachers were very appreciative to have more flexibility and are seeing an increase in student engagement and participation. Hess has led staff and teachers to create a safe, motivating, and positive learning environment for students. Hess did not use the pandemic as an excuse to stop innovating and instead, stayed creative to ensure the best learning environment for every student.

Nominee: Michele Bledsoe, Puyallup School District
Nominated by: Hazel Health       

Hazel Health (Hazel) nominates Michele Bledsoe in honor of her deep understanding of the youth health crisis and her ability to build the cross-functional buy-in that ensures her students have equitable access to mental health care. Before the pandemic, the Puyallup School District was experiencing capacity challenges in meeting the needs of its students when it came to providing timely mental health care. The pandemic exacerbated those challenges making the requirement more critical. Because Puyallup is a diverse learning community, finding a partner that could provide culturally competent health care was a top priority.

Ms. Bledsoe, director of Equity & Social Emotional Wellness, K-12 Counselors, MV and Truancy, had the vision to be an early adopter of Hazel. She believed in a world where every student in the Puyallup School District had access to timely, quality health care regardless of their family’s ability to cover the cost of care. And she put in the work to make it a reality. Ms. Bledsoe did the deep research required of a trailblazer to get buy-in from her board and teams across the district. She also had the foresight to understand that leveraging ESSER funds to expand access to student mental healthcare was fundamental to overcoming the impacts of the pandemic.

Thanks to her dedication, every student in the district—more than 22,000—now has access to evidence-based mental health care. Students can receive care in school or at home in minutes to days versus the national average of months. Since Hazel specializes in delivering culturally competent care, the professionals providing care reflect the district’s diversity, which means students and families receive care and support from professionals who understand and value their experiences. Positive word of mouth from families with students who have accessed care is driving the second-highest utilization rate of services out of all our partnerships nationwide. Further, the partnership helped to expand the capacity of overloaded staff dedicated to supporting students’ mental health.

Ms. Bledsoe quickly understood that sustainability is essential and laid the groundwork early for transitioning the work to more sustainable funding sources to ensure students throughout the district can continue to access quality healthcare once ESSER funding runs out. Thanks to Ms. Bledsoe, stakeholders across the Puyallup learning community are positively impacted—but most importantly, students now have access to the care they need to have their best opportunity to thrive.

Nominee: Mira Campbell, FH Miller Jr. PS
Nominated by: Tools for Schools, Inc.     

Mira Campbell has taken on legendary status amongst the Book Creator team. There are very few teachers out there who continually push the capabilities of our tool like Mira does.

Her work is innovative and pushes boundaries–and she’s great at sharing her knowledge with others!

The story behind this nomination comes from a project that Mira ran during the pandemic. They started the project in the classroom, switched seamlessly to remote learning and then finished the project with an in-person celebration that melts the heart!

This was a creative writing project that was differentiated for the various skills, interests, and learning styles of her students, allowing every student to be successful. Mira worked with the class teacher to introduce writing techniques, and then used a writing prompt to generate story ideas. After brainstorming ideas together, they drafted stories in Google Docs before creating fully fleshed multimedia publications in Book Creator.

Mira took advantage of the full suite of tools in Book Creator to allow students to create in the media that worked for them–some kids dictated their books using speech to text; others used drawing and emojis to bring their stories to life. With real-time collaboration in Book Creator, the teachers were able to keep in touch with students and post feedback in their books.

In January 2021, whilst still in lockdown, Mira arranged a class reading over Zoom. They invited the principals to join, and the students got the thrill of sharing their work with a wider audience.

Mira then had students use Flipgrid to record reflections on the book creation process–what they learned, strategies they employed for writing, and a question for Debbie Ridpath Ohi (the author of the writing prompt). These video reflections were embedded at the end of their books. What’s more, Mira reached out to Debbie and she gave her own feedback on the books and answered the questions!

At this point, most people would wrap up the project, but not Mira. Mira used the PDF export feature in Book Creator and worked with a local printing company to print physical copies of their books, which she presented to students in a big reveal once they were back in the classroom! The video she put together of that moment may be the best thing we’ve ever seen Book Creator used for.

Mira is a hero for a number of reasons:

1. She cares about her students and goes out of her way to make projects that work for them on their own individual levels.
2. She works collaboratively with the teachers around her to get the most out of everybody.
3. She generously shares what she has learnt with other teachers.
4. She knows Book Creator inside out and goes above and beyond in the way she uses it in her classroom.
5. She goes the extra mile to give students the best learning experience they could hope for.

Nominee: Neal Kellogg, Oklahoma City Public Schools
Nominated by: TutorMe              

Originally an elementary school music teacher and site lead technology educator, Neal Kellogg is the Director of Educational Technology Services for Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS)—serving 34,000 K–12 students across 33 elementary schools, 12 middle schools, 8 high schools, 4 alternative schools, and 6 charter schools.

Under Neal’s direction, technology at OKCPS is evolving to a more personalized, engaging, and interactive experience, focusing on personal responsibility for self-directed professional learning. A shy student in high school, Neal credits the positive impact his band teacher had on him when he was growing up, which helps guide him today in his role.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Neal prioritized communication first and foremost with students, families, and teachers at OKCPS—the second-largest district in Oklahoma—to ensure learning continued. The pandemic pushed OKCPS to move quick, making it crucial the district kept everyone informed about the direction the district went, along with ongoing changes to better support students.

In March 2020, Neal oversaw the district roll out a one-to-one device program and implement a new learning management system (LMS). While these initiatives can take two years or more to fully scale, the district’s program was up and running by August—just in time for the 2020–2021 school year. During this time, Neal worked with his team to implement solutions to help teachers—including TutorMe, an online tutoring solution–to provide students additional academic support and complement the work teachers were already doing. Neal worked with other leaders throughout the district to help OKCPS adopt, modernize, and move forward in a short period of time.

Throughout the pandemic, Neal’s confident and calm leadership inspired his teammates, while demonstrating natural leadership skills. Neal’s leadership helped guide his team and kept heads above water. Throughout all the change, Neal also fostered a healthy work-life balance throughout the district—recognizing the importance of supporting teachers’ mental health.

Nominee: Scott Mitchum, USD 112 Central Plains             
Nominated by: Bluum    

USD 112 Central Plains Technology Director Scott Mitchum hails from a family of teachers and a tradition of helping people. Throughout childhood, Scott had a passion for learning, reading, and devouring encyclopedias.

Accepting a golf scholarship to attend college, Scott briefly studied law before receiving a master’s degree in library science. After serving as a librarian for 26 years, Scott taught himself computer programming before eventually accepting a position at two junior colleges teaching the subject.

