Lakewood City SchoolsREPORTCARD

A Lakewood community newsletter September 2013

INSIDE:

Making a Difference

Second-grader Christian Starks stopped by Grant Elementary the day before school started to pick up some school supplies that were generously provided through the Supplies 4 Success initiative. For more on this great commuity effort, see story on page 2.

See BOND Page 3

Bond issue will helpfinish what we started

Salute to Schools event to benefit our students

Page 2

District sets goalsfor new school year

Page 2

LHS wins grant for new teaching model

Page 3

New administrators among many new faces

Page 3

See REPORT CARD Page 4

Lakewood High senior cellist Danny Toner has been selected to perform with the National Association for Music Edu-cation’s All-National Honor Orchestra, which will perform in late October in Nashville, Tenn.

This is Toner’s second selec-tion to the prestigious ensemble as he performed with the group his sophomore year as well. He will join about 63 other top-

performing student musicians in the country to form this year’s honors ensemble.

Toner will rehearse and per-form with renowned conductors when he travels to Nashville on Oct. 27. Three days of rehears-als will be capped off with a performance on Oct. 30 as part of NAfME’s Music Education Week. The National Honor Orchestra will be joined in that performance by the national

honor ensembles for Band, Mixed Choir and Jazz Band.

Sophomores, juniors and seniors from across the country were eligible to audition and had to submit a two-minute audition piece. To be eligible to audition, a musician must also have been selected to his or her All-State Orchestra.

Although this is a return trip for Toner, he is still “super ex-cited” to be part of it all again.

Toner said the musical expe-rience he gains is invaluable.

“You really get to understand different conductors’ styles. The conductors that are invited are always some of the top ones and most competent,” he said.

Toner hopes to attend Vander-bilt University to continue his cellos studies. He also was in-vited to take part in a two-week cello festival at St. Olaf College in Minnesota this summer.

LHS cellist Toner to make return trip to National Honor Orchestra

Senior Danny Toner.

Student achievement amonghighlights of state report card

cate that the district has made significant strides in helping our most struggling students achieve above average prog-ress in a year.

These results are part of the district’s Value-Added

The 2012-2013 state report card results show that our district continues to provide a quality education that results in many of our students achieving significantly more than one year of academic growth in a school year. In addition, the state results indi-

ing feedback from Lakewood residents, our schools have de-cided to place a 3.25 mill bond issue, and an additional .5 mill levy for building maintenance, on the November ballot. It will replace Grant, Lincoln, and Roosevelt Elementary Schools and finish renovations at the

The first two phases of Lakewood City Schools Long Range Master Facilities Plan are complete. We have four new school buildings, and a completely renovated high school wing. Now, there is only one phase left to complete.

After months of commu-nity engagement and gather-

Each year the Board of Education approves goals for the district as guidelines for staff and administrators to follow as they progress through the school year. The 2013-2014 school year goals are the following:

Goal 1: To Improve Student Achievement • To give students the support to realize at least a full year

of academic growth • To build students’ critical thinking, collaboration, cre-

ativity and communication skills to become productive 21st Century citizens

• To make progress on becoming a top 20 school district by the year 2020

Goal 2: To Plan Our Next Phase of School Construction • To design three elementary schools and the east end of

Lakewood High School • To secure community support in our final bond and

permanent improvement levy • To work cooperatively with the Ohio Facilities

Construction Commission in the Classroom Facilities Assistance Program

• To identify a team of professionals to carry out the bond financing, design and construction management planning

• Engage community and staff in the planning process • Develop a construction timeline

Goal 3: To Build upon the Confidence of the Staff and the Community in the Lakewood Schools • To conduct a community survey regarding our facilities

and quality of our educational programming • Focus on the positive accomplishments of our students

and staff • Communicate effectively regarding the future of the

Lakewood School District • Develop community and business partnerships to en-

hance our curriculum and opportunities for our students Goal 4: To Provide for Fiscal Stability of our Lakewood City School District • Monitor staffing levels and research cost effective

employee benefits • Communicate effectively with our staff and community

our financial outlook • To explore additional possibilities for increasing

revenue that will have a positive impact on providing programs and services for our students and the greater Lakewood community

Goal 5: To Have a Collective Bargaining Outcome that is Fair to Our Taxpayers, Fair to Our Employees, and Enables our District to Compete in the Market to Attract Quality Candidates to Fill Positions • To work collaboratively with LTA, OAPSE 129,

OAPSE 134 and administrators • To enhance the educational environment and

opportunities for all students • Work within economic realities and the District’s

financial forecast

Lakewood City Schools

Seventeen volunteers helped sort the thousands of school supplies donated by the community for Supplies 4 Success.

