Leaders from the four county school districts, St. Joseph Elementary School, and Blue River Career Programs answered questions on a variety of topics during the Shelby County Chamber of Commerce’s State of our Education event Tuesday morning.

St. Joseph Elementary School Principal Stephen Hoffman, Southwestern Consolidated Schools Superintendent Jamison Wilkins, Shelby Eastern Schools Superintendent Todd Hitchcock, Shelbyville Central Schools Superintendent Matt Vance, Blue River Career Programs Director Jeremy Powers, and Northwestern Consolidated (Triton Central) Schools Superintendent Chris Hoke answered eight questions posed by the Chamber.

Four of those questions will be listed below. For answers on the other four, read Thursday’s edition of The Shelbyville News.

If you will introduce yourself, what school you represent, the number of students you have and what strengths your school offers.

For St. Joseph Catholic School, which has 118 preschool through fifth grade students, the strength is the small class sizes, Hoffman said. He is in his second year as the school’s principal.

Wilkins, in his fourth month as Southwestern’s superintendent, said his district has 669 students in pre-k through 12th grade, which is up a little bit from last year.

“I’m still learning about the district, but I think our biggest strength is the smallness of our community and our school because we can get to know our students a little bit better and have close contact with our kiddos,” he said. “I think another success is our preschool program. It’s been very successful and is actually responsible for some of our growth over the last year as well.”

Shelby Eastern includes Waldron and Morristown. Between the two towns, the district has just a hair under 1,200 students from pre-k to 12th grade, Hitchcock said. Right now, the school is undergoing a few building expansion projects, including new elementary gyms and agriculture lab expansions.

Shelbyville boasts 3,604 students between pre-k and 12th grade. This is actually down a bit from previous years, Vance said. Staff retention and facilities are some of the strengths.

“In terms of our strengths, when I talk about Shelbyville Central Schools, I always talk about our people,” Vance said. “We have outstanding staff here and are always looking at ways to make that better.”

Powers is also new to the director position at Blue River Career Programs, but he’s no stranger to the community. The former Morristown Jr./Sr. High School Principal said the career center has 403 students enrolled, the second-highest enrollment ever. The center primarily serves sophomores through seniors, and its biggest strength is that all courses are dual credit certified through Ivy Tech.

Triton Central’s biggest strength is its diverse array of programs both inside and outside the classroom, Hoke said. The enrollment count is about 1,400 students from pre-k to 12th grade.

“We’re proud to say we’re able to do that with small class sizes,” he said.

With the rapid changes in educational needs, how are you evolving your curriculum to prepare students for different careers, colleges or educational paths?

Hoke said the focus for Triton Central is to provide students with the base skill level problem solving and intellectual curiosity to help them learn whatever they need to learn in their life; especially with the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Science fiction may be science fact in a few years, he said, and he hopes to help students be equipped for when they encounter it.

At the career center, Powers is looking at new programming.

“One of the things we use is ‘high demand, high wage,’ so what jobs out there right now are high demand and high wage?” he said. “Whether it be exercise science, construction, welding – we’re always looking for different programs so that we know when our students leave our career center, they’re prepared for them.”

Vance said Shelbyville staff is adapting to new technology by “going 1:1,” or getting every student their own personal laptop and teaching them how to use it. School is different for students now than it was when educators were children, and they’re constantly looking for new ways to get students into a better position.

At Shelby Eastern, Hitchcock said they’re focusing on early literacy and preschool enrollment.

“What we’ve tried to do is really focus on our preschool programming, expanding that, and having more early interventions and access for students who are not able to read,” he said. “If you look back 20 years ago, when we had kids that showed up on day 1 in kindergarten and had never been exposed to a book before, that presents some challenges for several years to come. We’re trying to make sure we don’t have that.”

They’re also implementing project-based learning in the classrooms to help students identify a problem, strategize solutions to the problem, develop community partnerships to fix the problem and bring those solutions to life.

Southwestern is also focusing on early intervention, Wilkins said. The elementary school has been implementing new team-based measures among staff to help ensure students are learning to read properly. At the high school, the district is adapting to new changes by promoting work-based learning.

