John I. Leonard, others receive awards for improving school lunches

GREENACRES — The cafeteria meal planners at John I. Leonard and several other high schools in the district were recognized by the federal government for their efforts to get kids to eat healthier.

The Palm Beach County School District recently received a best practices award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for its nutritious dishes program offered in the cafeterias at John I. Leonard as well as Atlantic High School in Delray Beach, Wellington High School in Wellington, Forest Hill High School in West Palm Beach, Santaluces High School near Lantana, Boynton Beach High School in Boynton Beach and Independence Middle School in Jupiter.

The program offers a dedicated serving line in each school’s cafeteria specifically for healthy foods such as salads, fresh fruits and vegetables and chicken wraps, said Lori Dornbusch, the district’s manager for site-based operations for the food services department. She said the program increased the percentage of students buying their lunch at each school by eight to 21 percent last year.

John I. Leonard Food Services Manager Casaundra Hechler said the program at her school started in February 2009. Since then the number of salads she serves a day has doubled. All of the meals are reimbursable for children on free and reduced lunches, Hechler said, and about 100 of the roughly 1,000 breakfasts or lunches she serves a day are through the nutritious dishes line.

Hechler said she is also talking with John. I Leonard High School Football Coach Wayne Monroe, who is the school’s wellness coach, about creating a student advisory board that could help them come up with more nutritious meal options students will eat.

The healthy serving line started as a pilot at Atlantic High School three years ago and has since been expanded to several other high schools. Dornbusch said she hopes to expand it to other schools slowly but will probably keep it mostly at high schools and select middle schools for now because high school cafeterias are typically designed with more available serving lines.

The participation increase shows that students at all schools want to eat healthy food if it can be made easily available to them.

I see this as crossing all socioeconomic lines. It is crossing all ethnic lines, she said. Students are getting good information and they want to eat healthy foods.

Keeping an Eye on the Upcoming ABA Law School Survey

As we reported in last month’s post, U.S. News May Change Its Law School Ranking Methodology, an American Bar Association (ABA) committee approved new standards to be used by law schools to report post-J.D. employment and job placement data. We will know exactly how these new standards will be implemented officially when the ABA posts the instructions for its 2011 ABA Questionnaire, the annual accreditation survey that each law school is required to fill out, within in the next few weeks.

The ABA’s goal is to have the new employment questions ready for law schools to complete in early August 2011. At that time, the standards that were passed in June 2011 will be translated into actual questions that each law school must answer and submit to the ABA for their 2010 graduating J.D. class. 

The pressure had been building on law schools from a variety of individuals, organizations, and California Senator Barbara Boxer to do something significant about the integrity and quantity of the law school placement data (see our previous post, U.S. News Again Urges ABA to Improve Jobs Data). One of the more recent attempts to discuss the potential problems law schools face is from a paper written by the University of California—Davis School of Law’s Joel Murray, titled “Professional Dishonesty: Do U.S. Law Schools That Report False or Misleading Employment Statistics Violate Consumer Protection Laws?”

This paper joins a rapidly expanding body of literature that relate to the law school rankings and examine the impact of the rankings on law schools, the legal profession, prospective students and their parents, and society in general. Murray’s paper analyzes the potential for using the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) against ABA accredited law schools. The paper contends:

In recent years, evidence has emerged indicating that many law schools are misreporting or falsifying employment statistics in marketing materials and to the U.S.News and World Report‘s law school rankings, the preeminent rankings for United States (U.S.) law schools. The reporting of false or misleading employment statistics to prospective students may violate provisions of the FTC Act that prohibit deceptive practices and false advertising. This paper reviews evidence that U.S. law schools are misreporting employment statistics, examines how the FTC Act applies to U.S. law schools, and argues that U.S. law schools that misreport or falsify employment statistics violate multiple provisions of the FTC Act.” 

TCoast school news: The St. Lucie County Education Foundation awarded a record $69,750 in scholarshi

OLIVET PRIVATE SCHOOL

Mark Becker was selected to represent Florida as a delegate to the 2011 National Youth Science Camp. The camp, in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, integrates scientific programming with opportunities for delegates to explore music, art and the outdoors. This year’s lecture topics will include global warming, genomic medicine, radio astronomy and energy sustainability.

PALM POINTE EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH SCHOOL

BRIEFLY

The St. Lucie County Education Foundation awarded a record $69,750 in scholarships to 47 public high school seniors during the annual awards ceremony, held recently at the Fort Pierce Magnet School of the Arts. Local businesses, civic groups, community associations and individuals presented scholarships ranging from $500 to $2,500 to outstanding students who demonstrated financial need and academic achievement. Many high-achieving students received multiple scholarships, including Port St. Lucie High’s Kendal Hamblin, Elizabeth Hatch and Julia Hurtado; Lincoln Park Academy’s Xiaobin Chen, Bradley Shea, Kali Alexander, Mary Kindred, Martha Jackson and Crista Benjamin; Fort Pierce Westwood High’s Claudia Jean; St. Lucie West Centennial High’s Collin Vernay, Nora Porter and Cody Riebel; and Treasure Coast High’s Julie Sciortino, April Tudor, Amanda McVey and Anna Decosta.

