Local school officials want to get all their students on the same page.

District 834 could do a better job of ensuring its students are learning the same material at the same time, district administrators told the school board Thursday.

According to Assistant Superintendent Don Schuld and St. Croix Valley Area Learning Center Director Ginny Kruse Rudolph, standardizing curriculum across the district's 13 schools would improve student performance and raise test scores.

"One of the things we've been trying to move toward is ensuring that common standards are taught across schools and grade levels," Schuld said Thursday. "I don't think we've effectively guaranteed that the standards that are covered in first grade at one elementary school are the same standards that will be covered in every other elementary school. ... So when students meet in one of our junior high schools, they will have had different foundations, depending on the elementary school they may have come from, and some are better prepared than others."

Schuld and Rudolph presented school board members with a proposed curriculum framework the board is expected to approve at its May 22 meeting.

While District 834 has historically given its teachers and building administrators a great deal of autonomy to design and implement curriculum, an increasing emphasis on state and federal standards has led district administrators to take a closer look at how well the school system's various programs align with governmental targets.

This year the district started a push to standardize end-of-semester exams at the secondary level so that all students of a given course - second-semester Spanish, for example - take the same test, regardless of who taught them, which school they attended, or in which year they took the class.

Schuld and Rudolph said the curriculum framework is intended to guide a similarly detailed review of the district's academic programs. With several significant curriculum review processes on the horizon, they said the framework will guarantee a consistent approach.

"It puts the emphasis on a systematic, thorough process of looking at what is taught, why it's taught, and how it's taught, and it puts in place procedures that make sure it doesn't happen in a haphazard way or without careful thought and significant input from key stakeholders," Schuld said.

Rudolph said she likes the framework's holistic approach to curriculum design.

"It's not just about 'What are we going to teach in English?' but it looks at all the pieces of the puzzle. What are the skills that our students need? Critical thinking skills; problem-solving skills. We look at college preparation. We look at what kind of training do teachers need to deliver the curriculum well," she said. "Rather than having all these discreet pieces and hoping they somehow come together, this really brings a sense of coherence to it."

Of course, at the end of the day the administrators say the initiative will be measured on student performance.

"We should see higher achievement," Schuld said. "Our children are going to be taught the standards in a developmental sequence from the beginning, and it's going to be consistent so that when they come together at junior high and high school, they will at least have a common base from which to grow."

Transportation changes

The school board Thursday unanimously approved a new transportation contract with Illinois Central Bus Co., which will provide bus service to the district as Minnesota Central School Bus for the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years.

The district currently uses First Student, formerly known as Laidlaw Transit, but was unhappy with the company's performance.

Assistant Superintendent Ray Queener estimated the new contract will help the district trim $160,000 to $385,000 from its $5 million annual transportation budget, noting that Illinois Central's bid was $177,000 less than First Student's final bid.

Queener also said Illinois Central's chief executive personally agreed to pay any former First Student drivers his company hires what they would have earned at First Student, following that up with Illinois Central's regular annual wage increases.

"That's part of the language that we've negotiated in the contract. We know that many of our drivers are local residents, and it is not our intent that obtaining a lower-cost transportation contract would mean that salaries would be decreased," Queener said. "We were very methodical in that conversation, because we know it is a big issue for local residents and we wanted to make sure that we were not doing this on the backs of our drivers and our monitors."

On a related note, the board also approved leasing a bus garage at 5280 and 5288 Stagecoach Trail from Stephan Stagecoach Property LLC for 10 years, starting July 1, with the intention of allowing the school system's bus service provider to use the facility to house its District 834 fleet. The base rent will be $166,200 in 2008-09, and future increases are tied to changes in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index. The lease agreement is conditional upon the property owner receiving the necessary conditional use permit from the City of Oak Park Heights.

"Whether we pay it or our bus company pays it, it will ultimately come out of our transportation budget either way," Queener told the board. "This puts us in the driver's seat when it comes to this property and allows us to enter into a longer-term agreement than our bus company would be able to, which will save us money in the long run."

After determining its new transportation plan would allow it to do so, the school board unanimously agreed to move the school day at Stonebridge Elementary 15 minutes earlier, so it will run from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. starting with the 2008-09 school year.

District 834 administrators deemed the change feasible after taking a detailed look at the school system's transportation plan. Upon hearing that, Stonebridge officials conducted an online poll of the school's families.

According to Queener, 230 people responded to the survey, with 145 supporting the change, 61 saying there would be no impact to their family one way or the other, and 24 saying they'd prefer the school day not be changed.

In other business, the board...

• heard an update from Oak-Land Junior High Principal Derek Berg on the school's new seventh-grade global concepts course. Berg said the course, designed and taught by Jim Amaral, has been an unqualified success. Specifically, Berg said it not only allows the school to split its 330-member seventh grade class into two smaller "houses" of 165, but it develops students' critical thinking skills and enables other teachers to delve deeper into their respective subjects by addressing some topics that would otherwise have to be addressed in core classes.



• awarded a contract to reconstruct and reconfigure the Stillwater Junior High School parking lot and two athletic fields to Miller Excavating of Stillwater for $948,990. The district had budgeted $1.15 million for the project.



• awarded a contract to replace the kitchen floor at Stillwater Area High School to Construction Results of Plymouth for $228,7000. The district had budgeted $250,000 for the project.



• awarded a contract to replace flooring at SAHS and Lake Elmo, Lily Lake, Marine, Stonebridge and Withrow elementaries to St. Paul Linoleum and Carpet Co. of Eagan for $59,369. The district had budgeted $60,000 for the project.



• approved the 2007-08 final revised budget, an update of the revised budget approved in January. General fund revenue and expenses came in marginally higher than January projections, with revenue rising from $80.7 million to $80.9 million and expenditures climbing from $81.0 million to $81.2 million.