Nowlin nearly lands starring role in upcoming Hollywood movie.

Dearborn schools nearly landed a starring role in an upcoming film being directed by Rob Reiner, aka “meathead” from his days in the sitcom “All in the Family”.

The G-rated movie called “Flipped” is about second grade friends growing up together who then struggle trying to understand the awkwardness they begin to experience as feelings for each other grows stronger. Filming for the movie begins this summer in Michigan.

Production teams were in town last week looking at Nowlin Elementary and O.L. Smith Middle School. After looking at several Dearborn schools on three separate occasions, the production team fell in love with Nowlin, located near Grindley Park and O.L. Smith, immediately adjacent to the elementary school, because the schools so perfectly fit the time period for the movie.

Smith was built in the early 1950s, Nowlin in the 1940s.

But when Reiner came to town to make the final decisions on locations last week, he chose a school in Saline because it was closer to another location in Ann Arbor where a good portion of the movie will be filmed. Production crews simply did not want to make the drive between a movie set in Ann Arbor and one in Dearborn, school officials were told. (Now we know why he was called “meathead” for all those years.)

The good news is that the production team said they would keep Dearborn schools at the top of their list of potential future movie locations because the buildings are so well maintained.

Corporal punishment has long been banned from Michigan schools but it apparently is having some impact on more than just the rear ends of some elementary school students in South Carolina. A reader sent this article to us from a recent issue of Newsweek.

For those of you in your late 30s, you may recall or perhaps experienced first hand similar treatment in Dearborn schools. At Dearborn’s Adams Junior High it was the “Shader Persuader”, a wooden paddle that science teacher Shader wasn’t afraid to use on his 7th grade students. Another gym teacher at Adams would use the cord of his whistle on a wet bathing suit to get students inline. We can’t recall how effective it was but we do know that students acting up in class were rare events.

But would a crack on the behind today bring about discipline or a lawsuit?

Below is the Newsweek article:

The Principal And The Paddle 

 Eric Adelson
NEWSWEEK
May 4, 2009

The wooden paddle on principal David Nixon’s desk is two feet long, with a handle wrapped in duct tape that has been worn down by age and use. He found it in a dusty cabinet in his predecessor’s office at John C. Calhoun Elementary in Calhoun Hills, S.C., where Nixon has been the principal since 2006. He has no idea if the old principal ever used it, but now it sits in plain view for all visitors to see, including children who have been dismissed to his office. As punishment for a “major offense,” such as fighting or stealing, students are told to place both hands on the seat of a leather chair and brace for what Nixon calls “a whippin’.” Before he begins, though, he sits the child down for a quiet talk about why he, or she, is in trouble. He tries to determine if a deeper issue, such as a problem at home, might warrant a meeting with a counselor. If the child shows remorse, Nixon will often send him or her back to class without a spanking. Otherwise, he makes sure he is calm, and he makes sure his elbow is still. Then he delivers “three licks” to the child’s rear end. If the child is a girl, then a female administrator does it. Some of the kids cry. Some are silent. Some want a hug. And after the child is sent back to class, still stinging, Nixon sits alone in his office and thinks about what the child has done, and what he has done. “If I could burn that paddle in my stove,” Nixon says, “I would. This is the worst part of my job.”

Before Nixon took over “John C,” student behavior had gotten so bad that one teacher described it as “chaos.” She eventually quit in disgust, pulled her own child from the school, and moved to a different one 45 minutes away. John C is located in a rural stretch of South Carolina near the Georgia border where all but one of the major textile plants have closed, and where the leading local employer is the school system. Nearly 90 percent of the kids at John C live below the poverty line. When Nixon went to his first PTO meeting, only about a dozen parents showed up at a school with 226 students. He still has trouble reaching many families by phone because they can’t afford to put down a deposit on a landline. And yet Nixon has managed to turn John C around. It recently earned three statewide Palmetto awards, one for academic performance and two for overall improvement-the school’s first such honors in its 35-year history. Not everyone agrees with his methods, but most parents and teachers will tell you he couldn’t have pulled off such a turnaround without his wooden paddle.

Still, the mere fact that it works hasn’t made spanking kids any easier for Nixon, who’s no fire-breathing traditionalist. He’s 31, a brownish-haired beanpole with a soft-spoken but determined manner. Married, with an 8-month-old daughter, he taught agriculture to high-school students for six years but had no prior administrative experience. He studied animal science at Clemson, served as state president of the Future Farmers of America, and raised 50 head of beef cattle on his ranch. In 2006, a family friend called about an opening at John C. The school, he heard, was “kind of in bad shape,” but he took the job anyway.

For the rest of the story, click HERE.