Today, Scott finds himself as the technology director of two districts in Kansas. During the early days of the pandemic, Scott was aware of immediate shortages of N95 masks for emergency care workers and sought out a way to lend a hand. Through teaching his students 3D printing techniques, he realized he could use the printers to manufacture masks, so he and a colleague discovered a mask prototype to model from a doctor YouTube.

After learning of a hospital nearby in Hoisington that had a shortage of masks, Scott began creating masks with 5-6 printers running 24/7, switching out polylactic acid (PLA) in the middle of the night. Each mask took seven hours to print.

He continued to tweak the printers to include weather stripping around the outside to make it air-tight and a HEPA filter from a vacuum cleaner. Scott produced approximately 140 masks and 100 face shields that were used primarily for surgery. Even though the hospital offered to pay him, he politely declined.

Nominee: Shawn Braxton, Cleveland Metropolitan School District             
Nominated by: Bluum    

Shawn Braxton is the Executive Director of Learning Technology and Training Services for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Shawn has been an integral part of standardizing technology across all 97 schools within the district. Most recently, he created a comprehensive plan to place a Clevertouch interactive flat panel in every classroom that lacked one. Although this project just launched over the summer, 1,081 Clevertouch panels have already been installed in classrooms that currently had only projectors. By the end of the 2022-23 school year, every classroom will have an interactive flat panel. Shawn is constantly investigating the future of classroom technology and how it could improve student learning and classroom instruction.

Shawn also played an enormous role in the creation of the district’s first-ever Tech Fest. Tech Fest was a two-day event in August that allowed students, parents, and the community to visit one of two locations within the district and interact with the district’s new technology. This event was also an opportunity for students to engage with educators outside of the classroom, build excitement around the upcoming school year, and have their devices fixed or replaced.

Shawn is a visionary when it comes education technology and how it can change and shape the minds of students. He is a catalyst for his district and is constantly on the cutting edge for new and inventive ways for students and teachers to utilize technology in the classroom.

Nominee: Spartanburg School District One
Nominated by: Promethean        

Spartanburg School District One spans three cities in rural upstate South Carolina, where nearly half of 5,000 students come from lower-income families. This also means students have limited access to technology and devices at home. Furthermore, less than 22 percent of residents in the district hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.

These combined factors have prompted the administrators of Spartanburg School District One to take action to ensure students are equipped for life beyond high school. To achieve that goal, administrators are tasked with exposing students to computers and devices and providing them with the tools and skills needed to be successful post-graduation. However, while many students have limited resources, the district is also tasked with utilizing a limited amount of school funding, which is derived from taxes on businesses within the district, while much of the local workforce commutes to larger cities outside of the tax area.

This has prompted Spartanburg School District One administrators to get creative and be strategic as to how funding is used in order to enable engagement and facilitate movement within the classroom. Dr. Jimmy Pryor, Assistant Superintendent, Accountability and Technical Services at Spartanburg School District One, determined an interactive panel would enhance learning, facilitate mobility, and increase engagement for students and simultaneously streamline lesson delivery for teachers. To find the right fit, Dr. Pryor launched a pilot program where educators tested a variety of interactive displays. As a result, Promethean’s ActivPanel was not only the preferred choice but an easy choice for educators.

It didn’t take much convincing for Dr. Pryor to secure an ActivPanel for every classroom within Spartanburg One. The superintendent and school board quickly gave the green light to invest in the new interactive panels. Within the first six months of using the ActivPanel, teachers recognized the increase in student and teacher mobility and student engagement. They also recognized the enthusiasm the panels provide for teachers to deliver quality instruction and felt motivated to expand on their professional development to learn more about the ActivPanel’s capabilities.

With four blue ribbon schools, four schools awarded “Palmetto’s Finest” by the South Carolina Association of School Administrators, and three statewide top performing high schools, administrators are looking forward to delivering on the promise of post-graduation success for students, too. Administrators district-wide anticipate seeing positive outcomes and improvement as it relates to state-mandated, end-of-course tests, all of which contribute to students’ growth and development throughout their Spartanburg tenure and beyond.

Nominee: Steven Langford, Beaverton School District
Nominated by: Lightspeed Systems

Steven Langford is the CIO of Beaverton School District in Oregon and the President of CoSN, a widely known and well-respected organization within the K-12 edtech world. Under Steven’s guidance, Beaverton has created a path of innovation and improvement for other districts to follow.

In addition to this, Steven gladly shares his advice and wisdom on how to implement new programs/systems/projects successfully. Beaverton successfully rolled out district-wide multi-factor authorization, which is a crucial component to cybersecurity, and something that is not easily done.

Steven’s continued approach to innovation in the technology department in his district is inspirational and makes him a worthy recipient of this award.     

Nominee: Tiffany Brinkley, EdOptions Academy
Nominated by: Edmentum           

For many educators, making the switch to teaching virtually presented challenges. Connecting with students virtually was new to many educators and required an untapped skill set. At a time when human connection was limited but needed, Tiffany Brinkley improved the overall student experience with virtual learning by making personal connections and accommodating students’ needs. As a result, she positively influenced student results on high-stakes exams, all while mentoring new teachers.

Our nominee, Tiffany Brinkley, has been an educator for 10 years, with 5 of those being in an online setting through Edmentum’s EdOptions Academy. Tiffany has taught various math courses ranging from 6th grade math through AP Calculus.

When a student enrolls in one of Tiffany’s classes, she always first reaches out to make a personal connection because she knows this is the key to student success. Instead of beginning the conversation with academics, she asks about their summer, interests, or hobbies. To continue to keep students involved and engaged, she sends out monthly questionnaires on fun topics. These questions and her interest in their answers allow students to feel more comfortable in a virtual setting.

Although she had taught virtually before, Tiffany noticed an increased need for student engagement during the pandemic as students sought out help and connection. Pre-pandemic, Tiffany knew there were students who needed extra support, but now those who didn’t typically reach out before were requesting time to meet with her. So, she decided she would make it easier for students by allowing them to decide their meeting time with her, rather than adhering to a standard set of office hours. She finds this flexibility beneficial for her students and it allows her to better connect them.

In 2021, she made a huge impact on a project working to better prepare students for high-stakes state exams. In the previous year before Tiffany joined, the program did not have any students pass the math exam. By delivering instruction during live Zoom sessions and providing extra support with a study program she helped to develop, Tiffany was able to raise students’ passing rate from zero to 15 percent overall on the state exam for Algebra 1.

Because of her stellar contributions, Tiffany was awarded National Teacher of the Year from Edmentum in 2022. She was recognized for her performance as an educator and her dedication to being one of three mentors training and onboarding other math teachers who were hired to meet demands during the pandemic. While helping other educators navigate how to be an effective teacher, Tiffany was described as “the glue that holds us all together” because no matter what challenges arise, she quickly and calmly finds a solution.

