Time is running out to register for our free webinar on Education 3.0.  American School Board Journal is partnering with Cisco for a free webinar on how to move your school district into the next generation. Led by Jim Lengel, a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, the session will feature a seven-step process on how to assess where your district is now and how to get where you need to go. The webinar will take place on Thursday at 2 p.m. EST. Register here.

Kathleen Vail,  Managing Editor

This past weekend was one for the record books for us in Washington, D.C. — a snow storm socked us with more than 20 inches of snow. Many of us are from colder areas (Pittsburgh, for me), but we’ve been here so long that we’ve acclimated to snow-less winters.

Schools and offices are closed all over the Washington, D.C., metro area and beyond. While we’ve been trying to come up with names for the big storm (Snowpocolypse, Snowmaggaden, and Snowtorious B.I.G.), yet another storm is fixing to dump yet another 10 to 20 inches on us.

For the snowbound, this is a perfect time to catch up on reading — and ASBJ.com offers plenty of useful and thought-provoking articles to keep you occupied as the snow piles up. Read what schools can and can’t learn from business in our February issue. Also, find out how administrators and school leaders are coping with the stress of the down economy.

While you’re in an information-gathering mode, register for a free webinar on how to move your district into the next generation. ASBJ is partnering with Cisco on this webinar, which will be at 2 p.m. ET on Feb. 25 and will feature a seven-step process on how to assess where you are now and how to get where you need to go.  Go here to register.

Social networking? Then follow us on Twitter for updates, insights, and other items for school leaders and anyone interested in education.  Are you on Facebook? Become a fan of ASBJ here.

Interested in federal education policy and legislation? Read our coverage of NSBA’s Leadershiop and Federal Relations Network conferences at School Board News Today.

Happy reading — Spring will be here, soon.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

clipart.com

A few days ago I was asked to participate on a panel at a conference held by the U.S. Green Building Council, the people who certify schools and other buildings that are built with environmentally friendly principles. And as these things tend to go, I learned as much from the audience as they did from me.

Almost everyone told me they had tried to contact their school board members. What became clear after a few conversations was that school board members are often skeptical, and in this case, many either did not have a construction or renovation project in the works or did not see the need to learn about sustainable designs and practices.

But they should, we agreed: Building green has become a no-brainer for school districts. Green, or sustainable, school designs shouldn’t cost significantly more, and lower operating costs will ultimately save money. And perhaps most compelling is that there is a growing body of research that shows students and staff who spend their days in these school buildings are healthier, miss fewer days of school, and actually learn more.

Not to mention that these buildings have a minimal impact on their environment, and their features can be used as teaching tools.

One person told me about a presentation on green schools he’d given recently at a statewide meeting of school administrators. His show was hijacked, he said, by the school officials who had built green schools for their communities and wanted to convince the skeptics of those benefits.

What many people don’t realize is that you don’t even need to build a new school to take advantage of some of the best green designs. Most older buildings can be retrofitted with features like solar panels, energy-efficient windows that let in more daylight (one of the factors that has been linked with better student performance) and ventilation systems that allow better indoor air quality, a key factor in reducing flare-ups of asthma and other respiratory conditions.

Here at ASBJ, we want to help you learn about sustainable designs and how to incorporate those into both new buildings and renovations of existing facilities. Join us tomorrow, Sept. 24, at 2 p.m. EDT for a webinar  that will feature Rachel Gutter of the USGBC, who will explain the benefits of green, and John Gayetsky and Kathy Prosser, environmental specialists with the Association of School Business Officials International, who will explain how to use these principles to improve and maintain your facilities. We’ll even tell you how to find new sources of money to do so.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

StockVault

 I’m feeling a bit duped.

Three years ago, when I was writing about school construction, experts were saying that school districts needed to hurry up and build before prices rose any further. Back then, there seemed to be no limit to how high the prices of construction materials would go, contractors were in high demand, and enrollments in many districts just kept rising.

Turns out, you would have saved a lot of money—and perhaps headaches–if you’d just waited.

With the fall of the economy, construction prices have plummeted, contractors are begging for work, and some districts that had projected years of enrollment growth are seeing families leave because they lost their jobs. Also, there are a bunch of new federal grants and incentives for energy efficiency and green building, both new construction and renovations.

