Phil Campbell HS Newsletter

Congratulations to our varsity volleyball team on finishing runner up in the Franklin County Tournament Saturday. They beat Belgreen 2-1 to open the tournament and then Red Bay 2-0 before fallling to Belgreen in the finals 2-1. In all, our girls played Belgreen three times going the distance in each match. Belgreen won five, we won four. The girls also won Senior Night beating Hamilton 2-0. Our junior high also finished their season with a win over Hamilton.

Our football team beat Double Springs on the road Friday night 36-8. Colbert County beat Lexington Friday night putting us in a three way tie for first place in the region.

Well, We've arrived at Homecoming Week and Fall Break Week!

Our parade will be on Wednesday, October 7 at 2pm with a community pep rally immediately after at the football stadium. PCHS and PCES will dismiss school on Wednesday at Noon to allow for students and staff members to participate in the parade.

We will have some activities for our students during school on Monday and Tuesday. This is for students only. Boys volleyball class tournaments will be on Monday. We will allow floats being built by our students to be pulled on campus Tuesday morning at 8:30am in the back of the school or by the field house. Floats will need to be removed from campus by 5pm. Floats can be brought back to campus on Wednesday morning after 8:30am for final preparations for the parade. All floats must have adult supervision.

The Homecoming game vs. Tanner will be Thursday night at 7pm with Homecoming festivities during halftime.

Our Bobcat Marching Band Competition will be on Saturday. We will host close to 20 bands.

Have A Great Week!

Bart Moss

Principal

Our lunch on Wednesday will be pizza.

As we announced earlier in the year, because our Homecoming week fell on Fall Break Week, the Homecoming game will be on Thursday, October 8 at 7pm.

The parade will be on Wednesday afternoon (October 7) at 2pm with a community pep rally immediately following. There will be a student bonfire fellowship at 8pm after church hours on Wednesday night. We know this is an inconvenience for some adults but it is in the best interest of our student and staff since they will be out of school on Thursday and Friday.

Volleyball Senior Night celebrating our three seniors- Adeline Hunderman, Ragan Moss, Lily Stewart

They got the win vs. Hamilton, then picked up wins over Belgreen and Red Bay on Saturday finishing runner up in the Franklin County Tournament.

Our junior high volleyball team ended their season with a win over Hamilton

Sunset in Double Springs prior to our football game

Snapshots from our region win over Double Springs Friday night

New Field House Update

The most cost-effective ideas: 1) small group tutoring, 2) science of reading, 3) universal pre-K, 4) increase per-student funding, and 5) increase pay for teachers in high poverty schools

The least cost-effective ideas: 1) vouchers for private schools, 2) smaller class sizes, 3) increase all teacher pay, 4) increase mental health spending, and 5) allow A.I. use

Excerpts from NYT Newsletter

A long time ago, after a stint as a restaurant cook, I spent a few years as a teacher in the New York City public schools. My perch was Bushwick High School, a vast and crumbling brick and terra-cotta building on Irving Avenue, where I taught social studies. The school’s closed now — done in by low graduation rates — but when I was there it was a pulsing organ of the community, overcrowded and chaotic, a difficult place and a beautiful one, too.

Naturally I had ideas about how to make Bushwick better. Everyone there did — students and parents, administrators, teachers, aides, nurses and school security officers. Sometimes there was agreement, in the way that everyone can agree that it would be awesome to go to Utopia High School every day and not this darker place that exists in reality. More often, there was not: That idea’s too expensive. This one’s not going to move the needle.

But from our posts in the classroom, we weren’t always watching the trends of scholarship. Had our ideas to fix the place been tried or studied? Did they work, and how much did they cost? We just complained (or campaigned) in the staff room or in meetings with parents or elected officials, on the front steps or in the fetid heat of the gym. (Go Tigers!)

My colleagues on The Upshot, a section of our newsroom devoted to data journalism, went to the experts. They recently took up the question of how educators might fix our nation’s ailing schools, where student abilities have been in decline over the last decade. Compared with 2015, reading scores are down in 83 percent of school districts, with declines in math scores that are nearly as widespread.

Our reporters wanted to know what could actually help reverse the trend. They asked 37 leading academics and researchers who study education to rate a range of ideas to improve student achievement, looking at both effectiveness and cost. Basically, they figured out how to rank the proposals. I urge you to read them.

What to do

Three ideas grabbed my attention. Another seemed so obvious that I couldn’t believe it wasn’t already standard practice.

Small-group tutoring (No. 1). The experts put this well above reducing class size. Students meet multiple times a week, in groups of three or four, with the same tutor, during the school day. That practice is, one expert said, the “most promising intervention” available. Small-group tutoring moves the needle on testing. The downside? It has to be done often and well, and finding a lot of tutors who are available during the school day is both hard and expensive.

Expanded access to advanced classes (No. 7). More kids should be able to take algebra in eighth grade or Advanced Placement classes in high school, the experts said. That’s not just about expanding gifted and talented programs. It’s about making these opportunities available to more higher-achieving students in more schools, particularly in low-income ones that offer fewer college-prep classes. The caveat: “Pushing students into material they haven’t prepared for can backfire,” one expert said.

Increase teacher pay (No. 20). A simple business: Compensate educators the way we compensate other jobs that require the same education and experience. No one goes into education to get rich. But you want people to stay in the field, building experience, stacking knowledge. That’s hard when they make less than they’d get doing virtually any other job they can get with a college degree. (An expert cautioned that it remains a question whether teachers with bigger paychecks become better instructors. And also: It would cost a lot of money.)

Ban cellphones (No. 22). There’s no real evidence yet that doing so increases test scores, experts told The Times. But, one noted, “There are academic and social benefits that are hard to quantify.” I’ll say. (Some states have already made it the law of the land.) All I had to deal with a million years ago were the precious few kids who had a Discman to play Rakim on CD. I can’t imagine teaching Global History, much less learning Global History, in a room full of kids straining not to look at their phones.