By building connections with students and her fellow EOA teachers, Tiffany improved students’ experience in a virtual setting, giving them the resources, opportunities, support, and flexibility they needed to adapt and overcome the adversity faced during the pandemic.

Nominee: Twin Rivers Unified School District
Nominated by: EmpowerU, Inc. 

Twin Rivers has been intentionally and strategically focused on increasing educator and student mental health on a comprehensive level.

District leaders like Christine Flock and Travis Burke understand the critical need to support educator well-being as paramount to improving student engagement, motivation, and outcomes. Their thoughtful selection of partnerships that are collaborative drive them to create programs that go beyond “check the box” solutions and result in integrated programs that drive outcomes. They work across departments to fully leverage the power and impact of the EmpowerU solution, understanding how each piece fits together to drive whole child success.

One of three eSN K-12 Hero Awards winners and nominated by Ripple Effects, Ann Hughes was selected for her dedication to struggling students and the innovative ways she helps these students succeed.

The challenges that students face at Linda Tutt Learning Center in Sanger, Texas are tough. Ann Hughes is tougher.

As she told the Houston Chronicle earlier this year, “I bet on the outsider because when I win, I want to win big.”

Ann’s students struggle with myriad challenges, including issues such as depression, hyperactivity disorders, and anger. Troubled students frequently come to Linda Tutt from other districts in the state as a last resort. In short, Ann’s program is the last hope to get these kids on the right track.

In her previous role as Director of Social Emotional Learning & Behavior Intervention for Linda Tutt and her new role as Director of Student Intervention for Sanger ISD, Ann has limited resources, both from a funding and personnel perspective. However, she meets those challenges both holistically and creatively. She stops students each day to engage in meaningful conversations about their lives. She taps into programs like Ripple Effects for Teens, which has modules that address a wide range of issues, including mental health, personal trauma, and academic challenges.

Ann has designated individual rooms throughout campus dedicated to giving students space to regroup. There’s a Movement Room to work off excess energy and a Chill Out Room for relaxation. Music, yoga, and dance are other key elements that she incorporates to reach her students, encouraging sing-alongs and dance parties.

To fill the gaps in funding and personnel resources, Ann has spearheaded community partnerships with local churches and charities, which provide counseling support not available at school. These collaborations have resulted in students honing their agriculture skills at community gardens and learning how to run a business via a nonprofit grocery store.

Related:
Meet the 2022 K-12 Hero Awards winners!

School districts continue to prioritize expanding summer learning and enrichment offerings, adding specialist staff such as mental health personnel and reading specialists, and investing in high-quality instructional materials and curriculum, according to a survey administered by AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

The School District Spending of American Rescue Plan report is part of a multi-series survey focused on how district leaders across the country are utilizing American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and, in particular, address student learning recovery.

This survey also sought information about what issues districts are experiencing in spending ARP funding and how they would change their spending decisions if they had more time to drawdown federal COVID-relief funds.

“Superintendents know best how to maximize the academic impact of the funding. It costs nothing for Congress to give districts additional time to extend the additional resources they have in place—reading specialists, tutoring programs, enrichment offerings and social-emotional supports—for students for an additional two years,” said Daniel A. Domenech, AASA executive director. “We call on Congress to extend this arbitrary deadline and enable students to get the additional time with these professionals and programs they need to recover from the pandemic.”

Districts’ ARP spending priorities have remained consistent from the 2021-2022 school year to the 2022-2023 school year. Improving instructional practices, expanding learning opportunities and learning time, hiring staff and addressing the social-emotional needs of students remain top priorities of public school system leaders, regardless of state, district size or locale.

Higher education institutions and K-12 schools are still reeling from the changes made during the pandemic, and the looming threat of a ransomware attack continues. Sixty-four percent of higher education institutions were hit by ransomware in the last year – a significant increase from 44 percent the previous year.

Institutions are attractive targets for bad actors, as they often lack a resilient IT infrastructure, operate with tight budgets and stretched IT teams, and struggle to secure outdated infrastructure with limited resources. Modern institutions run on data, making a meaningful data protection strategy essential.

Ensuring continuity of learning and research is a top priority for higher education institutions as any disruption threatens the student, educator, and researcher experience. They can benefit from solutions that prioritize data protection against changing ransomware threats – and investing in data-centric, flexible, and scalable solutions offers secure and reliable data protection.

The Importance of Data Protection

Data protection is a vital component of the contemporary data center that encompasses multiple platforms and technologies, efficiently delivers critical data and applications with blazing fast restores, and enables institutions to derive real value from data. It also plays a critical role in risk mitigation, continuity of teaching and learning, protecting institutional reputation, and student satisfaction.

While institutions grapple with the best approach to modernization, they face the ever-growing threat of a cyber breach – 57 percent of leaders reported an increase in the volume of cyberattacks on their institutions last year. With recent hacks at Los Angeles Unified School District and other high-profile school districts and institutions that shut down operations, the balance between access and security is as crucial as ever.

When digital assistants are used in classrooms, the outcomes can be overwhelmingly beneficial. AI has untapped potential in classrooms, from preschool through higher education. Digital assistants can transform how educators teach, giving them the freedom to teach from anywhere in the room.

Join eSchool News as a panel of experts shares the benefits of using AI digital assistants.

You’ll learn:

• What an AI digital assistant is
• How “technostress” is defined and how it can be reduced for teachers
• How teachers can efficiently control the apps and tools they are already using in classrooms
• How to bring simplicity into the classroom with artificial intelligence
• How edtech tools are working together to increase classroom productivity and support innovative teaching

Related:
AI in the Classroom – Supporting Innovative Teaching and Increased Productivity

The eSchool News K-12 Hero Awards recognize the dedicated efforts of education professionals across K-12 departments, including IT, curriculum, instruction and administration. 

Sponsored this year by JAR Systems and SAP Concur, the program received an influx of inspiring nominations that highlight the innovation and selflessness of educators in schools and districts across the nation.

Listed here in the order in which their nominations were received are program finalists. Stay tuned, because the second group of finalists will be featured on eSchool News next week!

Jump to: Christopher Columbus High School, Arlington Independent School District, Becky Alexander, Carmen Alvarez, Chris Moore, District 49, Dr. Elizabeth Faison, Dr. Nick Migliorino, Ed Kemnitzer, Emily Herring, FlexPoint Education Cloud, Florida Virtual School, Cory Hocker, Green Bay Area Public Schools, Hardee County School District, Heather Magill, Hemet Unified School District, Jefferson County Public Schools

Nominee: Alex Seage, Christopher Columbus High School             
Nominated by: Samsung Electronics America      

Alex Seage built a career leading technology and innovation in the cruise industry, which also provided him with a deep understanding of the technology needed to improve the experience for cruise guests. In January 2021, Seage decided it was time to leap into the education field, leveraging the skills he acquired to make a difference at his alma mater, Christopher Columbus High School. With the goal of modernizing the school’s IT infrastructure for the ever-evolving pandemic era, Seage joined CCHS as a Senior Director of Technology and Innovation.

