LYLE – Change is coming to the Lyle Independent School District.

Wednesday, May 03, 2000

LYLE – Change is coming to the Lyle Independent School District.

The changes include block scheduling for ninth- through 12th-graders, a sixth- through eighth-grades middle-school concept and multiage grouping for students in grades K-5.

Interested parents, as well as teachers and school board members learned more about the changes coming in the 2000-2001 school year at an informational meeting Tuesday night.

Thomas D. Hiebert, Lyle’s K-12 principal, explained the changes with Superintendent Jerry Reshetar on hand to assist.

The changes were forecast last fall, when the Lyle Board of Education gave the new superintendent and principal their approval. In addition, a curriculum advisory committee was organized to "set the direction," as Hiebert described it.

For the Lyle district, the changes will be sweeping and dramatic in their scope.

Why make the changes? Hiebert said the effort is driven by test scores.

"This is what we’re all being judged by," he said. The latest Minnesota Graduation Standards test scores revealed the district has its strengths as well as weaknesses.

Next week, the district will have its students take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.

The test results provide a benchmark for districts to do better, according to Hiebert.

Another motivating factor in making the changes is the desire to improve the social skills of students.

"Schools are called upon to do a lot of the things that aren’t happening in the home today," Hiebert said. These include simply "getting along with one another" and "older students helping younger students" and, in turn, "younger students respecting older students," according to the principal.

Also, the district’s school board and administration want to improve the efficiencies of teaching staff.

Reshetar and Hiebert came on board last summer and the school board provided them with specific goals to achieve to make Mower County’s smallest district viable.

From the beginning of the process last fall, developing a middle school and multiage grouping were among the administrator’s favorite priorities.

Hiebert admitted wanting to develop more opportunities for all learners is "easy to say, but hard to do."

But, Hiebert added, "We’re remiss if we don’t try to cover the whole gamut of what we’re doing."

Also pushing the district to make changes is the fact, according to the principal, learning in a classroom is not the same as that of today’s students, parents or grandparents.

"The day of standing in front of a class is done," he said. "We need to keep students on task. We need to keep them excited about learning."

Also, the school administrators and school board want to develop instructional team work – "teachers working together." This, in turn, will lead to continuity of the flow of curriculum through all grade levels, the principal said.

Other desired outcomes of the changes include developing a positive school climate, mainstreaming special education students and placing an emphasis on individual student performance. The latter, the principal said, is needed "so every student feels they have a home here at Lyle Public Schools and wants to come to school."