We are delighted to announce the first Disney Way community in the State of Michigan! Congratulations to Larry, Mark, Kevin and the entire team in Dowagiac!
LETTER TO BILL – AUGUST 31st
“Hello from Dowagiac…Last night Mark laid out the Educational Dream for Dowagiac…
In short, you laid the groundwork for exciting alliances heretofore unknown. Imagine, the School Administration is moving into City Hall to share space and services----the potential is unknown but vast. Here is a link to the Daily News. Enjoy, you are at the root of it all.”
http://www.dowagiacnews.com/2011/08/31/%E2%80%98dream%E2%80%99-would-remake-dowagiac/
Kind Regards,
Larry Seurynck, President
Board of Education
Dowagiac Union Schools,
Dowagiac, Michigan
Dr. Fred L. Mathews, chairman of the SMC Board of Trustees and a member of the Disney Way community committee, congratulates Supt. Dr. Mark Daniel on his presentation.
By John Eby
‘Dream’ would remake Dowagiac
Published 11:56pm Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Months in the making, since “Disney Way” author Bill Capodagli immersed Dowagiac Union Schools, City Hall, Southwestern Michigan College and Borgess-Lee Memorial Hospital in the customer service principles of Dream, Believe, Dare, Do, Superintendent Dr. Mark Daniel Wednesday night unveiled the “Dowagiac Educational Dream.”
The vision crafted since February is to create a “one in 100” district for the 21st century and a Dowagiac renaissance.
Daniel, his remarks prefaced by “When You Wish Upon a Star,” delivered a multi-media presentation brimming with engaging video elements about which he spoke.
The vision, which could take until 2015 to be fully realized, starts this fall with the administration leaving the Wolverine Building and moving into City Hall and follows a path that will definitely blaze a new trail, including moving high school students to the middle school, with construction of a two-floor addition in back to separate juniors and seniors from younger students; converting Union High into a districtwide grades 1-5 building offering consistent reading recovery to all students; and saving only Justus Gage as a districtwide Great Start center for kindergarten and preschoolers.
Patrick Hamilton, Sister Lakes and Kincheloe would join the Wolverine Building in jettisoning overhead and investing in energy conservation that would make the undertaking financially feasible to swing.
Voters will be asked to consider a bond issue in the spring of 2012, school board President Larry Seurynck said afterward.
Of course, the revelations studding the end of Daniel’s presentation came after a careful, comprehensive hour of aligning Dowagiac with best practices in modern education, such as Project-Based Learning designed to engage students, interspersed with Gov. Rick Snyder explaining the directions in which Michigan, poised for a pent-up recovery after years of shrinking, is moving.
For months district leaders have been consumed with creating an education culture, from bringing in new Steelcase furniture to show how classrooms have evolved from teachers as sages on the stage at the front of the room who are listened to to pods which move quickly into different configurations so students face each other and can interact, with teachers more guides and mentors who decide how to weave in such elements as video and social media.
Traditional classrooms discourage the engagement central to preparing for jobs in the workplace which stress collaboration, communication and problem-solving rather than memorizing facts gleaned from old-style lectures.
“Smart” classrooms like Dowagiac desires are only “a three-iron shot” away at partner SMC, Daniel noted in the DMS Performing Arts Center, completed in 2005.
A third of traditional classrooms are occupied by teacher space, Daniel said, which is opened up to avoid distraction from learning in modern new tech facilities.
Daniel, starting his second year with Dowagiac, said we live in a market-driven system and need to match the quality of living here with a top-notch educational system which will attract employers and investment and “will take all of us to make happen.”
“This building (DMS) itself, there’s so much value here,” Seurynck said after the meeting. “The resources here we can share — the auditorium, the gym, the common spaces, science and music labs. Those are all spaces we don’t have to build. Instead of having hallways, you open those up to 30 feet wide and each hallway becomes a technologically-rich media center. Classrooms have glass walls teachers can open to become part of the common area. Students migrate from a classroom out into the media center where they have fiber optics.”
Even Aug. 31 a Dowagiac delegation toured Rochester, Ind., Community High School.