CCHS is a private, Roman Catholic, college-preparatory high school, conducted by the Marist Brothers in the Westchester census-designated place of Miami Dade County, Florida. When onboarding, Seage saw firsthand how teachers were under great stress as they struggled to create crucial engagement and ensure students weren’t feeling left behind in the classroom. At that moment, a top-down approach to create a “Campus of the Future” was devised by adopting smart signage within lecture halls, hallways, athletic facilities, and executive conference rooms to transform the entire campus. Under his leadership, CCHS was one of the first schools to implement Samsung’s Flip 3 whiteboard in 2021. Samsung’s Interactive Whiteboard was ready out-of-the-box and was an easy-to-use product for educators to easily provide personalized experiences. Seamless integration with teachers’ education platforms helped to immerse students in their learning material.

As CCHS introduced this product to the campus, faculty were able to learn how their teachers wanted to incorporate collaborative experiences using technology and content-driven media that could be delivered in a quick and meaningful manner to hold students’ interest. The staff now uses the interactive display to create and present lesson plans and share content with students utilizing their own tablets. Teachers have also expressed positive feedback using the technology, underscoring how it led to more collaborative learning experiences for students. The ability to offer two-way communication and collaboration between students and teachers is no longer a pipe dream – by Seage utilizing Samsung’s products, CCHS was able to provide the technology and infrastructure to make this dream a reality.

The positive results in the classroom have led to other expansion opportunities across the CCHS campus. The school recently built a new center for science and arts outfitted with new, cutting-edge Samsung solutions that provide an ideal space for students to foster STEM skills, such as critical thinking, communication, and creativity. Additionally, Seage has put forward creative ideas to implement Samsung technology beyond the classroom, including a production studio, wayfinding, and even integrating the technology into the school’s sports program.  

Seage has played an instrumental role in transforming an ordinary campus into one that truly embraces the meaning of being “smart.” He has successfully built the architecture for a connected campus that enhances the campus experience, drives operational efficiency, and provides education in a manner that all can access. And for Seage, the best has yet to come.    

Nominee: Arlington Independent School District                                                            
Nominated by: Identity Automation

Arlington Independent School District (AISD) has a population of more than 61,000 students. With a highly-engaged faculty and array of learning opportunities that foster each student’s unique interests and talents, the district’s goal is to have 100 percent of AISD students graduate exceptionally prepared for college, career and citizenship. The district seamlessly combines the strength of a large school district with innovative approaches and focused support to help students articulate and achieve their dreams.

Arlington ISD has always been forward-thinking when it comes to its district technology strategy, and the district’s Assistant Superintendent of Technology, Eric Upchurch, has been the driving force behind much of its innovation. The district’s ability to quickly and efficiently supply devices to students, ensure remote access, and provide educational resources is a model other districts can follow.

When the pandemic started, Upchurch knew this would permanently change how students learn. The challenge was how to quickly adapt to the circumstances and make sure all students in the district had easy, affordable, and quick access to the technologies needed to succeed throughout the school year and in years to come.

Led by Upchurch, the technology team coordinated across district departments to ensure a speedy roll-out of 1:1 devices. Whether it was participating in device-day pickup or hosting and coordinating meet-the-teacher drive-throughs, the entire district staff stepped up to provide for nearly 61,000 students.

Internet hotspots were also set up so the thousands of students who otherwise wouldn’t have internet could maintain classroom access and ensure the continuing equity in education.

“It’s really been incredible,” said Upchurch. “The staff has worked really hard to get through this. The campus technology people, the assistant principals, school staff, it’s been a big task. They’ve done a great job.”

Additionally, Upchurch is constantly looking for innovative new technologies that can help the district. His team likes to beta test new technologies to explore the benefits for all of their end users, including security technologies that help keep the district safe.

Arlington ISD has also made a big push in its Technology Enrichment program. The program gives students technology skills that can lead them into the future. This includes access to the latest technology applications that can have real world applications. The district also holds several events inviting staff to learn about technology tools and strategies for the classroom.

Arlington Independent School District is an edtech integration leader both districtwide and in the classroom, and other districts can look to AISD for inspiration. Ultimately, from Upchurch and the technology team to leadership districtwide, AISD knows how important technology is in today’s learning environment and wants every student to have the same opportunity to be successful.

Nominee: Link TextBecky Alexander, Morris Elementary
Nominated by: Istation 

Becky Alexander is the principal at Morris Elementary School in Morris, Oklahoma. She has inspired change at the school by leading its faculty and staff to embrace technology and enrich their strategy toward 21st century learning. Alexander seeks new opportunities to use technology within classroom lessons regularly. She implements programs like Istation to give her teachers an advantage in providing data driven instruction and strong, effective interventions.

Alexander inspires an innovative approach to learning by embedding interventions led by Istation’s assessment data into the school’s daily instruction. These interventions ensure that students are being equipped with the best possible skills practice to achieve academic growth. As a result, Alexander has seen significant growth in her students.

Inspired by Alexander’s success, educators at Morris Elementary also use Istation’s reports and printable resources to promote academic growth in reading and math. With reliable, actionable data, educators at Morris Elementary are able to provide targeted instruction. Additionally, student motivation is high, as they are able to track their monthly growth and celebrate successes. As a result of these successes, Alexander presented at The Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administrators Conference on the effectiveness of this intervention, inspiring educators state-wide to follow her lead.

Alexander continues her commitment to improving the educational community by being an active member of Istation’s Red Cape Community, which allows her to collaborate with educators nationwide on best practices, and provide feedback directly with Istation on the classroom needs of educators.

Nominee: Link TextCarmen Alvarez, Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District  
Nominated by: Age of Learning  

Ms. Alvarez is the Early Learning Director for Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District (HCISD), a few miles from the U.S./Mexico border. The district serves an economically-disadvantaged community with about 80 percent of the students eligible to participate in the free and reduced-price meal program. In fall 2020, 61 percent of children in prekindergarten were classified as academically “at risk” and she has witnessed the impact a lack of readiness for kindergarten and beyond has on students. Therefore, Ms. Alvarez and her colleagues looked for ways to solve that challenge.

In the fall of 2019, HCISD launched a universal full-day pre-K program for 4-year-old children at no cost to families. Affordability is the number one deterrent to enrolling in pre-K, so they dedicated the resources to make it accessible to everyone in the community. Through this program, HCISD began to instill a strong foundation in literacy and math in these young learners.

