Bryan Murphy
By BRYAN MURPHY
Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation School Board President
Recently I was asked to write a message that demonstrates how the Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation School Board supports collaboration in our schools. In addition to leadership, character, and achievement, collaboration is one of the school corporation’s Core Values as indicated in the following Value Statement, “We value collaboration amongst students, staff, parents, and community.”
This Value Statement is accompanied by four Belief Statements:
1. We believe in shared decision-making.
2. We believe in seeking feedback and input.
3. We believe collaboration is a lifelong skill.
4. We believe that together we can accomplish more than we can on our own.
We do this by embracing Professional Learning Communities that occur during morning collaboration two times a week, utilizing data to make decisions, and differentiating learning for all students.
We support constant dialogue about student learning between teachers and administration (i.e. curriculum council, TVSC Steering Committee, grant committee and administrative meetings).
Parent communication (i.e. newsletters, View of the Valley, emails, phone calls, conferences, the TVSC website, classroom websites/blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Remind 101) is extremely important.
Tippecanoe Valley offers students the assistance of two graduation coaches at Tippecanoe Valley High School and the guidance of a success coach at Tippecanoe Valley Middle School, resources that are not available to students in neighboring schools.
Our schools have a tremendous responsibility to shape young lives into the future citizens of our community and our country. Our schools are in the business of educating young people and developing the next generation of leaders. These students are our future doctors, engineers, lawyers, farmers, and maybe even a president of the United States.
As a school board, we are charged with being policy makers and helping our administration implement programs that will engage and ignite a passion in our students so they have a strong desire to learn. The school board is responsible for making sure we have the right leaders in place to accomplish this. We are responsible to ensure the corporation has the resources available to help accomplish these tasks and to provide educational facilities that are safe and conducive to modern learning.
We hold our administrators accountable for administering the policies we set, and for meeting Indiana’s state requirements. The school board makes sure that students are improving their test scores and, if they are not, we help determine the programs or activities needed to achieve the academic success of our students. We also approve and monitor the budget to make sure that learning is the number one priority of our spending.
The methods of educating our students have changed tremendously since I attended school at Tippecanoe Valley. We strive to stay current with the latest instructional practices and constantly evolving technology in offering our students a cutting edge education.
As school board members we do not teach students, but we lead the corporation in helping our students learn. Our focus is not solely on academics, but also on teaching students about life, as we fulfill our commitment to student success through the development of character, leadership, and literacy.