I attended the Oneida School Board meeting tonight. I came at 7pm, but the meeting had started at 6, and because of the web site update I hadn’t seen the change. As is often the case, I was the only person not associated with the District at the meeting. There were several interesting things at the meeting. Here are my observations: Continue reading
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.
Filed under Uncategorized
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.
Oneida 2015 Opt Out Statistics by School
Here are the Oneida Opt out statistics for 2015. PDF here.
Edit: Here’s the state opt out statistics.
Filed under Oneida, School, Testing, Uncategorized
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)
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
on 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.
Filed under Robotics
FLL Qualifier
Our STEM team came in second of 24 teams in the FIRST Lego League Challenge.
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.
Filed under Uncategorized
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.
Filed under Oneida
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.
Filed under Oneida