Shortly after the program started, COVID-19 forced the district to rethink how it could academically support the pre-K students. While remote learning was difficult for all, the youngest learners faced particularly acute challenges when in-school learning was no longer possible. The priority was to ensure that district closures would not negatively impact pre-K students’ academic growth and development.

Under Ms. Alverez’s leadership, pre-K classes began using an adaptive, mastery-based math program, My Math Academy, to strengthen young learners’ foundational math knowledge, and inspire their love of learning. Furthermore, due to remote learning, Alvarez turned to the technology solution to equip educators with insights and tools to personalize and accelerate learning at-home and in the classroom.

HCISD teachers quickly saw positive changes in how students were building math skills. The pre-K students using My Math Academy during the 2020-2021 school year nearly tripled their skill levels, while kindergarteners participating in the program increased their skill levels by 50 percent. And perhaps most impactful is that due to learner variability, each student was at a different starting point in learning, yet every student mastered all pre-K skills and continued well into kindergarten. HCISD even had children entering kindergarten the following year learning math at a second-grade level!

Based on the overwhelmingly positive results, HCISD expanded the use of My Math Academy and began a pilot of My Reading Academy, an adaptive, standards-aligned reading solution. The district is already seeing improved reading skills among students, and they have become more confident, engaged readers. 

District officials expected the extraordinary challenges from the pandemic would drastically increase the number of students falling behind in their learning. However, more than 850 children enrolled in HCISD’s universal pre-K program, and HCISD students are now performing better on math and reading compared to cohorts in previous years, and their math results are above the national average. Ms. Alvarez and her colleagues were at the forefront of developing unique educational experiences for their youngest learners and adopting evidence-based practices–by implementing My Math Academy and My Reading Academy–to ensure technology was positively impacting teacher engagement and driving student outcomes.

Nominee: Link TextChris Moore, Salem-Keizer Public Schools                                                     
Nominated by: EmpowerU, Inc. 

Chris Moore is a heart-centered leader who works tirelessly to support the needs of all staff and students. He is intentionally and strategically focused on expanding access to effective social-emotional and mental health support holistically throughout the district–a huge undertaking in a district of 40,000 students.

Chris is extremely thoughtful in his selection of partnerships and is always thinking strategically about how the programs and supports he implements will fit into the greater picture of driving whole child success. He is collaborative with his partners and his school sites, making the right connections at the right time, resulting in integrated program implementation to leverage the greatest impact and drive big outcomes.

Chris helps his school sites, staff, and students tap into their highest potential every day by meeting them where they are with belief in them and unconditional positive regards–connecting them with resources like EmpowerU and working with them to identify where and how EmpowerU programs can best support their unique needs and challenges.

Nominee: District 49      
Nominated by: LearnPlatform    

The number of digital tools used by districts rapidly accelerated during the pandemic as schools transitioned to remote learning, causing challenges for both teachers and administrators. Leaders at District 49 (D49), one of Colorado’s fastest-growing districts, knew they needed to work collaboratively to ensure that the education technology tools used across their system were delivering value for students and teachers and that they were doing so safely.

The district serves approximately 21,000 students across four distinct zones spanning 133 square miles of urban and rural areas in Colorado. D49 is committed to providing students high-quality technology opportunities and giving teachers the tools they need to help all students achieve desired outcomes. Colorado vendors and school districts are required by the state to facilitate safe online learning experiences.

To better understand edtech use across the district’s system, the district’s tech team set up a district Inventory Dashboard, provided free from LearnPlatform. Within days, they realized that students and teachers were using more than 2,000 edtech tools systemwide. They knew they needed to establish clear processes for managing this amount of edtech use effectively.

In particular, they wanted to be able to encourage consistent practices across school buildings, ensure compliance with Colorado’s student data privacy requirements, reduce frustration and confusion among stakeholders (including parents and staff), and begin to evaluate the impact of edtech on student outcomes. At the same time, they wanted to maintain local decision-making autonomy among their four zones.

While several district-wide teams, including Learning Services, Purchasing, and Data and Performance, worked together to identify and select LearnPlatform to help them achieve their goals, Melissa Riggs, D49 Education Technology Specialist within the Learning Services team, ultimately led the LearnPlatform implementation.

She and her team have worked closely with the LearnPlatform team to:

• Create a district library of their top edtech tools
• Keep stakeholders (teachers, staff, and parents/guardians) informed of the approval and privacy statuses for those tools
• Establish a clearly defined, efficient process for requesting and reviewing new edtech product requests to ensure curricular alignment, technical compatibility, and data privacy compliance
• Evaluate product usage, cost, and student achievement to better understand how well key edtech products are working for all D49 students
• Reduce the financial and human costs associated with managing and vetting edtech tools
• Make it easier for teachers to find and select edtech products to use in their classrooms

D49’s thoughtful rollout of LearnPlatform, led by Melissa, has made D49’s use of edtech more manageable, thoughtful, and consistent; ensured compliance with state student data privacy regulations; and optimized safety. Simultaneously through her leadership, she’s been successful in reducing the workload on teachers and staff and has improved district value from edtech expenditures, all without interfering with local decision making.

Nominee: Dr. Elizabeth Faison, Prince George’s County Public Schools     
Nominated by: AllHere  

We are nominating Dr. Elizabeth Faison, Associate Superintendent of Student Services at Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS), for leading a transparent, honest, and thoughtful interrogation of what stands in the way of authentic partnerships between families and schools. PGCPS’ focus on transformational practices has led to the district’s quest for innovative approaches to removing barriers to student success.

Dr. Elizabeth Faison has held leadership positions for over 16 years at PGCPS, one of the nation’s largest school districts with 208 schools and more than 136,500 students in Maryland. As Associate Superintendent of Student Services, Elizabeth ensures PGCPS’s diverse student population receives holistic support that includes school health, mental health, psychological services, homeless, home and hospital teaching, home schooling, restorative approaches, international admissions, bullying prevention, and attendance.

As the gap between home and school widened during the pandemic, Elizabeth led the funding of programs that ensure every family in her district receives the support they need by establishing new touchpoints that reach students and families wherever they are. This includes the adoption of AllHere, a 24/7 texting-based chatbot that provides personalized support so that every family can get questions answered within seconds or be escalated to a support staff member within the district. When it was time to reopen for in-person learning, the district used AllHere to provide timely, empathetic nudges and offers of support to help families address any challenges they might have faced returning to school. This chatbot, affectionately named by students as J.A.R.V.I.S (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System), allowed PGCPS to also provide real time answers to parents’ inquiries as well as provide students with a way to alert the district to personal crises.

