Mansfield Legacy High School PTSA

In response to questions being raised regarding President Obama's back-to-school speech to students on September 14, we wanted to provide some background on the chosen District procedure.

The Mansfield ISD administration made the choice to send permission slips home to assist our campuses in preparing proper facilities and equipment to accommodate students who wish to view the speech live. The permission slips were not sent home to prohibit students from watching the speech. As we have stated in prior communications, we feel the speech can be used by our teachers in future classes as it fits with their lesson plans. This is the only event during the year where we attempt to show a live broadcast to a large group of students at the same time. We set the September 10 deadline to give our campus and district administrators a reasonable amount of time to adequately plan for this potentially large-scale live broadcast event in MISD.

In our discussions with parents this year and last, we realize this event carries a special emotional and/or political significance in our community. We are making every effort to be sensitive to the wishes of all parents in our decision-making, although we realize we cannot satisfy everyone’s specific wishes.

Thank you for your understanding, patience, and for being part of our school district.

Last week, new district employees attended the Mansfield Training of Professionals (M-TOP) two-day program. The program is designed to give incoming teachers the fundamentals and important information they need to start the year off right and be successful in the District.

M-TOP was held at two Mansfield ISD high schools. Mansfield High School was the location for sessions from Human Resources and Communications and Legacy High School was used for Curriculum and Instruction. Based on some early feedback, the sessions were pretty successful in helping new staff get a good start while having a little fun.

Check out the photo gallery from the two-day event.

To our new employees, welcome to Mansfield ISD.

Visit the Staff Homepage for more employee information.

(And yes, that was an inflatable slide inside Legacy High School. A special thanks to all who opted to jump in and join the fun.)

"Oh didn't you hear? We have cows."

And that's how it started. Last week, new assistant superintendent for student services and support, Lamar Goree mentioned our little cattle issue at the construction site for the Mansfield ISD Center for the Performing Arts.

Construction workers from Thos. S. Byrne Construction Services tipped us off to the cattle problem at the site located behind Ben Barber Career Tech Academy. After some field investigation work and armed with a digital camera, Goree and Dr. Ed Foster, Director of Career and Technology, located the cattle as well as their owner. (See the photo evidence above.)

Approximately 30 head of cattle have been roaming the land between an area owned to the North and East of the MISD property and our construction site. We are having a fence built between the two properties and construction has commenced on the $40.4 million facility. Yep, the cows have to be moooooved. (Sorry, I couldn't help it.)

Mansfield ISD Center for the Performing Arts
The Mansfield ISD Center for the Performing Arts will be a 149,650-square-foot home of the Claude Cunningham Performance Hall and John Washington Professional Development Center.

The performance hall will accommodate 5500 people with an additional 500 on the stage. This would allow for a seating capacity of 6000 to accommodate our high school graduations and other large-scale events. The main feature of the professional development center's design is one large room that can accommodate up to 500, but can also be divided into six separate rooms for training. This large professional development room could host other events that are currently being housed outside the district. The MISD Center for the Performing Arts is scheduled to open in the spring of 2012.

It's that time of year again. No, not back to school...yet. It's the hot summer days and school district personnel are in and out on staggered vacation days. We've all been getting the last bit of time before another school year begins.

So if you've tried to contact someone in administration and it has taken some extra time to get a return call or e-mail you'll know why. Campus personnel will report back to work soon as well. Thanks for your patience.

But we are getting close
The school year is right around the corner. The first day of school is Monday, August 23, 2010. You still have time to squeeze in some summer fun. Also, be sure check the MISD website for back to school information in the coming days (with registration dates, school supply lists, and more). Don't wait to take care of any immunization needs and athletic physicals.

Enjoy what's left of the summer.

(Image: jaqsphotogarage)

We are saddened to learn of the passing of Annette Perry over the weekend.

Mrs. Perry, who was the namesake for Annette Perry Elementary School in south Mansfield, lost her battle with cancer.
"The Perry Elementary Campus Family is deeply saddened to learn of the loss of Mrs. Perry," said Sondra Thomas, Perry Elementary Principal.

"She was a remarkable lady, and I feel very blessed to have known Annette. She enjoyed visiting the campus, and the students loved Mrs. Perry's visits.

"As a campus we will do our best to carry on her legacy that all students are capable of making great strides and reaching to new heights."Our thoughts are with the Perry family.

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Annette Perry began her education career in the Head Start program in Mansfield ISD in the summer of 1970 followed by seven years at Alice Ponder Elementary. While teaching, Annette married Gerald Perry in 1978. She left the district to teach in Bryan ISD for two years before returning to Mansfield ISD for 25 years. She spent five years teaching in a self contained class at Mansfield 6th Grade with students who had a wide range of disabilities. Perry finished her career at Erma Nash Elementary teaching resource, STAR, FALS, and PPCD. She served as the Special Education Team Leader for many years at Erma Nash as well as helped develop and implement a successful Inclusion Program.

Annette Perry retired from Mansfield ISD in 2008 after 34 years as a dedicated educator. Annette Perry Elementary School opened in January 2010.

Today wraps up the Mansfield ISD annual Summer Conference for teachers. These dedicated teachers have put their summer plans on hold for a few extra days to prepare for next year.

Monica Gonzalez, Elementary Language Arts Coordinator, guest posts about the conference:
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This three-day event draws over 500 teachers each day to attend multiple sessions in every content area known to man...well that may be an exaggeration but we do have language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, health, art, GT, CPI, ESL, and even PE, 125 sessions total.