Community generously supplies students with right tools for school

2013-14 District Goals

Thanks to the generosity of the Lakewood commu-nity, many of our students that might have otherwise been lacking, started the school year with a backpack full of school supplies pro-vided through the Supplies 4 Success initatitive.

The initiative is an outreach effort of the Lakewood Fam-ily Collaborative in collabo-ration with partners Trinity Lakewood Community Out-reach, Help to Others, Lake-wood Community Services Center and sponsor New York Life.

All summer long, Lake-wood residents and businesses responded to the call for supplies with donations that amounted to more than 7,000 pens and pencils, nearly 800 notebooks and 600 binders. All in all, nearly 11,000 items were collected. A special shout out to the Lakewood office of New York Life, which donated 101 fully stocked backpacks.

Other groups that collected were Hospice of the Western Reserve, Lakewood United

Methodist Church, Cleveland Clinic Teen Health Center, Trinity Lutheran Church and Lakewood Presbyterian Church.

More than $1,000 in cash donations were also collected. That money was put toward purchasing expensive graph-ing calculators for high school math students.

Also critical to the effort were the many businesses that served as dropoff spots: God-dess Bleesed, KB Confections, Lakewood Rec, Pet’s General

Store, PNC Bank, The Coffee Pot and The Root Cafe.

“Supplies 4 Success has grown over the past three years from a few people getting the word out to a true citywide effort - with support from all aspects of our community: in-dividuals, businesses, commu-nity groups and religious or-ganizations,” said chairperson Karen Lee. “We know from the guidance staff at schools that the supplies are necessary and the families are so grateful to have the assistance.”

By Missy Toms, Alumni Foundation Executive Director

All Lakewood residents are invited to ring in the new school year with a Homecoming week-end of special events to benefit the Lakewood City Schools.

Sept. 26-28 will see the Salute to the Lakewood City Schools, four fun-filled events that highlight the schools that make Lakewood such a popu-lar place to raise kids.

On Thursday, Sept. 26, 7 p.m, in the high school’s Civic Auditorium, we will honor 12 alumni and staff at the 2013 Lakewood High School Hall of Fame Ceremony. This event is free and open to the public. Inductees are: ATHLETIC - James Robert Bowman ‘93, Tom Brandt ‘53, Mary Harris Day ‘90, Matthew Fannin ‘02; DISTINGUISHED - William Beyer ‘62, Freder-

Weekend of fun to benefit our schools

ick Bissinger, Jr. ‘60, James Butler ‘51*, Rear Admiral Janet Russell Donovan ‘76, Bruce Freeman MD, PhD ‘61*, Robert S. Hewett ‘53; STAFF - Gerry Stupiansky and Terry Q. Walker *posthumous

Cheer on the Rangers as they face the Bay Village Rockets at the Pregame Homecom-ing Tailgate Party, Friday, September 27, 5:30 pm, at Lakewood Stadium North ten-nis court. Tickets are $25 and include game ticket and food.

This may be your last opportunity to see the east sec-tion of the high school at the

See SALUTE Page 3

Lakewood City Schools

Roosevelt Elementary is one of three elementary buildings that will be demolished and rebuilt in the final construction phase.

New faces throughoutdistrict for 2013-14

Lakewood High School is one of 30 organizations nation-wide to be awarded a $100,000 planning grant from the Next Generation Learning Challeng-es (NGLC) initiative, which is accelerating educational innovation through technology to dramatically improve college readiness and completion in the U.S. The grant will fund a year-long planning process for a new and innovative second-ary school model that is based on students learning through making.

Winning the planning grant opens the door for Lakewood High to receive a $300,000 NGLC grant to launch the new “school-within-a school” edu-cational design in fall 2014.

If the second grant is re-ceived, “The Engine” at Lakewood High will have a dedicated space on the LHS campus and will serve approxi-mately 100 students at first. It will be modeled after a Maker-space design, which empowers students to identify, articulate and solve real-world problems.

The curriculum puts the student at the center of his or her learn-ing, is project-based and makes full use of digital connections to provide authentic learning contexts. Students will have flexible credit options, blended learning opportunities and in-ternships with area businesses that maximize each student’s academic growth.