“It’s really exciting,” Seurynck said, “and we could do these things (financially) because we’re not building a new library. (The added high school wing) would be, if you were standing back at the soccer field, at the left side of the building. The addition would have a second floor, built onto this building. Busing wouldn’t change a lot. Right now, we bus kids from behind Hale’s out to Kincheloe and from the south end of the school district, out past California Road at Indian Lake all the way up to Sister Lakes. Society has changed and gone away from the neighborhood school. Justus Gage isn’t a neighborhood school anymore. We don’t have huge clusters of students who can walk to school. All that was done when we redistricted to balance the number of kids.
“The problem with that is you’ve got two first grades out at Kincheloe, two first grades at J Gage, two first grades at Pat Ham and one first grade at Sister Lakes. Some have 19, some have 27 students. Not optimal class sizes” like could be accomplished in a central DUHS location. “We’ve got bubbles coming through the district all the time,” fluctuating from 105 to 125 or 150. “It’s very inefficient. And when students come to high school there’s a lot of variation in their preparedness because each building has a different strength.
“With all the kids in one building, you could have best practices for each grade and align your curriculum so that all are learning the same thing and hitting the same benchmarks at the same time in the same year. Right now, for our special needs students, we lose a day a week for travel. By consolidating, we can have higher quality people in touch with our kids for a greater period of time. The benefits just go on and on. The high school, built in the Sixties, is pushing 60 years old” and needs major upgrading. “It would be $3 million to $4 million just to put in a new boiler and it has only 900 amps. We’d take the efficiencies and using those to pay some of the freight. We’ve been working intensely with architects for four to six weeks. We’re analyzing putting a high-efficiency system in the high school, be it geothermal,” which would also provide air conditioning.
“How much do we save on energy? Then we take that money to pay back what we borrow in low-interest money from the state. It’s making improvements to the district now,” including lighting, “that will save energy, and earmark those savings to pay off debt. Dowagiac’s board leadership the last 10 years has been forward-looking, which puts us in a position to survive. We made a conscious decision between hunkering down, hanging on and hoping things get better or spending some of our fund equity in a calculated risk to make improvements that will bring more people to the community and jobs. When we hired Mark, the community fathers sat me down and said in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t recruit business because the schools were not performing, so we hired (Daniel), a guy with a vision who knows what it looks like. (Former president) Randy Cuthbert said he was the only guy who knows what it looks like and he had national model schools (in Indiana). There’s so much potential.”
“Classrooms should look very different today than when you and I were in school to create an educational culture and environment,” Daniel said. “We have some buildings that have been well-maintained,” but due to their age, “have some major needs. We are at a crossroads.
“Central office will be shared services with City Hall. We have to start thinking in that mentality and start finding ways to reduce expenses and costs, but still expand learning. I’m excited about going to City Hall and I’ll tell you why. Because it’s about community. We all share in this, so why shouldn’t city government be sharing education and technology. We already share fuel. We don’t even know” what other possibilities there might be, “and that’s exciting. I’m looking forward to working with City Manager Kevin Anderson and talking about what we can share — software, computers, copiers and on and on. One elementary center channels all resources into that facility. A 6-12 building? Do students who walk out of this pristine building, do they really want to go over to 9-12” at DUHS?
Chris Taylor-Alumni Field would be retained, the superintendent indicated.
“At the same time, we’re going to have to put dollars into some of our structures. Union High needs a whole new HVAC system. Why is that not AC yet? The boiler and pipes are at their life expectancy after serving their purpose well. That needs to be revamped. The new design would add on (to DMS) on the west with a second floor for 11th and 12th graders. I come from a national model school where we had seventh through 12th graders. There is extreme power when you have 11th and 12th graders for your younger students to model. Maturity in the building, you can just see it rise. Respect. Trust. Responsibility. It ramps up in a healthy way. At the same time, you need to make sure you don’t have a constant interaction with your younger students. Architects — (DUHS graduate) Scott Winchester — looked at a flow” which segregates students as they enter and exit.
“We’re going to have to expand the cafeteria,” Daniel explained. “This building was designed to expand and the governor said be smart in the way you spend your funding because you’re probably not going to get more unless you’re achieving, and you need to figure out shared services. I salute the fiscal management of this district. Most districts are talking about how to weather the storm rather than growth or opportunity. That’s not a way to be ready for the prosperity that’s going to happen in Michigan. Michigan is among the major states in the country primed for economic growth. It’s going to be different, but it’s going to come back. Advanced manufacturing with technology, which we get from SMC and our Van Buren vocational school.”
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