#mark twain elementary

Josh Verges guest post:

The 1889 Argus Leader was about as excited about Susan B. Anthony's visit to the state as Jonathan Ellis is about the pending death of the Mark Twain school name.

The Argus-Leader begins to feel a wild thrill of pleasurable expectation. Susan is coming. We shall see her own dear self and shall hear her dulcet tones declare the total depravity of man. We shall see displayed in all her entrancing loveliness the female ward worker, and shall like St. John in the vision, feel the air warm around us with the heavenly effulgence of woman suffrage. Hail to thee, Susan, thou headlight of the elysium to come, our heart's ecstasy arises at thine approach. - Nov. 16, 1889 (research by John E. Miller at SDSU, hat tip to Madville Times.

From my perspective, these were the year's biggest stories in K-12 education in South Dakota:

10) Longitudinal data system – The state DOE finally has a data system linking students and teachers, along with a range of other indicators. It will enable the state to answer such questions as: Which teachers get the most out of their students? Does class size matter? Are online courses working for students? Which colleges produce the best teachers?

9) Project-based learning – Innovation Labs schools in southcentral South Dakota are dramatically changing the way those rural schools are run. Students learn through projects, taking advantage of technology, while teachers serve more as facilitators. Sioux Falls New Technology High isn’t rural but it’s a similar model.

8) Privatizing the school district – Working with the Sioux Falls School District, a company called Ombudsman opened a high school program for ELL students at the downtown Multi-Cultural Center. Next year, Ombudsman is taking over Joe Foss alternative high school, which will merge in 2014 with Ombudsman’s two-year-old alternative high school.

7) Spanish immersion – Parents of current, future and wait-listed students persuaded the school board to expand the Spanish immersion school, adding two kindergarten classes at Robert Frost Elementary. The board later agreed to give Spanish immersion its own elementary school in northwest Sioux Falls in 2016.

6) Teacher training – The Board of Regents decided every teaching candidate must spend a full year teaching alongside a veteran teacher before they graduate. The goal is to have them ready for their own classroom on day one. Private schools may soon follow.

5) School lunch – The Congressional health kick hit schools hard as athletes and other big kids left the cafeteria hungry. The USDA relaxed its rules a bit this month, lifting the cap on meat and grains.

4) ‘No Child’ gets left behind – South Dakota received an Obama administration waiver from No Child Left Behind and installed its own point system for keeping schools accountable.

3) School consolidation – The Sioux Falls School Board voted to close Longfellow and Jefferson and replace Mark Twain elementary.

2) Tax measure fails – A 1-cent sales tax increase to undo the funding cuts of a year ago failed at the polls, guaranteeing K-12 funding will be a top-three issue before the Legislature for years to come.

1) Reform fails – South Dakota lawmakers briefly caught the reform bug, passing by a single vote Gov. Daugaard's bill that would have changed the way we evaluate and compensate our teachers. The teachers union gathered the signatures to refer the law to voters, who overwhelmingly rejected it.

Honorable mention:

Common Core Standards implementation begins.

ELL students – DOE doesn’t think English learners should have to take the Dakota STEP, and some lawmakers want to give schools more money for ELL students.

Naughty teachers – The Argus Leader revealed details of educator misconduct, surprising school officials who thought those records were secret.

South Dakota is among the quirky states with a proud tradition of direct democracy.

When we want something done, we don’t wait around. We circulate petitions and put measures on ballots. When our elected representatives do something we don’t like, we refer their decisions to a popular vote.

At the state level, it’s easy enough to do. To get an initiated measure or referred law on the ballot, you need to gather the signatures of registered voters equal to 5 percent of number who voted in the most recent race for governor.

This year, that number was 15,855.

To initiate a constitutional amendment, you need twice that number, 31,709.

But if you’re fighting the Sioux Falls School Board’s decision to close a school near your house, referring that decision to a public vote is nearly impossible.

State law says that in order to challenge the closure of a school, you need signatures from 15 percent of the registered voters in your school district.

In a small town, that seems doable. But in Sioux Falls, that’s roughly 14,400 signatures, more than three times the number – 4,090 – who voted in the last standalone school board election, in 2011.

If the school board votes to raise property taxes through an opt-out, it takes signatures from just 5 percent of the district’s registered voters – about 4,800 in Sioux Falls – to put the question to a public vote.

But maybe the high bar is appropriate. The three-school consolidation approved Monday closes the schools of about 850 students, or about 3.7 percent of all the K-12 students who will be enrolled in the district in 2015.

If the schools' defenders do attempt an ambitious petition drive, we'll see if the board's decision resonated with anyone outside the central Sioux Falls neighborhoods.

To recap, it takes:

15,855 signatures of registered voters statewide (about 1 in 33.5) to put a $180 million annual sales tax increase on the ballot;