Smith on state of the schools

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Supt. Brian Smith delivered a state of the schools address at last week’s Fishers Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
Supt. Brian Smith delivered a state of the schools address at last week’s Fishers Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Hamilton Southeastern School District Supt. Brian Smith painted a picture of the local schools that has both encouraging characteristics and serious issues at hand in his state of the schools address before the Fishers Chamber of Commerce Sept. 18.

Smith detailed what the school system is looking like for local business stakeholders, as well as town officials at the FORUM Conference and Events Center, 11313 USA Pkwy.

As it stands, HSE has 20,157 students and 1,125 teachers. The percentage of those students on free or reduced lunch increased from 8.1 percent during the 2007-2008 school year to 14.35 percent during the 2012-2013 school year, according to Smith.

721 students receive English as a New Language instruction.

Pressing on toward more academic data, Smith said in 2013 1,790 students took 2,912 advanced placement tests, with more than half of graduating seniors scoring well enough to receive college credit. 45.4 percent of AP students at Fishers High School and 42.6 percent at Hamilton Southeastern High School passed at least one advanced placement course.

“It’s all about rigor,” Smith said. “We’re trying to challenge our students to not take the easy path, to not take the low road.”

Addressing state-wide testing, the district saw an overall increase in number of students passing the ISTEP. HSE saw 86.9 percent of its students pass the math and language arts components of the tests in the previous year, while 88.4 percent of the crop passed the same segments in 2013.

Smith said this form of testing was too basic in terms of figuring out how HSE students stack up to students in other industrialized nations. He gave an update on HSE21, the district’s 21st century skills initiative and global perspective and noted the United States’ lower performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment testing.

“Our competition is not the United States, it’s the global competition,” he said. “I think it’s important to start metric-ing ourselves to see how we compete.”

The amount of funding received per pupil from the state is also a concern. Smith said the school district could have a general fund deficit totaling more than $9 million by 2016, according to a cash flow analysis from CFO Mike Reuter. This deficit could mean cost-offsetting measures including nixing 164 teachers by then.

 


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