My Wednesday morning began by being notified that a deer was stuck between the cyclone and white fencing on the east side of the school. Mr. McMahan and I drove down to find an exhausted adult doe wedged between the fences and two very upset young ladies who had stopped and called the police for help. Within a few minutes Mr. McMahan, the City Police Chief, a Menard County Deputy and I were able to lift the deer above the pinch point and were able to release it safely. What a great way to start the day, the young ladies were happy and we felt pretty good about saving the deer.
Leading off with an attention grabber like the deer story was by design as I had hoped to grab your attention so everyone would take the time to consider the following information. The PORTA Administration is currently working on adding some career ready courses for next school year. The courses we are most interested in offering are a Certified Nursing Assistant and culinary courses. At this time we are looking for qualified applicants for both positions, with the thought that the CNA course will be a part-time position. If anyone knows of a qualified candidate we hope you will let them know of the opening.
One might ask, why we are moving away from some of our traditional consumer education course? PORTA has traditionally, taught courses like sewing and a few others that while useful do not relate to the workplace like they once did. Courses like the CNA and Culinary will allow some of our students to graduate with a certificate that could lead to a full time position or at the very least would give them a head start to completing a nursing degree or cooking/Chef degree. We are able to consider these additions because we plan on working with the Lincoln Technical Education Center and the Athens and Greenview school districts. This emerging partnership could allow expansion of curricular offerings to our students and increased college credits, as well. We have been discussing the possibilities of sharing the CNA, Culinary, Computer Aided Drafting, and Auto here at PORTA and Athens has the ability to offer Stats and AP Calculus. While this is just in the beginning stages our conversations began out of necessity. Every school district in the State has seen less and less revenue and as a result massive cuts have or are being made, but that does not impede our desire to offer relevent courses to our students. By working together the Greenview, Athens and PORTA Districts can find ways to save revenue, while offering quality programs. We hope that we can work out the logistics of this venture and offer these course in the upcoming school year.
You might remember that the Board held a public meeting on February 27th to discuss the new Illinois State Standards/Common Core Standards. We were fortunate to have a very nice crowd of about 50 or so community members who listened to Dr. Susie Morrison(Asst. State Supt of Illinois) speak about the process of creating the new standards. The meeting was very informative and many great questions were asked by parents and taxpayers who are worried about issues related to Common Core. I have included this link to the video of that meeting. If you have other questions or requests I would point you to the PORTA Website, click on the Common Core link at the top of the page. If you have more questions feel free to call, email or visit me and I will do my best to answer your questions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq919VuphuY
Finally, We had a great week last week here at PORTA. Our Wrestling team placed second in State and our Boys Basketball team won the regional and will compete tonight in Macon at 7:00 pm. We have been planning all week for fan buses and other normal steps we need to take to prepare for such an event. We are fortunate to have great businesses in our community and one of those is Nickles of Petersburg. Nickles offered yesterday to pay for the fan bus costs and provided a lunch for each student who rode the fan bus, free of charge. How is that for community involvement. If you have the chance thank those fine folks at Nickles and if your in need of a new vehicle I bet they have one on the lot that is just for you. Oh, I guess that was a shameless plug for Nickles, but what the heck they did not ask for any recognition even though they always have supported the PORTA Schools.
Leading off with an attention grabber like the deer story was by design as I had hoped to grab your attention so everyone would take the time to consider the following information. The PORTA Administration is currently working on adding some career ready courses for next school year. The courses we are most interested in offering are a Certified Nursing Assistant and culinary courses. At this time we are looking for qualified applicants for both positions, with the thought that the CNA course will be a part-time position. If anyone knows of a qualified candidate we hope you will let them know of the opening.
One might ask, why we are moving away from some of our traditional consumer education course? PORTA has traditionally, taught courses like sewing and a few others that while useful do not relate to the workplace like they once did. Courses like the CNA and Culinary will allow some of our students to graduate with a certificate that could lead to a full time position or at the very least would give them a head start to completing a nursing degree or cooking/Chef degree. We are able to consider these additions because we plan on working with the Lincoln Technical Education Center and the Athens and Greenview school districts. This emerging partnership could allow expansion of curricular offerings to our students and increased college credits, as well. We have been discussing the possibilities of sharing the CNA, Culinary, Computer Aided Drafting, and Auto here at PORTA and Athens has the ability to offer Stats and AP Calculus. While this is just in the beginning stages our conversations began out of necessity. Every school district in the State has seen less and less revenue and as a result massive cuts have or are being made, but that does not impede our desire to offer relevent courses to our students. By working together the Greenview, Athens and PORTA Districts can find ways to save revenue, while offering quality programs. We hope that we can work out the logistics of this venture and offer these course in the upcoming school year.
You might remember that the Board held a public meeting on February 27th to discuss the new Illinois State Standards/Common Core Standards. We were fortunate to have a very nice crowd of about 50 or so community members who listened to Dr. Susie Morrison(Asst. State Supt of Illinois) speak about the process of creating the new standards. The meeting was very informative and many great questions were asked by parents and taxpayers who are worried about issues related to Common Core. I have included this link to the video of that meeting. If you have other questions or requests I would point you to the PORTA Website, click on the Common Core link at the top of the page. If you have more questions feel free to call, email or visit me and I will do my best to answer your questions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq919VuphuY
Finally, We had a great week last week here at PORTA. Our Wrestling team placed second in State and our Boys Basketball team won the regional and will compete tonight in Macon at 7:00 pm. We have been planning all week for fan buses and other normal steps we need to take to prepare for such an event. We are fortunate to have great businesses in our community and one of those is Nickles of Petersburg. Nickles offered yesterday to pay for the fan bus costs and provided a lunch for each student who rode the fan bus, free of charge. How is that for community involvement. If you have the chance thank those fine folks at Nickles and if your in need of a new vehicle I bet they have one on the lot that is just for you. Oh, I guess that was a shameless plug for Nickles, but what the heck they did not ask for any recognition even though they always have supported the PORTA Schools.