If you’re looking for a slightly different place to dine in Dearborn, you might want to consider dropping in on Henry Ford Community College’s Fifty-One O One restaurant.

Located in the Student & Culinary Arts Center on HFCC’s main campus at 5101 Evergreen Road in Dearborn, the restaurant is run by students in the college’s culinary arts program who get practical experience in the kitchen, preparing food for dinners, waiting tables and also take classes in sanitation, food preparation, nutrition, baking, food purchasing and cost control.

Students in the HFCC program can earn an associate’s degrees in culinary arts or hotel-restaurant management or receive certification in a different culinary, baking or hospitality areas. And these two year degrees can be applied towards a bachelor’s degree at other institutions without losing credits.

Dearborn Councilman George Darany takes a closer look at the Fifty-One O One restaurant in this video interview done by the CDTV team.

The restaurant is open for lunch on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, Fifty-One O One also is open for dinner. To dine at Fifty-One O One, reservations are recommended. For reservations, please call (313) 206-5101.

Nearly all public school students in the Kalamazoo school district have the opportunity to attend a college or university for free under the Kalamazoo Promise program. Dearborn’s new school Superintendent Brian J. Whiston would one-day like to be able to offer a “Dearborn Promise” for public school students in our city, too.

The idea of providing scholarships to Dearborn school kids so they can attend higher education institutions still is just in the “idea” stages but it is one of Whiston’s plans for the district. In this recent interview with Dearborn Councilman Robert Abraham, Whiston mentions the idea as one of his long-term goals.

Under Whiston’s preliminary plan, students who attend Dearborn schools from kindergarten to grade 12 would be eligible for two years of free school at Henry Ford Community College. Those students with fewer years in the district would be eligible for smaller amounts of financial aid to the community college.

Just how it would be paid for still would have to be worked out. According to school officials, if the district began saving money for this system for the kindergarten class of 2011 and worked out a plan with Henry Ford Community College to lock in a credit hour rate, it could be possible by about 2024. The plan would require the district to set aside and invest a portion of money each year for some 12 years in order to potentially have enough funding to offer free tuition to students who completed K-12 in Dearborn.

There are other challenges, too. Henry Ford, no doubt, might have concerns about having to lock in a tuition rate for students for 12 years in the future.

What is driving Whiston’s idea, no doubt, is the success it has had in Kalamazoo. That city was losing students until the “Kalamazoo Promise” was created, which provided free tuition to colleges and universities in the state to students who went to school in the district. More people moved to the district and home sales increased, too.

Funding for the Kalamazoo Promise came from a group of undisclosed benefactors, which Dearborn at this point doesn’t have. The program works like this: students graduating from Kalamazoo’s public school system are offered scholarships to local colleges and universities. The longer the student is in the public school system, the greater the scholarship. Those who started at the kindergarten level get a full ride scholarship.

Under the Kalamazoo Promise, the scholarships will cover between 65-100 percent of tuition and fees, starting with the class of 2006. Qualifying students will have entered the public school system no later than the ninth grade.

The entire program was geared around the idea of attracting businesses and families to Kalamazoo and improving property values. Could such a program work in Dearborn? As there are so many unknown variables right now, who knows? But it is an interesting idea.

The Dearborn School District could see a cut in state funding of nearly $8 million if Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s budget recommendations are approved in its current form by the Michigan Legislature.

Such a cut would be devastating to the Dearborn School District, which already is facing an $11 million deficit for the 2009-10 school year, including a $1.8 million reduction in state aid.

Gov. Granholm, however, decided to cut much deeper for Dearborn and several other school districts.  The Dearborn district is now looking at an overall reduction of $17 million or about 10 percent of the district’s total general fund budget.

The governor’s proposal included the following cuts for Dearborn Public Schools:

1. $59.00 per pupil cut = $1,064,411
2. 20J Cut = $616,928 (20J Funding was created in 1999 to ensure equal funding increases to all school districts.)
3. Bilingual (Sec 41) = $381,000
4. At Risk 31a = $5,875,000 (31a funding helps those students who are at risk of not being successful in school.)

All of us understand the need for cuts given the state’s current economic condition, but cuts need to happen across all districts equally. That isn’t happening under the current plan.

The Dearborn School District is seeing both its 20J and 31a funds slashed. Hardly equitable when you consider that Dearborn sends more local tax dollars to Lansing to fund public education than it receives from the state. In all, Dearborn taxpayers send $14 million more to Lansing than the district receives back, thanks in large part to Proposal A.

Dearborn’s own House and Senate representatives understand the impact such cuts will have on our district and are fighting to ensure that if cuts need to be made then all districts across the state should be cut the same per-pupil amount.

Gov. Granholm, however, doesn’t quite understand that part so it would be in all of our best interest to call her office at 517-373-3400 to ask her to treat all school districts the same. What is on the table now is unfair to Dearborn.

