Good reports for school’s opening

It wasn’t without its hiccups, but by all indicators, the opening of the 2015-16 school year may have been one of Acadia Parish’s best.
Through a report from Student Transportation Specialists’ managing consultant Dave Schultz during the Personnel/Insurance/Curriculum Committee of the Acadia Parish School Board meeting and another from Superintendent John Bourque during the Budget/Finance Committee meeting, the picture painted for this year was a good one.
Schultz explained that two routes were added to Acadia Parish this year – one in the Iota area, as expected, and another in Church Point, which was initially projected to be put in the Richard area.
He later explained it will now be incumbent upon STS to look at its current resources in the Richard area to alleviate some of the congestion there.
In the meantime, the new managing consultant hired by STS to quell some of Acadia’s concerns going into the year is planning to spend his year here gathering student data (for example: how many ride the bus, make sure all bus cards are turned in, etc.) and have a fully executable and better plan by the end of the year.
Some of the changes being made have already been implemented, particularly at Church Point Elementary, the rest, such as at Iota Elementary will occur within the next week.
By design, Schultz has made documentation a priority this year. not only for the school system and STS, but for the drivers, for parents and for schools and students.
Though Schultz admitted to the minor issues, which have been chalked up mostly to “bad communication,” concerning the difference between routes last year and this year in the areas of Church Point and Iota, he also had glowing reviews for the maintenance staff of STS which made sure all buses were ready a week ahead of the school start date.
That too, however, had its own set of issues.
The fleet of buses spend the summer in the Rice City Plaza shopping center parking lot and many were vandalized in the days leading up to school’s beginning.
Schultz reported that about 20 batteries had to be replaced and said a better security system for the buses is needed not only for STS, but for the board as well.
From the education side of things, Bourque reported that the opening of school this year seems to have been “exceptional.”
The superintendent credited teachers and schools for keeping parents and guardians well informed, commenting on how many informative papers were sent home to students’ caregivers.
Bourque spent a good chunk of his report focusing on the need for homework to not be punitive and the importance of reading.
He provided the board members with a portion of an article, “How should we approach homework?”. The article explains that research of those such as author and lecturer Alfie Kohn, has shown that there doesn’t appear to be any tangible evidence of a direct link between academic achievement and the completion of traditional homework in elementary school.
Kohn and others, instead, point to other research regarding reading, as Bourque read from the article, “Students who engage in reading for just 20 minutes daily are exposed to 1,823,000 more words in a year.”
Bourque said he believes that would be a better usage of a student’s time at home.
“We have to get (teachers) off that old kick (of traditional homework),” he said, adding that with Common Core, testing and many other school stressers, students and teachers alike, hardly need another source of stress concerning homework.