We are very excited to be one of the first public high schools in the country to design the curriculum, physical space, and community of learners around

the concepts of a Makerspace,” said digital literacy teacher and grant team member Ken Kozar.

“The Engine” school will use the power of 21st century tech-nology to connect students with meaningful learning experiences and allow them to follow their own pace and depth of learning.

An average day for a student might include building a robot, editing a blog and meeting with a community partner to review a project on which the student and mentor are collaborating. The physical location of the

school hopes to allow for open space, flexible seating op-tions and an area to build. This untraditional environment will encourage and facilitate col-laboration, critical thinking and foster a desire to innovate in a way that traditional classroom configurations do not.

As a partner in the grant, the University of Akron can provide post-secondary op-tions both in a brick-and-mortar setting and online for those students ready to move on to that level.

LHS receives planning grant for innovative teaching model

Every school year the district experiences some turnover among its personnel but chang-es this year put the 2013-2014 school year in a class by itself.

Many of the changes came as a result of staff retiring or mov-ing on for career advancement. This year the district has five new principals at its elemen-tary schools; a new principal and assistant principal at Hard-ing Middle School and a new principal and house principal at Lakewood High.

In addition, the district hired or moved current employees into 19 administrative posi-tions, including a new treasur-er, who will start his job Dec. 1, and 37 new teachers came aboard.

“The many changes in our administrative ranks that have come about by a combination of retirements and professional advancement has created a great opportunity for us to add some significant talent to our leadership team and reassess where that talent will best serve the district,” said Superinten-dent Jeff Patterson.

The district welcomes the following administrators to

their new positions:Kent Zeman, Treasurer Jim Estle, Interim TreasurerJim Reitenbach, Execu-

tive Director of Operations & Construction

Bill Wagner, Director of Human Resources

Roxann Ramsey-Caserio, Director of Teaching & Learning K-12

Brian Siftar, Director of Special Programs

Bob Curtin, Coordinator of Community Recreation & Education/Operations

Keith Ahearn, LHS PrincipalJoe Takacs, LHS House

PrincipalJoe Niemantsverdriet,

Harding PrincipalShane Sullivan, Harding

Assistant PrincipalPhilis Muth, Grant PrincipalSabrina Crawford, Harrison

PrincipalSandy Kozelka, Lincoln

Principal Sandy Powers, Hayes

PrincipalMerritt Waters, Horace Mann

PrincipalSean Jackson, Athletic DirectorRenee Hart, Psychologist

high school. We can finish rebuilding

Lakewood City Schools and the state will pay half. If this issues passes, the State of Ohio will contribute $50 million to construction costs—making this project more affordable for our residents.

The money from the bond issue and the state will allow the district to build environ-mentally friendly, energy efficient, very safe and secure school facilities

It will lower operating costs keep taxpayer dollars in the classroom. It will update class-rooms with instructional tech-nology to prepare students to compete in a changing world.

It will improve classroom space to maximize usage and make learning easier.

It will modernize safety sys-tems, reduce risk and keep our

Bondcontinued from PAGE 1

Tour of LHS, Saturday, Sept. 28, 10 am, in the L Room. Dr. Charles Greanoff ‘77 will lead a free tour of the new and old sections of LHS and tell the story the schools.

Mingle with Lakewood alumni, fans of the schools,

Salutecontinued from PAGE 2

students safe. New buildings will reduce

waste and provide a better learning environment. It wil rid LHS of all trailers.

This issue keeps Lakewood attractive and supports home prices. This issue will cost less than $11 a month on a $100,000 property. For that, we can complete the construc-tion process and have new

school buildings that attract and retain new residents to Lakewood and help keep our property values high.

All buildings, to date, have been completed ON TIME and ON BUDGET.

This is the last phase of our schools Long Range Master Fa-cilities Plan. Let’s finish the job! Our community’s future de-pends on high quality schools.

and Hall of Fame inductees at the Cocktail Supper & Silent Auction, Saturday, September 28, 7-10 pm, at The Clifton Club. Tickets are $75, which includes delicious refresh-ments, libations, and enter-tainment. You’ll also have the opportunity to bid on several unique auction packages in-cluding a Great Lakes cruise,

OSU football tickets and one-of-a-kind artwork.

Show your love for the Lake-wood City Schools and pur-chase your tickets today! Visit www.lakewoodalumnifounda-tion.org or call 216.529.4033. All proceeds from the weekend benefit the Lakewood City Schools and the Lakewood Alumni Foundation.