A rendering of Dearborn High's new $2 million synthetic turf football field. The current football field can be seen in the upper left part of the image.

We thought it would be worth sharing color renderings of what Dearborn High School’s new football field will look like when the roughly $2 million project is completed this fall.

As a Dearborn High graduate, I’m actually saddened to see the football field move from the valley, where it was surrounded by trees and hills to give it that special outdoor bowl feel. Now the football field will be  the top of the hill alongside the rush of vehicle traffic on Outer Drive. The uniqueness of the Pioneer football field and its bucolic setting will forever be lost come the start of football in the fall of 2009.

But we all knew it was headed this way. Once Fordson High School had its synthetic football field installed in 2007 at a cost of  more than $1 million, followed by Edsel Ford in 2008 for its new football field, another cool $1 million plus, Dearborn High wouldn’t be far behind. No school wanted to be left behind. 

This artist rendering shows the new football field viewed looking toward the high school, just out of view to the top left of the image.

Natural grass, much like Michigan State University and U of M football use today, could have worked here at Dearborn High, even though the field is in a floodplain. The key here would have been to limit traffic on the field to just football so it wouldn’t get so torn up.

That would have meant a separate natural grass field for soccer and field hockey teams to play and practice on.  Such a field could have gone at the top of the hill now that new tennis courts have already been constructed behind the high school. Though we doubt the folks pushing for a fancy new synthetic grass field would have supported such an idea.

For those of you wondering,  Dearborn High’s graduation ceremonies still will be held down in the bowl.

When is a full day of kindergarten school class better than a half day of class?

When the state of Michigan says it is and says it will reduce by half the amount of per student funding it will provide school districts who decide otherwise.

But is it really that much better to have 5-year-old kids in class for eight hours a day?

We will soon find out as the Dearborn School District races toward making the state-required switch to a full day of school for kindergarten kids, which could occur as early as the fall of 2009 here. Not making the switch means the potential loss of millions of dollars in state school funding. It won’t be an easy change as Dearborn school officials are now discovering, trying to grapple with the challenges associated with a longer school days. 

The change is part of new state rule set to be implemented in the fall of 2009 for “developmental kindergarten” classes and in the fall of 2010 for traditional kindergarten classes. While the Dearborn district doesn’t offer developmental kindergarten, a special committee is looking at what it would take to begin the longer school day in the fall of 2009 rather than waiting until fall 2010.

Among the challenges Dearborn faces:

1. Some schools lack the space required to operate full-day kindergarten classrooms
2. Deciding which elementary schools will convert to full day kindergarten classes and which ones will not
3. Having to hire more teachers to handle the longer day
4. Additional materials

School districts across Michigan are facing similar challenges with the new rule. School districts have the option of not changing anything and continuing with half days for kindergarten kids. But doing so means the loss of  millions of dollars in state funding per child. Under the new rules, the state will reduce by half the amount it pays per child in a school district if the child doesn’t attend a full day of kindergarten school.

For the Dearborn school district, which has about 1,000 kindergarten students at about $8,000 per child, not making the change would result in a loss of some $4 million annually.

The change to a longer school day for kindergarten kids already has parents and teachers lining up on both side of this issue and has the potential to get ugly. While some parents like the idea, an equal number of parents and teachers do not. As one Dearborn school official told us, “this is going to get very interesting.”

Indeed it will.

The Dearborn Public Schools System is overstaffed, has more administrator positions than it needs and pays more per mile to bus students than similarly sized schools in Michigan, according to the results of a four-month benchmarking study released Tuesday by the school district. 

The study, however, also points out that across most cost categories, Dearborn’s costs as a percentage of expenditures are less than the overall average for other similarly sized districts used in the study. 

(For full copy of study click here:  dearborn-benchmarking-study)

 

Dearborn Schools Benchmarking Study

While the findings in the report may be uncomfortable for some to read, Whiston deserves credit for requesting it as a way to cut costs and improve efficiencies in our school district, which is facing a $10.5 million deficit for the 2009-10 school year. 

The idea of having a third party come into the district for four months and study key areas of the Dearborn School District will help our school administrators more quickly identify the district’s successes along with the areas that need work and determine ways to improve them. School officials tell DeepSaidWhat.com that the next step for the district will be to examine what can be done to improve the areas identified in the report or determine if the reported costs are due to other factors not captured in the study. There were some anomalies in the raw data and the district says that could be attributed to how the numbers were reported

“This is only phase one in the process,” Whiston said. “The next phase will be to find out why the numbers look the way they do and, if needed, how can the district make improvements. The report has provided us with good information that will allow the district to make the types of changes needed to cut costs, improve efficiencies and implement a better reporting system.”