We also have 17 vendors in attendance, providing teachers with a look at available technology and new instructional materials. The conference provides a way for teachers to expand their teaching repertoire and to learn about new instructional materials for the 2010-2011 school year. Teachers are saying: "Great workshop; they did a great job!" "Will definitely use in my classroom." "I got some great ideas and am excited about using them next year." "Loved It!! Best and most effective workshop I have attended in my three years in MISD."


Thanks to the staff at Legacy HS for hosting the summer conference. Thanks to all the presenters! Thanks to MISD Curriculum and Instruction Department for all of the hard work and effort that goes into planning, organizing, and conducting the conference each year!

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of dining at the Cowbell Café inside Mansfield Legacy High School. The restaurant is the product of an innovative teaching grant written by teachers, Michelle Lutes and Jayme Schroeder. They received the $2,700 grant from the Mansfield ISD Education Foundation. The grant provided funds to purchase equipment and supplies to run a restaurant/café inside the high school.

That in and of itself is a pretty interesting thing for a school. (Just ask the Culinary Arts team at Ben Barber Career Tech that run Savvy's Bistro which opened in 2006.)

However, what makes this dining experience so unique is that it is through the combined efforts of Legacy special needs students.

According to the grant, students benefit by "gaining food service experience and skills that will lead to future job placement, as well as, reinforce their every day living skills."

Michelle Lutes said they held Cowbell Café job interviews to determine functions from the hosts, servers, kitchen staff, napkin rollers and more all the way through the mini-restaurant roles, each student had a part.



The food was tasty (we had salad, lasagna, plus dessert) and the service was exceptional. The plan is to have seatings on a regular basis each month during the school year.

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The name, Cowbell Café, is a Texas-sized hat tip to the Kowbell Arena which was the world's first indoor rodeo arena. The Kowbell Arena, which is where the Legacy band hall, performing arts center and journalism room are now located, was demolished to make way for the high school.

At the Tuesday, May 25 school board meeting, the administration presented information on a change to the intermediate school bell schedule for the 2010-11 school year.

Next year, the bell schedules for our intermediate schools will be pushed back 15 minutes to help alleviate transportation issues. The intermediate schools bell schedule will shift to an 8:15 am start time and a 3:30 pm afternoon dismissal.

Background
Dr. Morrison had the administrative support division look into ways to resolve as many of the late issues for buses as possible. Late issues have included buses that were 20, 30, and sometimes 40 minutes, late after last dismissal bell. These problems resulted from our second bell at the elementary and intermediate schools who currently share the same start/end times.

A traditional method that was considered to solve this problem included purchasing more buses and adding drivers. This idea proved to be cost-prohibitive. (For reference, the last buses we bought for general routes cost about $100,000. To get to every campus within a 15 minute window, we would need to add 24 new regular route buses, drivers for 11 special education buses, and the required 22 special education drivers and attendants .) This solution would have required an investment of several million dollars. With this information, it was time to go back to the drawing board for a more creative approach which concentrated on the routes.

Currently, we are carrying 4,700 passengers after the second bell. (Our other bells at the middle and high schools are just about half of that number.)

We utilize all 99 general route buses to get to that second bell. Since elementary and intermediate schools are on the same bell schedule, it's just impossible to be at two places at one time. We utilize the buses that we have as effectively as possible, so we like to pick up the elementary school kids that are in the same attendance zones as the intermediate schools. We pick up both the elementary and intermediate school students, then take them to their neighborhoods. So it made sense to continue that process and transport those kids one time rather then running an elementary school route and then turning around and running a separate intermediate school route.

Our solution
In researching this situation and through some careful consideration on our routes, we found that by moving the intermediate school bell schedule up by 15 minutes, we could alleviate the majority of this transportation issue. This 15 minute difference will give us the time it will take to meet the transportation needs at elementary and intermediate schools. Additionally, we determined that if families had students at both the elementary and intermediate levels this would be a benefit from a parent's driving perspective. There is also a benefit for families who have both intermediate and middle school age children because the new bell schedule closes the gap between those two levels by 15 minutes.

By moving intermediate schools to the 8:15 am - 3:30 pm bell schedule, we can best utilize our resources to get the students to their next stop.

Additional Information
We've also had some specific questions and concerns from parents:

Q: Will the intermediate students not ride the bus with the elementary students anymore?

A: We are in the process of re-routing the majority of our routes now with the additional 15 minute window. In some limited cases because of capacity, some intermediate school buses will not have elementary students on board as well as some elementary school buses will not have intermediate students on board. This occurs under the current routing schedule. Our goal is to continue co-mingling the students in there attendance zones. Where buses are used to run both intermediate and elementary school students the bus will stop first at the elementary school.

Q: What happens with the transfer bus going from Donna Shepard Intermediate and Tarver Rendon Elementary?

A: We are working to eliminate the Tarver Rendon and Donna Shepard shuttle and instead provide direct service for Rendon students and Shepard students. This route is our toughest to cover because of the distance; therefore, we are working towards a direct service for these campuses rather than a shared solution. Additionally, the construction project planned for 1187 will cause additional time delays between the two sites.

Q: Are you changing the schedules at Tarver-Rendon and Perry Elementary?

A: There is no change to elementary school bell schedules. This option was discussed at the two campuses with the PTA, but it was later determined to not be necessary with the intermediate school bell schedule change.