It’s absolutely maddening, but the lesson learned is that good planning is crucial. Regardless of the economy, schools should be able to project what their enrollments will be in five, 10, or 15 years and which areas of the district are seeing growth or decline in school-age populations. And those plans, we now know, must be flexible enough to accommodate sudden and unexpected shifts like some we’ve seen in recent months.

The one thing I’ve learned from personal experience recently—after spending three years looking for the perfect house and trying to decide on the best time to sell an investment property—is that predicting the market is impossible. What matters most is what’s right for your district—if you need a new school and can raise the necessary funds, build it now. If you don’t need more space, or don’t have the cash in hand, don’t do it. You may still get a good, or better, deal a few years from now.

Regardless of your situation, it helps tremendously to know what’s happening in the construction industry and know the best design features for new schools, so you’ll be prepared when the time comes to build or renovate. Fortunately for my family, my obsession with the real estate market here in Northern Virginia helped me find a great house at a greatly reduced price. We know its value could decline if the economy goes down further, but we also know it’s the right fit for us for the next few years.

With that in mind, ASBJ’s October issue is chock-full of advice on how to plan and build schools that will fit your district for the foreseeable future, and how to best harness the ups and downs of this crazy economy we’re in. And be sure to tune in to our webinar, “Facilities and Construction Money: Where to Find It,” co-hosted with our friends at the Association of School Business Officials International, on Sept. 24. For registration and more information, go to here.

 Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

We held our bullying prevention webinar last week and we had more than a thousand people register (you were there, weren’t you?). That phenomenal response confirms to me that the topic of bullying prevention is on the minds of many educators, administrators, and school board members. 

A decade ago, right after the Columbine shootings, I wrote an article about bullying and what districts were doing to prevent it. I was heartened to discover that the attitude about bullying that I grew up with (it’s natural and adults shouldn’t interfere) was fading.

I revisited the topic in our September issue to see what had changed in the decade after Columbine. A lot, as I found out. The school shooting tragedy has spawned a huge body of research on how bullying affect students and the best ways to do school-based prevention. The people I interviewed said that fewer educators and administrators had to be convinced of the school’s role in prevention.

I mentioned my article to my brother when he visited this summer. He’s in his mid-50s – the age of many administrators and school board members. He asked if schools should be preventing bullying, because it was going to happen anyway. I answered with a resounding yes – school is exactly the place to do this. Schools should be a safe haven for students, and they don’t learn very well when they’re being threatened, shamed, or made fun of.

David Cullen’s excellent book, Columbine, published this year, showed that neither of the two young killers was bullied. It was a myth that took on a life of its own because of our very real need to find a rational explanation for what happened. That doesn’t change the fact that other school shootings had their roots in bullying behavior and that research has shown that bullying brings student achievement down and hurts children long into adulthood.

Read my September article here, where you can also check out my first article. Also, we’re going to post the webinar, in case you missed it.

What do you think? How big of a role should schools play in bullying prevention? Leave a comment and let us know.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

Want to know how bullying affects student achievement and your school climate? American School Board Journal editors are teaming up with the American School Counselor Association to bring you a webinar on bullying prevention. It will be held Thursday, Sept. 10.

Listen to experts in the field of school counseling and education on cutting edge methods of preventing this threat to school security, climate, and achievement. Panelists include author Rosalind Wiseman (Queen Bees and Wannabes) and Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network. 

Register for the webinar here. 

Read our article on the decade of changes in bullying attitudes and prevention here.

Did you know that chronic early absence (missing nearly a month of school in kindergarten through third grade including excused and unexcused absences) could be a critical and overlooked issue in your school district?   A recent analysis of national data found that when children miss extended periods of school in the early years, their academics suffer, especially among poor children. An examination of data from nine urban school districts found that chronic early absence ranged from a low of slightly over 5 percent to a high of nearly a quarter of the entire K-3 student population.  Learn more about the scale and scope of this problem at a free webinar from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday. You’ll also find insights into how it can be addressed, especially when schools, families and communities work together to promote school attendance and address the barriers that prevent families from getting their children to school every day. 

To register, click here.