Author Archives: Ralph

by | April 5, 2016 · 3:58 pm

Ralph L. Kohler for School Board

After two years of following the Oneida City School Board, I’ve decided that the Board needs someone with my history of excellence and commitment to transparency, so I’m running for the Board of Education.

I’ve prepared a tri-fold that lays out my professional history, community involvement and recent interactions with the Board.  You can also find more details about my professional history, Community Involvement and Oneida Board of Education activism.

You can find a Tri-Fold  description of my Candidacy here.

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by | March 8, 2016 · 2:42 am

State Assessment Tests for Elementary and Middle School

The testing dates for Oneida’s New York State Assessment tests are as follows:

  • The NYS ELA Assessment will be administered on April 5, 6, and 7.
  • The NYS Math Assessment is scheduled for April 13, 14, and 15. All tests will be given first thing in the morning.

I’ll post the Science Assessment dates when I get them.  They are likely in late May.

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by | February 7, 2016 · 2:46 pm

Oneida 2015 Opt Out Statistics by School

Here are the Oneida Opt out statistics for 2015.  PDF here.

Oneida Opt Out Results by School

 

Edit:  Here’s the state opt out statistics.

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by | January 13, 2016 · 1:32 pm

School standardized testing schedule

I filed a FOIL request under NYS law to get the local testing dates teacher evaluations for Oneida.  Here’s what they gave me back.

It appears to me that the dates given make it too hard to opt out on  an individual basis, and you have missed the January tests (which is what caused me to request these).

For lower  grades, there’s a March  and sometimes a May screening. I’ll  follow up with more information.  For the  June tests, its my  current understanding that you can not  opt out of them, becuase they are in effect the final  exam grades.

Actions:

  • Get March, May testing dates
  • Find out if June test dates are part of student grades (March, May, June)

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by | January 2, 2016 · 12:51 pm

Robotics Scrimmage at OPL

Our STEM team, GeneWorx Oughtamation, hosted a scrimmage at the Oneida Public Library over Christmas Break.  The Oneida Dispatch  did a story on the event.

Oneida Library robotics teams prep for league tournament

Oneida >> Local youths gathered at the Oneida Public Library g1drw1wlon Wednesday to practice for their upcoming participation in the FIRST Lego Regional Championship.

The three local teams in attendance included Geneworks Oughtamation, of Oneida; Everlasting EV3, also of Oneida; and Piece by Piece, of Clinton.

Practice entailed testing each team’s robot, which were placed on a tabletop course in which they had to complete various simulated tasks relating to trash cleanup and recycling. Robots are programmed to navigate the course on their own, without a remote control operator.

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by | November 23, 2015 · 1:06 pm

FLL Qualifier

Our STEM  team came in second of  24 teams in the FIRST Lego League Challenge.IMG_7181 cropped team photo

The team came in a close second in the Robot Game to the  NeXT Generation (league  champions for the  last two years running), and won the Robot Design portion of the competition.

The team is planning to work hard to improve their scores at the Regional Championship on January 16, 2016 at SUNY PI.  Of course, they understand  that the other 47 teams who qualified will be doing the same!

Geneworx Oughtamation is  affiliated with the Oneida Public Library, and partially funded through a grant from the  National Defense Education Program.

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by | August 1, 2015 · 1:17 pm

Boy Scouts Summer Camp

Boy Scouts Troop 2 in Oneida went to Camp Russell for a week.  They had a lot of fun doing woodsy, boy-scouty things.

I thought that this performance, at the  closing campfire was an awesome collaborative tribute to the staff at Camp Russell.

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by | May 11, 2015 · 2:51 am

Superintendent ‘Lied’, Board Swears

This editorial ran in the Oneida Dispatch on May 4, 2015.  I wrote it to protest the Oneida School Board’s unreasonable  treatment of my son.

Superintendent ‘Lied’, Board Swears To It

The Oneida school District refuses to educate my son in math and its costing you money.

My son Bob is very good at math.  Last year, in sixth grade, he taught himself Algebra and asked to challenge the course because he was bored in math.  The District’s first response: “I don’t care what he knows–he’s taking math 7 next year!”  After resistance from Mr. Spadafora, the Superintendent, the Board let Bob challenge the course.  Bob got a 90 on the exam and passed the oral exam, but it wasn’t good enough for them.  They put him in Algebra Anyway.  Bob quickly decided the class was a waste of his time, instead teaching himself three more years of math through last January, including Pre-Calculus at HCCC.

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