| Team effort helped land Mathews' Blue Ribbon Principal credits innovation, parents for honor 05/30/2001 By Katie Menzer / The Dallas Morning News
Mathews Elementary School students and staff were "blue" during the final
days of school this year, but it was not because they were sad to see
classes end.
Mathews has been named a 2000-01 Blue Ribbon School, a national award
from the U.S. Department of Education that recognizes overall excellence
in schools. Mathews is the 22nd Plano district school to be presented
with the award since the program was developed in 1982. Plano's Haggard
Middle School was honored last year.
"It was so much work on behalf of everyone, but it was so worthwhile,"
said Mathews principal Jane Ball, who was told her school made the final
cut two weeks ago by Sen. Phil Gramm's office. "To be able to succeed at
such a goal that truly involved the entire community was an overwhelming
experience."
Mathews is one of 32 Texas schools that won the award out of the 98 that
applied, said Belinda Flores, the Blue Ribbon Schools project director
at the Texas Education Agency. Nationwide, 264 elementary schools were
recognized.
Of the 98 applications the state received, 37 were forwarded for
consideration at the national level.
"We have excellent schools in Texas that seem to impress the application
readers," Ms. Flores said, referring to the high number of national
winners in the Lone Star State. About 58 percent of schools that applied
for the award were given the blue ribbon nationwide. Eighty-six percent
of Texas schools that applied at the national level were honored.
Schools applying for the award must complete an exhaustive 30-page
application that is reviewed by education experts at the state and
national levels. Schools are chosen from those applications to receive
site visits from officials representing the Department of Education.
Those reviewers make recommendations to the secretary of education for
final selection.
Community effort
Ms. Ball said the school community began preparing to apply for the award
in March 2000. The 70 members of the school's faculty divided into groups
to compile information to answer the application's questions, which
focused on areas of school leadership, teaching, curriculum, student
achievement and parent involvement. The school's 670 students were asked
to contribute their ideas through conversations with teachers and through
written work.
Fifth-grade teachers Beverley Lamkin and Melanie Willett collected all
the material and fashioned the first draft, which was more than 80 pages
long, over their summer break. Ms. Ball, with teachers and parents,
began paring down the application in the fall.
"Cutting it down to 70 and then 60 and then 50 wasn't so hard," Ms. Ball
said. "But those last few pages – cutting those last few lines so it fit
onto 30 pages – was really heart-wrenching."
In September, Ms. Ball boarded a plane to hand-deliver the application
to officials at the TEA in Austin.
"I didn't want to trust it to Federal Express," Ms. Ball said. "And I
wasn't the only principal standing at the door to deliver the
application, either."
The application, which focused on school activities from the 1999-2000
school year, touted high state assessment test scores, innovative
curricula and parent involvement that have become commonplace at the
school over its 13 years, Ms. Ball said.
The Mathews PTA won the district's Outstanding PTA of the Year Award in
2000, accumulating more than 20,000 volunteer hours in the 1999-2000
year. The group organizes carnivals and multicultural events, designs
fund-raisers and helps out during field trips.
"When we go to the PTA and say we need something, we never have to ask
twice," Ms. Ball said.
PTA participants man the school's Horseshoe Press, a program in which
volunteers bind books written and illustrated by students.
Parents and community members also run Mathew's 3R's Volunteer Program,
in which they tutor students needing extra help in reading, writing and
mathematics. In the 1999-2000 school year, 19 volunteers worked with 33
students, and all the students in the program passed each section of the
Texas Assessment of Academic Skills.
"The parental involvement keeps us working at our best," said
first-grade teacher and team leader Vickie Scott. "That's what drives
our district and drives our school."
Innovations
The students run a schoolwide mail delivery system that circulates about
700 letters between students and faculty during each six-week period.
Students apply for positions as postal directors, mail sorters and mail
carriers while practicing their writing skills and learning about the
postal system, Ms. Ball said.
Ms. Ball also highlights classroom technology – an emphasis of the
entire district – as one of the reasons her school was honored. Each
classroom contains eight computers, with laser disc players, video
monitors and digital cameras available to all students.
"Kids are on the computer a lot, but they use them as a tool and not a
toy," Ms. Ball said. "You can see kindergartners opening files, printing
and saving documents."
But on his last day as a Mathews student, Xihao Liu sat on a wooden
bench outside his fifth-grade classroom on Thursday, admitting that his
favorite memories of the school did not involve reports on high test
scores, science experiments or computer lessons.
"It's about how the staff cares about the kids and the kids care about
the staff," the 11-year-old said.
Staff writer Katie Menzer can be reached at 214-977-6947 and at .
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