Pushing Your Limits at the Folk School

Woodturning instructor, Alan Leland, tells us why he loves teaching at the Folk School:

One of my favorite things about teaching at the Folk School is watching the students grow and stretch their boundaries not just artistically but in all aspects of their lives. I will never forget the time one of our students managed to get my assistant, Melissa, up to join in the Contra dancing- something Melissa would never do on her own. It was such a surprise.

Then of course there is all the laughter that seems to follow me around when I am at the Folk School, some created by me, and some just because the students have loosened up and feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. To me, both as a student and an instructor, it is all about growing and stretching yourself, pushing your limits, and discovering the multitude of things that you can do with the proper guidance and freedom. Creativity is such an exhilarating and fulfilling thing and to see the students grow and the smiles on their exhausted faces is just overwhelming at times.

Many students who have never tried to do anything creative discover just how creative they can be and soon get swept up in the magic of it all. It never ceases to amaze me when “show and tell” comes around and we get to see and share the week’s work. It all looks so professionally done and is such a wonder to see.

I must not forget that the Folk School experience is not just about learning a new craft, it is about getting to know each other, making new friends, and most of all, having an enjoyable, unforgettable, and sometimes life changing experience.

Fun at Little Middle Folk School!

Not only does the Folk School enhance the artistic skills of adults, but they also allow children to join in on the non-competitive atmosphere with Little/Middle Folk School.

Little/Middle has been a long-standing tradition allowing children from all over the country and locally to come and learn Appalachian crafts such as weaving, blacksmithing, pottery, woodworking, and cooking to name a few.

There are very few places like the Folk School that allow children to enjoy giving up the TV and malls to step into a rural atmosphere, while learning art, craft, music, dance, and other skills that are hard to find anywhere else. Students also get to enjoy nature walks around the campus, playing volleyball, evening contra dances, and cooling of with a visit from the Brasstown Fire Truck.

Little/Middle caters to kids 7-17 years of age; many of the young students come year after year and enjoy long distance friends that they meet up with every summer. Many students, like Able Allen, a recent graduate of Warren Wilson College, come back to volunteer or teach. “It is exciting, going from being a student in Little/Middle, to now teaching in Little/Middle,” says Able, who is teaching blacksmithing to middles this year. Able grew up around the Folk School and was a long time student of Little/Middle.

Other classes this week include Dulcimer, Dance, & Drama, Recycle Art, Silk-Screen Printing, World Foods, Kite Making, Puppetry, and even Canoe Building!

Teachers’ children ‘prioritised’ in school admissions overhaul

They will be given new powers to prioritise sons or daughters of staff members for the first time as part of a plan to give more power to individual schools.

Ministers insisted the change would allow heads to attract the best candidates and ease the burden on parent teachers.

But the move is likely to raise fears it could lead to a further reduction in the number of places available for other families in local catchment areas.

The Coalition’s draft school admissions code also requires all schools to admit children from Armed Forces families before other pupils and gives flagship academies and free schools the power to prioritise poor youngsters eligible for free school meals.

In another new development, the document will allow twins and other multiple birth children to be admitted to infant classes – even if means pushing them above to 30-pupil legal limit – to stop brothers or sisters being separated at a young age.

Teaching unions warned that the move could also lead to a rise in class sizes, undermining children’s education.

But the Government insisted the new code meant more parents would be able to get their children into the best state schools. It was also revealed that all schools – including selective state grammars – would be able to expand to take in more pupils.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said: “The school system has rationed good schools. Some families can go private or move house. Many families cannot afford to do either.

“The system must change. Schools should be run by teachers who know the children’s names and they should be more accountable to parents, not politicians.

“Good schools should be able to grow and we need more of them.”

But Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said the number of special interest groups awarded reserved places could lead to unsustainably large classes in some schools.

Since 1997, primary schools have been banned from squeezing more than 30 infants into the same lesson.

“The idea that primary class sizes could go beyond 30 for whatever reason is a backward step,” she said. “This is of no benefit to anyone, least of all children.

“Large class sizes will increase the dependency upon teaching assistants who, while providing very useful support and back up in the classroom, have been shown to have little effect on attainment.

“We need to see class sizes reduced to at least 20 to ensure pupils get the maximum support and attention from their teacher.”

The measures announced today form part of the Government’s plans to slim down the admissions code, amid concerns that it had become too unwieldy.

The code – which will go out to consultation before being introduced for children starting school in 2013 – is around 50 pages long, compared to the old version which stretched to around 130 pages.

In one controversial development, schools can decide to prioritise staff during the admissions process. They must set out their own definition of “staff” – possibly widening it out beyond teachers to include all support workers, including cleaners and caretakers.

The new proposals also include:

• Increasing the number of places available in good schools by making it easier for popular establishments to take more pupils;

• Banning local authorities from using area-wide “lotteries”;

• Giving parents more time to appeal after being rejected from the school of their choice, with the current 10-day deadline being extended to 30 days;

• Reducing bureaucracy by requiring schools and local councils to consult on admissions arrangements every seven years, rather than every three years, if no changes are proposed;

• Simplifying transitions from one school to another when families move to a new area during the school year.