St. Joseph serves students ages 2-12, so their primary focus is just getting them ready for middle school.

“We used UFLI [reading program] a lot in the younger grades, and we’re trying to implement Science of Reading to get our kids ready to go,” Hoffman said. “We have a Title 1 teacher and a resource teacher that work with kids every day.”

Let’s talk about the new graduation pathways. What are your thoughts on those?

St. Joseph does not graduate students so they didn’t have an answer.

Wilkins expressed concern with finding programming for Southwestern students to meet the work-based learning opportunities and ensuring those programs are funded. Work-based learning will be a new requirement to graduate.

Current eighth grade students will be the first that graduate under these requirements.

Hitchcock said the new requirements do pose a positive, as it eliminates a big requirement that poses a stumbling block for a lot of students.

“Currently, you’re required to have Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry to get the Core 40 diploma,” he said. “The Algebra II course is problematic for a lot of kids, and is really problematic for a lot of kids who have no desire to go to a four year college, because they don’t see the connection. When they don’t see the connection, they lose engagement, and success drops. With this new proposal, ... Algebra II does not become a general graduation requirement. It will remove that block for some of our kids planning to go to welding or another trade school, and they won’t have that hurdle at the end of their junior or senior year that causes a lot of stress or angst.”

Vance agreed this proposal poses more opportunities for Shelbyville students because it allows for more student flexibility.

Powers believes the new requirements will give Blue River Career programs a boost, both through increases in student enrollment and through partnerships with the local schools to help them meet the work-based requirement.

“One of the things that’s in the proposed requirements is that if a student wants to get the employment honors plus diploma, they’ve got to have 650 work-based learning hours,” he said. “What we’re proposing on the career side is allowing students to take their lab hours within their specific programs and count that toward their 650 hours.”

Hoke said this provides students the opportunity to have a more individualized education.

“Sometimes what’s best for institutions aren’t what’s best for kids, so let’s do what’s best for kids,” he said.

Many districts face challenges with teacher recruitment and retention. How is your school or district addressing these issues, and are there specific incentives or programs in place?

Hoke said they’re fortunate to be so close to the Indianapolis area.

“Because of where we’re located, we’re a rural market but we are very much an Indianapolis wage market,” he said. “Our employees wake up every day and have to make a conscious decision – they can turn right, and they can go to Hamilton County, Plainfield, Zionsville, etc., or they can turn left and come to us. We need to give them a reason to turn left and come to us. The pragmatic reality is we cannot match the compensation package of some of those larger districts.

“We’ve made a very conscious effort to make compensation comparable enough that the decision to come to us and stay with us is not monetary,” he continued. “It’s about non-monetary considerations, the culture of the place, the feel of the hallway, the autonomy to be a professional and do your job well. We’ve been very successful and we’re grateful for that.”

The other school leaders agreed that culture was a huge part of teacher recruitment and retention.

At the career center specifically, Powers said those teachers come directly from the field and may not have teaching degrees. They focus on making staff feel valued, but those coming to teach at the school often come because they want to give back to the students.

“We hired an instructor this summer, who’s main reason for coming – yes, he understood he was taking a pay cut, but he wanted to make sure the kids were getting back out and doing the same thing he was doing.”

Shelbyville and Shelby Eastern have both implemented childcare for staff and provide mentor programs for new teachers as incentives to retain current teachers.

“We can control culture, so we try to build places that people want to come to work, they feel like a family, and they have real partnerships with the community,” Hitchcock said.

Hoffman said St. Joseph is working to offer more professional development for staff as a way to provide more support. Teachers that are supported are more likely to stay, he said.

“If you come to work everyday and it’s not just work, it’s a job you enjoy doing, you enjoy working with the kids, you enjoy building relationships with kids and with fellow staff members, I think you can easily keep people in positions because they enjoy what they’re doing,” he said.

The panel also discussed topics like mental health for students, community involvement, school safety, and the future of schools. Their answers will be published in Thursday’s edition of The Shelbyville News.
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