In recent years, Elizabeth has spearheaded a district-wide initiative to drive awareness around attendance, one of the top drivers of student success. Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing more than 10 percent of days in a school year for any reason, has risen to historic levels during the pandemic. Rather than fall back on outdated, often punitive attendance intervention strategies, Elizabeth has taken important steps forward to reimagine attendance strategies that acknowledge the unique circumstances of each child and family.

Traditionally, school absences are assumed to be a result of disinterested families when the real causes more often are language barriers, parents working multiple jobs, and poor internet access, among a host of other obstacles. Over the last decade, family engagement leaders like Elizabeth have championed a shift in how our education system treats chronic absenteeism, from a punitive to an empathetic approach that treats families as crucial components to their child’s success.

Elizabeth expertly and compassionately convened the district’s attendance task force, bringing together families, students, educators, and policymakers in support of a high-quality system of supports around attendance and overall student achievement. Elizabeth’s leadership in PGCPS shows the way toward a more liberatory, solidarity-driven, strengths-driven, and equity-focused engagement practice that supports student services excellence for all children.”                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Nominee: Dr. Nick Migliorino, Norman Public Schools
Nominated by: Rave Mobile Safety          

In the wake of the tragedy in Uvalde, TX earlier this year, school administrators across the nation began assessing ways to protect students. Elected officials also started doubling down on safety measures, including the Governor of Oklahoma, who issued a statewide mandate this summer requiring more than 1,800 public K-12 and charter schools in the state to implement Rave Panic Button by September 1. Oklahoma is not new to Rave Panic Button – the state is coming up on its third year of working with Rave to protect students and staff.

Dr. Nick Migliorino, superintendent of Norman Public Schools, has been the catalyst for school safety technology in Oklahoma for years and continues to keep the safety of students and staff at the top of his priorities today.

In 1999, he was awarded the Governor’s Humanitarian Award for his service to students during the May 3, 1999 tornado that damaged Westmoore High School. Since then, he has had a long and successful career, taking on more challenging roles along the way, ultimately becoming the superintendent of Norman Public Schools in 2017. Before taking on his current position, Migliorino served as the school’s Assistant Superintendent for Administrative Services and Chief Technology Officer, which entailed overseeing all technical aspects of the district. In this capacity, Migliorino worked with the district’s technical services staff, site teachers, leaders, and other external stakeholders to expand the district’s use of technological resources. As part of this work, he also oversaw bond projects and managed the district’s maintenance, transportation, child nutrition health, and technology divisions.

A firm believer in the fact that technology can make a difference in the ways that schools connect and protect students, Migliorino co-founded School Connect, a company that provided a web-based platform for schools to create their own mobile-messaging applications. The company was sold to Jostens, Inc. in 2012 and the platform continues to serve districts across the nation as School Way.

Dr. Migliorino worked tirelessly to ensure that Norman Public Schools was among one of the first Oklahoma school districts to use the Rave Panic Button application, a school safety app that, with the push of a button, sends important information to 9-1-1 centers, on-site personnel, and first responders in the event of an emergency. Norman Public Schools implemented Rave Panic Button before Governor Kevin Stitt declared the executive order and served as a resource to many other districts who had questions about the benefits of Rave Panic Button. Today, as of this writing, 92.4 percent of Oklahoma schools have opted in to use the Rave Panic Button app, and nearly 88 percent show as live users which means school personnel have “geo-fenced” their campus, named their buildings, and added some staff into the system.

At the time that Rave became a school safety solution in Oklahoma, Dr. Migliorino stated, “The safety and security of our students and staff is our top priority and I know the same is true in every school district across the state. This is one more critical tool we can use to be prepared for whatever situations may arise and to keep our students and staff safe.”

Migliorino’s values and vision have helped the Oklahoma school system to be the safety leader that it is today.

Nominee: Ed Kemnitzer, East Williston Union Free School District
Nominated by: Bluum    

Since the recent pandemic and subsequent federal spending regarding technology tools in the classroom can be overwhelming to many schools and their leaders, many school administrators have clamored for an education technology partner to help navigate those choppy waters. With the need for guidance on what and how to purchase technology to truly help improve learning outcomes at an all-time high, the company Bluum launched Strategic Advisory Planning Services for its education partners this past year.

It is a three-phase process in which the company’s technology and education experts help school districts assess where there is a need for edtech and how they should implement it into their schools at little or no cost. But in order to launch services such as this, trusted partners and education technology experts at the schools are needed to provide the feedback necessary to make the program truly valuable for educators.

That is where East Williston Union Free School District Director of Technology, Innovation and Information Services Ed Kemnitzer from New York came in. Ed was one of the early adopters of the service provided by Bluum and helped pilot the program for eight months. Ed selflessly volunteered his time and energy to assist the Bluum Education Services Team with countless insights in developing these services for schools.

Although Ed said that the experience was beneficial to learning more about what his district needed as well, his knowledge in strategic planning, budgets, working with the school board, federal funding, and other acumen were invaluable to the Bluum team as they designed their programs. Ed understands that districts scratch and claw for every technology dollar in their budget and the counsel he provided Bluum will allow the company to assist countless others in those efforts.               

Nominee: Emily Herring, Fairfield City Schools
Nominated by: EmpowerU, Inc. 

Emily Herring is a champion of students!

Emily works tirelessly to support the needs of all students–particularly students who are struggling in the traditional school setting and who have been temporality transitioned to an Alternative Learning Site.

Emily has taken it upon herself to generate grant money to connect students at the ALC with EmpowerU to feel empowered to transition back to their traditional school settings with more resilience and coping skills.

Students from Emily’s district who take EmpowerU share feeling increased self-value and confidence.

Emily helps students tap into their highest potential every day by meeting them where they are at with belief in them and connecting them with resources like EmpowerU to support them as a a whole person.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Nominee: FlexPoint Education Cloud
Nominated by: Mary Stevens, Florida Virtual School        

The vision of Florida Virtual School (FLVS), a fully accredited online K-12 public school district, has always been to transform education worldwide. To that end, FLVS launched FlexPoint Education Cloud, enabling them to partner with schools and districts around the nation and worldwide to help them quickly and effectively transition teachers and students to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

In the 2020-21 school year, the FlexPoint team helped more than 160 new schools and districts around the nation launch their first online learning programs during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Plus, to help educators who were new to online learning during, FlexPoint helped train more than 14,000 education professionals nationwide, equaling more than 500 hours of professional development.

In Florida, FLVS saw success through state testing results and surveys. The 2021 state testing results showed that FLVS students scored 21 percent higher in English and 11 percent higher in math than the state average. Additionally, FLVS supported Florida schools and districts by training more than 10,000 teachers statewide and provided ongoing support. 

To help even more students, families, and educators around the nation who were new to online learning FLVS launched the Online Learning Community (OLC).  OLC gave educators the resources they needed and offered an online community where they could ask questions, connect with others, and feel confident as they educated students in a virtual environment. 