The study cost the district about $40,000, an amount some may question. However, when you consider the potential hundreds of thousands the district can save by implementing some of the recommendations, then long term it would be money well spent.

The benchmarking study, which covered the 2005/06 and 2006/07 school years, identified four areas for the district to consider to reduce costs and increase efficiencies. The areas included District Cost Metrics, Staffing Levels, Administrator and Professional Staffing Levels and Operational Metrics — Facilities & Transportation.

Plante Moran gathered information from eight districts, including: Farmingtion, Wayne-Westland, Rochester, Chippewa Valley, Walled Lake Consolidated Schools, Flint City School District, Ann Arbor Public Schools and Plymouth Canton Community Schools. It should be noted that of the districts mentioned above, Dearborn has the most students, more than 18,000. The only other districts that were close are Rochester (14,700 students) and Walled Lake (15,700).

The overall observations from the study show that for staffing levels, Dearborn is “higher than the average of the eight districts that participated in the survey.” The same was true for the Administrator and Professional Staffing Levels.

On the Transportation, the study revealed that Dearborn cost per mile for regular education was higher than similarly sized Oakland County districts. Dearborn paid $6.13 per mile in the 2006/07 year compared to $5.41 for comparable districts and its cost per rider was $1,033 compared to $675 for other districts.  

Those high figures are likely a direct result of Dearborn’s low bus ridership levels, which shouldn’t come as a surprise as the Dearborn district was set up in the beginning as a walk-to-school district. There were few, if any buses, in the district in the 1980s.  Today, just 17 percent of Dearborn’s regular education students are bused, which is low compared to Oakland County, which ranged from a minimum of 46 percent up to 80 percent in 2006/07, according to the report. But, again, Dearborn has always prided itself on having neighborhood schools, something this report doesn’t capture.

Dearborn’s Facilities costs (including custodial and maintenance) also were higher than average. While Dearborn’s electricity costs were comparable to other participating districts, Dearborn’s natural gas costs were much higher on both a per student basis (about $140 for Dearborn vs. $65 for other districts) and a square footage basis ($0.80 cents for Dearborn vs. $0.39 cents for other districts). 

The report also indicated that Dearborn’s number of full-time custodial and maintenance positions is higher than the overall median number reported by other districts. 

Supt. Whiston made it clear from the beginning that the study is by no means a way for the district to begin privatizing services. Instead, he said the study will be used to further investigate how the district can save money and resources.

The recommendations for the District to consider to reduce costs and increase efficiencies include: 

District Cost Metrics: The study recommended the district investigate ways to reduce its natural gas costs, which were higher than similarly sized Oakland County districts.

Staffing Levels (compared to similarly sized Michigan districts):  The study recommended the district perform a detailed organizational assessment of staffing requirements in areas with potential for improvement, including non-classroom teachers, secretarial/clerical staff at the buildings.

Administrator and Professional Staffing Levels (compared to national benchmarks): The study recommended the district perform a detailed organizational assessment of staffing requirements in areas with potential for improvement, such as Central Office, Special Education and Technology.

Operational Metrics — Facilities & Transportation:On the facility side, the study recommended the district consider conducting an operational/organizational study to find ways to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. While on the transportation side, the study recommended an operational analysis of transportation to determine cost-savings that might be achieved using either smaller, more fuel-efficient buses or eliminating some routes altogether.

Generating this report was a good first step for Dearborn. But now comes the hard part, trying to implement the recommendations outlined in it.

The Dearborn Public School district has produced a 15 minute video that provides general information about the district budget and outlines the projected $10.5 million budget deficit for the 2009-10 school year.

The video, featuring Supt. Brian Whiston and Business Services Director Bob Cipriano, can be viewed directly by visiting the district website: www.dearbornschools.org and clicking on the “D-Tube” screen located on the front page. The program will also run on the district’s cable channel on the following dates and times:

Wednesday      January 21                    8:30 am

Thursday          January 22                    1:00 pm

Saturday           January 24                    1:00 pm

Sunday             January 25                    1:00 pm

Throughout the months of January and February Whiston, Cipriano and other district administrators will be visiting with staff members at each school to deliver the budget presentation in person, answer any questions, and listening to cost saving suggestions.

Parent groups or community organizations interested in scheduling a live presentation or wishing to provide input can contact the Superintendent’s Office at 827-3020.

This is the eighth straight year that the district is looking to make budget reductions. District administrators have been discussing a budget plan for the 2009-10 school year since late November and are scheduled to bring a balance budget plan to the Board of Education by the end of February.

The Board will have time to review and discuss the plan before making any final decisions. State law requires the Board of Education to have a balanced budget for the 2009-10 school year in place by June 30, 2009.