Western girls basketball coach Tiffany Silver found out Friday that she would not be returning for a seventh season as the Doves coach.
A 1998 Western graduate and former Doves player, Silver said she was told by Western principal Alisha Trusty that she and her staff were not being asked to come back. Silver said she wasn’t given a “particular reason” for her release “just that we weren’t coming back, that they were going in a different direction pretty much.”
Saying that she was shocked and “crushed,” Silver added, “You devote so much more than just time and you were an alum of that program. It meant a lot more to us. We were not just a fly-by-night coaching staff. We cared about what we did and we did a lot there.”
Silver had a 126-29 record with the Doves, led them to five Baltimore City championships, five regional championships and three state title-game appearances. She said she has also graduated 100 percent of her players and all have gotten into college.
This past season, the No.
More than a year after approving a plan to close nearly half of the schools in the Kansas City School District, the superintendent has introduced the second phase of an effort to transform the historically troubled district.
Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent John Covington told members of the business and civic community Thursday morning that the massive closures _ needed after a steady loss of students and resulting budget shortfalls _ left the district “bruised.” But he said they also “marked a transition for this district, a realization that we could no longer operate in the misguided and financially irresponsible manner of the past, an acknowledgement that we are committed to doing for all children the right thing.”
The next step of transforming the district includes efforts to upgrade technology, improve its workforce through initiatives such as a pay-for-performance program and opening an all-male school in fall 2012 patterned after one in Chicago that has prospered.
Covington said the bulk of the district’s top graduates are girls.
“We are losing our male students by the droves and we know that and we are certainly going to have to do something about it,” he said, recalling the story of one young man shot to death only hours after graduating from the district this spring.
St. Paul, Minn. The University of Minnesota new president starts work Friday on the first day of the state’s government shutdown.
Eric Kaler said the school will operate as normal during the shutdown even without money from the state. Classes and research will continue and hospitals and clinics will stay open.
“We have financial reserves that will get us through a short-term shutdown,” Kaler said. “We have a range of commitments to our students, to our patients, to external stake holders in our research and other endeavors and so we’re going to move forward through that shutdown.”
Kaler said if a shutdown lingers into the fall, he’ll need to reconsider how to keep the university operating without money from the state.
Currently about 18 percent of the university’s roughly $3 billion a year budget comes from the state.
Today Nancy Grasmick, the Maryland state superintendent of schools, steps down after twenty years on the job. She is the longest-serving schools chief in the country.
Grasmick was named superintendent in 1991 and for two decades has overseen what is now widely considered the best public school system in the country. She says she’s proud of the changes she’s been able to implement, including consolidating early childhood programs.
“In 2001 and 2002, only 49 percent of our children were coming to school really ready to learn,” she says. “This year it’s 82 percent.”
Another change is accountability. Grasmick says now the state can compare different sub groups of students, including by race and disability, and see differences that previously might have been hidden by the average score.