Additionally, in response to COVID’s substantial impact on mental health, FLVS added nearly 50 student services professionals to support students and families, providing them with resources, webinars, and trainings to help them through a time of great change and stress. 

During the pandemic, FLVS went above and beyond to support students, parents, and educators in Florida and across the nation–putting students at the center of every decision they made.

Nominee: Florida Virtual School             
Nominated by: SAP Concur         

It’s with great pleasure that SAP Concur nominates Florida Virtual School (FLVS) and Kelly Goodman, Expense Management Manager, for the eSchool News K-12 Hero Award.  We believe that Florida Virtual is a great choice for the award as they have embraced technology to become one of the world’s leaders in online education.

FLVS has been leading the way in K-12 online education since 1997. They provide a robust, award-winning curriculum to public, private, charter, and homeschool families and school districts nationwide. They are accredited by Cognia and offer supportive online learning to students both in Florida and around the world.

FLVS’s 5 core values–Excellence, Innovation, Community, Balance, and Communication–energize and guide its team members in their daily pursuits to achieve their vision. They lead online education worldwide with innovative digital solutions that individualize learning for each student, and they equip students for success by developing and delivering highly effective digital learning through an intuitive online platform. 

Nominee: Cory Hocker, Golden Eagle Charter School
Nominated by: Kajeet    

We are nominating Cory for his commitment to ensuring connectivity for students in need during the ongoing fire seasons in California. Cory ensures their school is prepared to serve displaced students in need of connectivity during wildfires.

Most recently, while experiencing the McKinney Fire, he was moving equipment from the red zone while managing connectivity and access for students. Wearing the many hats of an IT Director is challenging enough, and Cory goes above and beyond each year to assist students during fire season and evacuations, which are unpredictable and can be devastating for students when they are relocated.                                                                                                                        

Nominee: Green Bay Area Public Schools                                         
Nominated by: JAR Systems, LLC                             

JAR Systems has chosen to nominate Green Bay Area Public Schools for the K-12 Hero Awards due to its unrivaled commitment to student success. Green Bay recently invested in 20,000 Chromebooks to move the district to a 1:1 student-to-device ratio to advance students’ productivity and learning in classrooms.

Due to the mass increase of devices, the district began to experience some difficulties with keeping the devices charged and ready for learning. To combat this issue, the district purchased Adapt4 Charging Stations for its secondary schools to alleviate the challenges of uncharged devices in the classrooms. The yellow power banks included in the Adapt4 Charging Stations allowed students to charge their devices at the desk without the district needing to modify infrastructure or create fire/trip hazards with power cords. In turn, this increased productivity and reduced disruptions to learning in the secondary school classrooms.

In the district’s elementary schools, the main priority involved keeping students’ devices charged while maximizing space in the classrooms. To achieve this, Green Bay took the initiative to purchase Essential USB-C Charging Stations that are designed to fit various device sizes and types, which allowed teachers to maximize space in the classroom. The Essential Charging Station can also be wall-mounted, saving even more classroom space compared to that of a traditional cart and allowing for an ideal learning environment.

Green Bay Area Public Schools not only took steps towards a 1:1 student-to-device ratio during unprecedented times, but it also recognized potential disruptions to learning and took the initiative to alleviate these challenges. Green Bay’s initiatives display its commitment to student success by providing an idealistic environment for learning. During an unprecedented time of uncertainty, Green Bay Area Public Schools went above and beyond to educate students when demands on schools and districts were thought impossible. JAR Systems would like to nominate Green Bay Area Schools for the K-12 Hero Awards to recognize its dedication to its students’ prosperity and learning.    

Nominee: Hardee County School District              
Nominated by: JAR Systems, LLC              

JAR Systems is nominating Hardee School District (FL) for its exceptional response to rapid change in its students’ and teachers’ requirements for digital learning. The district serves a diverse population in a rural county with many titled government programs and a large ESOL program.

The technology team, led by Director of Technology and Information Systems Todd Markel, has implemented a technology plan that emphasizes equitable learning opportunities and equips students with the resources needed to thrive in a global society.

Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, they quickly recognized that the wiring of AC adapters into their charging stations was holding them back in several ways. The wiring and rewiring were costing the district time and resources and the AC adapters were better off used for other purposes. In response, they made a significant investment in upgrading their charging infrastructure. Instead of buying all new stations, they were able to leverage the ones they already had and upgrade them with Quick-Sense USB-C PD Charging Hubs. This effectively eliminated cable management tasks and created a more user-friendly experience for teachers and students in the classroom.

The district’s longstanding partnership with JAR Systems helped it toward a path of scalable growth and technological advancement that bolstered its ability to meet the needs of its increasingly digital curriculum. 

Nominee: Heather Magill, Palm Beach County School District                     
Nominated by: Edmentum           

When it comes to educators, pinpointing one single superhero power is difficult due to how much they undertake and execute daily. Educators put their energies toward making the world a little bit better, whether it be through a be a global reach or affecting a single student. The purpose always remains—simply support students in finding their way. This is exactly the purpose Heather Magill embodies.

Ms. Magill challenges her students to be their best self and presents opportunities that might never be considered. She provides a world full of possibilities.

Ms. Magill recognizes that not every child comes to the table with equal or expansive experiences and opportunities. To address the disparity, she established the foundation needed to create a viable STEM program with holistic values for her school. It now offers STEM elective classes and houses robotics and coding courses that integrate science, technology, engineering, arts, and math into one learning experience, while reinforcing real-world application. With the Advanced STEM students, she focuses on design engineering projects centered around NASA’s Growing Beyond Earth (GBE) trials, where she guides students to collect data on possible plants that could be used on the International Space Station, as well as the Stiles Nicholson STEM Inventor 3D print challenges. Using various expert speakers, programs, and virtual field trips, she demonstrates to students the unique opportunities that extend outside of their community.

Ms. Magill uses the process of instruction to get to know her students, build community, and present possibilities. She guides her students to personal heights in their question-answer-question cycle of discovery. She teaches them how to be limitless in their thinking and to consider the unconsidered. She does this while maintaining a high level of proficiency and mastery in the classroom. Digital resources like Edmentum’s Study Island are as much a part of the process as conferences with NASA and collaboration with PBS.

Ms. Magill uses knowledge of her students to find opportunities and outside grants to support the learning at the edges. By partnering with the community to support, expose, and create opportunity, Ms. Magill finds unique learning chances for her students.

These adventures and opportunities work in concert with teaching of standards and the curriculum of Palm Beach County SD. She uses that data derived from Edmentum’s Study Island to monitor understanding and learning. She teaches her students to be digital citizens as well as to use technology resources to monitor comprehension, perform critical analysis of content, and build self confidence that quickly translates to academic confidence.