Lakewood City Schools

The Lakewood Board of EducationEdward Favre, President

Linda G. Beebe, Vice PresidentBetsy Bergen Shaughnessy, Member

Tom Einhouse, MemberEmma Petrie Barcelona, Member

Administration Editor Jeffrey W. Patterson, Superintendent Christine Gordillo Jim Estle, InterimTreasurer christine.gordillo@lakewood.k12.oh.us

All courses and programs offered by the Lakewood City Schools and the West Shore Career Technical District are without regard to race, color, religion, national origian, creed, gender, marital status, disability, or age in its educational programs, activities, employment policies or admission plicies as required by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Section 504 of the Rhabilitation Act of 1973. The district provides equal access to Boy Scouts and other designated groups. Dr. William W. Wagner, Jr. serves as Title IX Coordinator and Dr. Christine Palumbo as 504 Coordinator.Printed by Vedda & Sons Printing, owned by a Lakewood High School alumnus, Class of ‘51

ECRWSS

Postal Customer

Board of Education1470 Warren RoadLakewood, OH 44107

Non-ProfitOrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDCleveland, OH 44107

Permit No. 2512

The Lakewood Project members (from left) Kyle Wagner, Kendall King and Avery Satayathum rock out during the group’s annual performance on the Fourth of July at Lakewood Park.

Reportcontinued from PAGE 1 A July Fourth Traditionmeasure, one of the nine mea-surements the district received a rating for in the newly over-hauled report card format.

The new report card assigns letter grades A-F as opposed to the previous designations of Excellent, Effective, etc.

To give districts time to adjust to these new account-ability categories, the state is measuring districts on only a portion of the new components this year and will gradually add more components through 2015. Districts and buildings will not receive an overall letter grade until 2015.

The district received the top rating of A in the Indicators Met measurement. Students met 22 of 24 state indicators or 91.7%, missing the mark only in 5th grade math and science.

The district also performed well in the Performance Index measurement, scoring 98.6 out of 120 points to earn a B. The 98.6 is down only slightly from last year’s 99.1. The Performance Index measures how well all students did on all tests.

Areas in which the district needs to work on include graduation rates and closing the achievement gap among student sub-groups.

Because of a new method of calculating graduation rates re-

quired by the state, the district saw a drop in its rate to 81.5% for four years and 86.1% for five years, earning a D from the state. The new calcula-tion requires districts to track students who leave the district, which has not been done in the past. The district’s new rates reflect students that were never tracked yet still counted as Lakewood students if they were not reported to be enrolled elsewhere. This rate should improve as systems are now in place to handle such tracking.

The district also is work-ing diligently on closing the achievement gap in reading and math for some of our stu-dent groups. The new measure-ment of Annual Measurable Objectives (or AMOs), looks at each category of students and how it performs in relation to all students. The district has been focused on improving the performance of our Limited English Proficiency students as well as our students with Individual Education Plans or IEPs, but we still have much work to do as evidenced by lack of a passing grade in the AMO category.

“We know we have work to do with our sub-groups and Lakewood is impacted significantly by this mea-surement as we are one of a minority of suburban school districts that have 9 of the 10 subgroups measured,” said

Roxann Ramsey-Caserio, Director of Teaching & Learn-ing K-12. Examples of sub-groups include Limited English Proficiency, Economically Disadvantaged, Students with Disabilities and Asian or Pa-cific Islanders.

On the building level, bright spots included four of our schools earning A’s for number of state indicators met as Hayes and Lincoln elementaries, Hard-ing Middle School and Lake-wood High School each met all of its indicators for subject

proficiency in math, science, reading and/or social studies.

The West Shore Career-Tech-nical District, also is a point of pride for our district. West Shore continues to shine in state ratings. Out of 91 districts across state, West Shore was one of 11 districts to receive A’s across all measures.

It will take some time for the district staff to adjust to the new sate accountability requirements and adjust its in-struction and focus accordingly.

“The new report card data is

based on state tests given to students once per year,” said Superintendent Jeff Patterson. “It is a snapshot of the district and school building progress and does not reflect all our programs within the district (i.e. fine arts). The reported data will be reviewed with our instructional staff so that we can focus on our continuous improvement efforts.”

For a complete look at the district and building report cards visit: reportcard.educa-tion.ohio.gov

RANDY VARCHO