M-P board honored at state convention

The Mid-Prairie Board of Education was honored November 19 by the Iowa Association of School Boards (IASB). From left, back, are Jack Hill, IASB president; Maxine Kilcrease, IASB excecutive director, M-P board members Randy Billups, Jeremy Pickard, Rob Stout, and Superintendent Mark Schneider, Front, from left, George Schaefer, Jim Hussey, M-P president, Jack Dillon, M-P vice-president and Stacia Bontrager. (Photo submitted)

The Mid-Prairie Board of Education is one of three honored by the Iowa Association of School Boards (IASB) during the 64th annual ISAB convention November 19 in Des Moines. The Making a Difference award also carries a $1,000 grant.
Mid-Prairie was honored for taking “sometimes unpopular but necessary risks to improve (student) achievement and those risks have paid off,” noted the ISAB.
One thing that stood out about Mid-Prairie during the selection process was the board’s push for a 4-3-3-3 graduation standards put forward by the Institute for Tomorrow’s Workforce and ACT, Inc. In addition to the unique graduation standard, M-P students are required to self-select if they think they will go to a four-year college, two-year college or join the workforce directly after high school. Their curriculum is then adjusted around that decision, with students taking AP courses and two years of a foreign language, six hours of community college credit or two 90-hour internships respectively.
“My reaction when I read this was: ‘Can we beg, borrow and steal?’” said Amy Jurrens, ISAB board member and of the George/Little rock School board who helped select award recipients. “What a great idea to prepare students for their individual paths. It makes students feel that no matter what path they choose, it’s valued, value for all skills and interests.”
Other achievements that weighed in for M-P:

• supports two extra days of professional development and two hours weekly of Monday morning professional deveopment at the high school as well as renewal of the curriculum every seven years;
• supported extending Chinese and Spanish language classes to all schools and all grades. It also offers Arabic
• traded traditional adversarial negotiations for “Interest-Based Bargaining,” which works through concerns in a manner that leaves everyone appreciative of all stakeholder perspectives.
  “The school board provides the environment and resources necessary for teacher, support staff members and administrators to do our jobs while finding appropriate ways to challenge us to do better for the students’ best interests,” said Superintendent Mark Schneider. “‘Good enough’ is not in their vocabulary; no matter how good we are, we can always get better.”

The awards are given in honor of T. E. Davidson, longtime school board member and a past ISAB executive director. They honor school boards for exemplary work done for Iowa children.
“In this select group we see dropout prevention, foreign language, reading improvement, teacher collaboration initiatives and much more,” said Maxine KIlcrease, executive director of the ISAB. “They are truly examples of how boards throughout Iowa are improving lives in schools and communities.”
The other two winners are Council Bluffs School District and Malvern School Distrit.
Mid-Prairie serves approxiamrely 1,200 students, has been ranked on several top-performing lists including Newsweek’s top six percent of high schools nationwide and is a two-time recipient of the First in the Nation in Education award.