Here today, here tomorrow: this urban district devised a successful plan to drive up school attendance.Omar Ramos confesses he's a sucker for competition. Once he heard that staff at nearby Western Hills High School had convinced a business partner to donate a PT Cruiser as a prize for student attendance, he saw that his offering of Blockbuster gift certificates would no longer cut it. And yesterday's tact of phoning home to check alibis to put fear into students? Dead as a doornail door·nail n. A large-headed nail. Idiom: dead as a doornail Undoubtedly dead. Noun 1. in the face of this new motivation on the block. So Ramos, principal of Trimble Tech High School in Fort Worth, begged his own school's business partners for a car, too. Construction firm Thomas S. Byrne anted $10,000 for a used copper-colored Ford Mustang For other Ford Mustang models and concepts, see . The Ford Mustang is an automobile produced by the Ford Motor Company, originally based on the Ford Falcon compact.[1] with leather seats and a six-CD changer Changer The name given to a clearing member that is willing to assume the opposite position of a futures contract within a larger alternative exchange, of which it also is a clearing member. in the dash, which Ramos proudly presented to the winner on May 21. The race for attention was officially on. Buoyed by the high schools' success, FWISD's School and Community Partnerships program sprang into expansion mode over the summer. Two more dealerships joined the parade, donating a Saturn and a Ford Ranger The Ford Ranger name is used on two distinct and unrelated pickup truck lines by the Ford Motor Company
But why should high schools get all the attention, wondered Janie Christie, the program's coordinator. Good attendance habits start early. Her team worked the phones, landing two Dell laptops as prizes for the 24 middle schools. And two $2,000 shopping sprees for bedroom furniture at Cargo Kids tempts the small fry at Fort Worth's 78 elementary schools. Students arriving on campus this year were greeted with "Every Child in School Every Day" campaign posters detailing how they could make school "pay off" immediately. Whatever Works Janie Christie encourages schools to establish their own attendance programs to supplement district-wide rewards. "There's no such thing as too many prizes," she says, adding that no one has branded the set-up a bribe. Nor does every school need to fall into lockstep lock·step n. 1. A way of marching in which the marchers follow each other as closely as possible. 2. A standardized procedure that is closely, often mindlessly followed. Noun 1. with the others. For example, the district awards one chance in the drawing for six weeks of perfect attendance, but some schools extend weekly chances for individual prizes. Bagging the Bucks Principal Omar Ramos uses this formula for the Trimble Tech High School car drawing: * 1 week in school with no tardy tar·dy adj. tar·di·er, tar·di·est 1. Occurring, arriving, acting, or done after the scheduled, expected, or usual time; late. 2. Moving slowly; sluggish. slips = 1 Bulldog buck * Placement on the A/B A/B Airborne A/B Afterburner (jet engines) A/B Air Blast A/B Answerback A/B Auto-brake A/B Air Bus A/B Afterburning honor roll honor roll n. A list of names of people worthy of honor, especially: a. A list of students who have earned high grades during a specified period. b. A list of people who have served in the armed forces. = 1 Bulldog buck * Placement on the all A's honor roll = 2 Bulldog bucks * Random bonus days (Ramos once picked spring break bookends--wink, wink) award present students with a surprise buck, which can make up for a screw-up earlier in the week * Four Bulldog bucks = one chance in the drawing. Of those vying for the Mustang last spring, a dozen had five chances; about 100 had four. Ramos' 1,600 students earned 16,000 Bulldog bucks that season. The school experienced a 1.8 percent boost in attendance from 2002-2003 to 2003-2004, taking it to 94.7 percent. After the first six-week period in the current school year, nearly one-third of the school population had clocked in perfect attendance, upping their chances for the additional wheels. As for achievement, Trimble Tech boasted the lowest high school failure rate on state tests this past year. ***** Prong Two The prize bout is actually "round two" in Fort Worth's ongoing battle of getting butts in seats. When Texas' comptroller audited the district at the end of the millennium, it reported a 1.8 percent rise in dropout (1) On magnetic media, a bit that has lost its strength due to a surface defect or recording malfunction. If the bit is in an audio or video file, it might be detected by the error correction circuitry and either corrected or not, but if not, it is often not noticed by the human rates in just one year, while most peer districts in the state and region had held steady. The office recommended that the district get its act together from the inside and out. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. state law, truant students and their parents can be charged in court for skipping classes. But these cases vie for docket space with everything else, and the school's boundaries stretch over seven precincts, "so it took three months for a kid to get to court and you've already lost them by then," says Delena Doyle, assistant director of student affairs Student affairs staff are responsible for academic advising and support services delivery at colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. The chief student affairs officer at a college or university often reports directly to the chief executive of the institution. . Court's in Session A Fort Worth school board trustee asked the city to designate a municipal judge for student truancy cases, with the school system providing the building. By April 2001, School Attendance Court was in session. "It's not about punishment, even though that's what the kids see," says Municipal Court 6 Judge Sharon Newman-Stanfield. "The laws are concerned with rehabilitation." Today, the turnaround on hearings is three weeks, and the district filed 1,000 fewer cases in the 2003-2004 school year than the previous one. Meanwhile, attendance has shot up and dropouts are down. Truancy is considered a "gateway crime," Doyle notes. "If they're not in school, they're generally out consuming alcohol, using drugs or participating in other activities that aren't good for them, like burglarizing homes, teen-age pregnancy." The student message: There's a price to pay for not being productive. How to Hook a Business Corporations like Cargo Kids--a division of Fort Worth-based Pier 1 Imports--are eager to partner with schools when it comes to goals like raising attendance levels, points out Joy Rich, a philanthropy specialist with the retail giant. The corporate brass responded to the call for prizes in large part because it already had deep ties to Daggett Elementary. Here, employees participate in everything from pen pal pen pal n. A person with whom one becomes acquainted through a friendly, regular correspondence. pen pal Noun Informal same as pen friend Noun 1. programs to reading sessions, math game tutoring, a holiday adopt-a-child clothing outreach and even random gift basket A gift basket, or fruit basket is typically a gift that is delivered to the recipient at their home or workplace. There are different varieties of gift baskets, some which have fruit only, some with dry/canned goods only (such as tea, crackers and jam) although the standard donations for teachers. "Our chairman's kids went to Fort Worth Public Schools," Rich says. "We meet with our schools all the time and ask, 'What do you need?'" DISTRICT STATS Fort Worth (Texas) Independent School District No. of schools: 78 elementary, 24 middle, 13 high schools, plus 28 alternative schools No. of teachers: 4,967 No. of students: 80,989 Ethnicity: 50.2% Hispanic, 29% black, 18.8% white, 1.8% Asian, 0.2% Native American Per-pupil expenditure: $6,025 Dropout rate (2003-2004): 1.7% Area Population: 585,122 Superintendent: Joe Ross Joe Ross may refer to one of the following:
www.fortworthisd.org The Numbers Crunch 2003-2004 School Year: 94.7% Overall attendance rate 97.8% Highest elementary school attendance rate 96.4% Highest middle school attendance rate Extras: $4 million: Revenue FWISD FWISD Fort Worth Independent School District (Texas) earns from the State of Texas for each 1 percent attendance increase across the 81 000 student population $16,896: slice of that pie Trimble Tech High School earned for its general fund based on last year's attendance increase Julie Sturgeon sturgeon, primitive fish of the northern regions of Europe, Asia, and North America. Unlike evolutionarily advanced fishes, it has a fine-grained hide, with very reduced scalation, a mostly cartilaginous skeleton, upturned tail fins, and a mouth set well back on the is a freelance writer based in Greenwood, Ind. |
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