Summer is over.
At least it is for Hawaii’s 180,000 public school students, most of whom returned Monday from summer break to kick off a school year that promises more big changes aimed at boosting student achievement and improving teacher effectiveness.
State Department of Education officials reported no major problems on the first day back. There was concern that cuts to school bus service for about 2,000 students would snarl traffic and cause big delays, but those fears didn’t appear to materialize.
"It was relatively quiet," said Ray L’Heureux, DOE assistant superintendent of school facilities and support services.
The 2012-13 school year is poised to be one of major transition for many public schools: A pilot aimed at revamping teacher evaluations to include student performance data will expand to more than 80 schools before being taken statewide in the 2013-14 school year; and tough, new national standards for reading and math will be integrated in more classrooms before replacing standards for all grades next school year.
But there are other initiatives kicking in this school year, including more efforts to improve schools in the state’s two "zones of school innovation" on the Waianae Coast and in the Kau-Keaau-Pahoa region of Hawaii island. Schools in those zones will have longer school days this year, and teachers have received extra professional development days.
In the Kau-Keaau-Pahoa region, schools used some of the extra training days to emphasize smarter ways of tracking student progress and providing interventions for students who aren’t getting it.
Mary Correa, Kau-Keaau-Pahoa complex area superintendent, said schools have also put lots of planning into how they’ll use an additional 50 minutes of instruction this school year for targeted interventions. (All schools in the zones will get the extra 50 minutes on most instructional days.)
Keaau High, for example, is putting its "extended learning time" in the middle of the school day: All students will take a course that underscores study and organizational skills, said Keaau High Principal Dean Cevallos. Students will also use the time to apply to colleges and for scholarships.
Cevallos said the time will help teachers serve as mentors — catching students before they fall too far behind — and is aimed at improving the school’s graduation rate, which was 72 percent in the school year that just ended, 8 percentage points lower than the statewide average.
At Keaau Middle School the extra instructional time will be spent on service learning projects for students. Principal Ken Watanabe said the projects, which will be decided with input from students, will emphasize hands-on, relevant learning.
Also in the coming year, Hawaii public charter schools are preparing for big changes as a new law aimed at overhauling charter school governance systems is implemented.
Lynn Finnegan, executive director of the Hawaii Public Charter Schools Network, a nonprofit advocacy group, said the law marks a "new era" in the 18-year history of charter schools in the islands. The law called for the creation of a new charter school commission, which met for the first time earlier this month, and put Hawaii’s 32 charter schools on performance contracts.
Finnegan said the changes come as charter school enrollment continues to grow. The network is forecasting that charter school enrollment will top 10,000 this school year, from more than 9,100 in the 2011-12 school year. The increased enrollment was spurred in part by the addition of a new charter school this year: Laupahoehoe Community Public Charter School on Hawaii island.