Hear more about Heather Magill’s Why, her 2020 Dwyer Award, or her work with PBS and advocating for her student to participate in the documentary “Hidden Wild.” You can also read about her work with the Environmental Resource Management creating new science curriculum. Or engage in some of the Virtual Field Trip she has been developing with Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Resources. The Department began working with Ms. Heather to do virtual field trips for Palm Beach County students in April 2020.

Nominee: Hemet Unified School District
Nominated by: Lexia Learning    

Hemet district leaders knew they had a literacy issue when their district data showed that only 16 percent of its 22,000 students in TK-12 were reading at or above grade level. And while every school site was a bit different, it was clear that they were dealing with major access and equity issues.

It was at this point that the 26-school district created a new director of literacy and intervention position, taking the stance that reading intervention was needed across most grades.

Working together, the district began to dig in and dive deeper into the root causes of the problem. Ready for a change, they started to broaden their understanding of the science of reading and did a book study on Shifting the Balance by Jan Burkins and Kari Yates.

Research led the district to learn more about and select Lexia’s Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) professional development suite. It piqued their interest because of its longevity in the marketplace, it was developed by literacy experts Dr. Louisa Moats, Dr. Carol Tolman, and Dr. Lucy Hart Paulson, and it provided them with a program that gave teachers the flexibility to learn on their own time in their own space and from the comfort of their own home. It also brought them together to work collaboratively across district roles.

To ensure a successful overhaul of their professional development platform, district leaders took these steps:

• Developed a plan of action. Beginning January 1, 2022, the district began offering the professional development curriculum to those teachers who requested it. It laid out a plan for the first full year of use and put together a scope and sequence of professional development that would kick off for the 2022-23 school year, with the first unit starting in March 2022.
• Use cohorts. District leaders established two different cohorts, including a group of 500 “first adopters” out of 1,3000 educators from grades TK-12 that started in March 2022 and a second cohort that started in August 2022.
• Make it worth their while. Teachers are paid hourly for the time spent completing the professional development units and attending the workshops. The district also offers the platform to its administrators, all of whom are participating in the program (and, also being compensated for that participation).
• Get everyone onboard. District leaders also brought in the district’s executive cabinet, special education program specialists, and other stakeholders into the system. It wanted everyone to understand that they are all teachers of literacy—whether they are teaching kindergarten, science class or auto shop.

Embracing a Paradigm Shift

In the end, there is a great deal of talk about equity among students, but where is the equity for teachers? And how are districts providing equitable access to the science of reading and really helping to prepare them and not leaving it to chance?

Hemet USD is a shining example of working collaboratively to drive a paradigm shift in teaching and learning for the sake of its most valuable assets – teachers and students.

Nominee: Jefferson County Public Schools
Nominated by: FEV Tutor            

Tutoring has received a lot of attention as a key strategy for helping to stem unfinished learning for K-12 students due to COVID disruptions and to close longstanding achievement gaps that have grown even wider during the pandemic. Even after heroic efforts by educators to continue teaching remotely, in-person, or via hybrid learning models, many learners have fallen behind. The impacted students are, not surprisingly, the ones who were underserved before the pandemic: low-income students, students without access to technology, special education students, and English Language Learners.

One urban district, Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) in Louisville, Kentucky, was determined to turn the tide for its 96,000 students and launched a partnership with FEV Tutor, the leading provider of online, high-dosage tutoring and an ESSA Level 2 Intervention and Evidence-Based Program that received the Product Design Certificate through Digital Promise.

Beginning in December 2020, the district connected its students with intentional tutoring–that being ongoing, curriculum and instruction-based, standards-aligned academic support when and where they needed it. The district was able to rapidly deploy FEV Tutor by implementing swift integrations like Clever for rostering, Single Sign On (SSO), and sharing NWEA MAP Growth data for data-driven instruction.

By reshaping its academic support for students using high impact tutoring and incorporating the Design Principles for Effective Tutoring from the renowned Annenberg Institute, including high-frequency and dosage with three or more session per week, tutoring offered during the school day, consistent tutors, and data-driven for personalized instruction, the district was convinced it was on the right track.

To confirm that its efforts were delivering positive results, JCPS activated its NWEA MAP Growth data connection with the tutoring platform and its data analytics team conducted a Winter-to-Spring AY21-22 academic growth analysis comparing RIT Score Growth across various attendance bands of tutoring participation.

From this intensive yet collaborative effort, amazing results have been realized:

• To date, more than 60,000 hours of live, one-to-one instruction have been delivered to 7,000 students in 116 JCPS schools. The online tutoring sessions have been available to students in grades 3-12 and focus on the core subjects of math, English, science, and social studies.
• FEV Tutor participants demonstrated accelerated rates of growth relative to non-participants in both math and reading. Students who participated in higher dosages of FEV Tutor showed additional gains. Students who participated in recommended dosages of tutoring demonstrated 78 percent accelerated growth relative to non-participants in math and 74 percent accelerated growth relative to non-participating in reading.
• In all, the district demonstrated accelerated, double-digit rates of growth (32 percent) relative to national norms in both math and reading on the NWEA MAP Growth Assessments.

It goes without saying that the real heroes of this story are the students who are making up for the ground they lost over the past 24+ months. But this ‘good news’ story would not be possible without the heroic efforts of JCPS district administrators and teachers who continue to work tirelessly to implement a successful, high-impact tutoring effort designed for learning acceleration.    

As educators, our charge is to impart knowledge onto our students, open new doors for them, and encourage them to stretch beyond their comfort zones. We try to show them every day that they are capable of doing anything that they set their minds to, but how often do we follow our own advice and push our own boundaries to try or learn something new?

As a physical education teacher in an underserved community, finding ways to connect with my classes during the pandemic and a time of remote learning was challenging. With sports being canceled, I was searching for new avenues to engage my students when I came across the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest, a program encouraging problem-based learning.

The contest tasks middle and high school students with identifying a solution to a real-world problem using STEM, and I was hesitant to apply as I do not teach a traditional STEM discipline. However, I knew that my students have a passion for making their community a better place for themselves and their families, and I decided to step outside the box and go for it.

Throughout the course of the project development, I watched my students approach problems from different angles and come up with solutions to real-life issues that they experience every day. My students at Hope of Detroit Academy identified urban decay as an issue that was close to home but affects many other areas in the U.S., and they have seen firsthand how it takes a toll on their community economically, socially, psychologically, and physically. They landed on developing an app to track and report abandoned homes and illegal dumping sites in Detroit to community groups that lead clean-up efforts.

Our project, the Green Warrior app, has been used in Detroit since mid-last year to track where the city has come in to clean up vacant lots, board up or tear down abandoned houses. Our work isn’t done, and we have a goal to roll it out in Spanish as well.