Murchison ISD revamps web site, hosts public hearing
By Nathan Straus News Reporter

The Murchison Independent School District Board of Trustees met Thursday, December 20 at 7 pm to cover several topics before the year's end. One of the topics concerned the ongoing construction of the school's new web site.

Scott Beene, MISD superintendent, said the new web site is only three or so weeks old.

"The old web site was just one page with no links," Beene said. "You would have to scroll down a long way to check things."

On the web site, visitors can click on the "Administration" tab to open a list of positions at MISD. Beene's position, as well as Principal Shirley Rowe's and the rest of the administrative staff's, is in this list. Clicking on the position will bring up a window with a picture of the person who occupies the position, and clicking on the person's name will bring up an e-mail window for comments.

The administrative staff does not currently have the extra window, but their names are still available for e-mail comments.

The Board of Trustees tab below lists all people on the board. The Faculty and Staff tab allows people to e-mail school teachers. Some of the support staff do not have e-mail links attached to their names yet.

Underneath is the Contact Us tab, and there was talk of some inaccuracies regarding the address. There is no word yet of any changes made regarding this.

The site also hosts a downloadable school calendar.

"The calendar is protected," Beene said. "People can't just download it, make changes and give it back to us."

Also on the page are a Vendor Bids tab and the MISD Happenings tab.

Among the required documents for the site were the Check Registry tab, regarding finances and expenditures, and the statements of conflicts of interest from the board members.

The school web site is murchison.esc7.net.

As for the school's campus/district improvement plan, Beene said the plan is a lot like last school year's, but there is a push to get more technology going, with the school being brought more and more to work with modern learning and operation tools.

In addition to the agenda, Thursday, December 20 was also the day of the public hearing on the school's Acadamic Excellence Indicator System report.

The school achieved Recognized status from the Texas Education Agency last year, and received Gold Performance acknowledgements on attendance from 2005 to 2006, and was commended on writing, science and social studies.

Among the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills statistics of the report MISD received a score 12 percentage points above the state average in science, and three percentage points above the state average in all tests. Both statistics concern 2007.

MISD met these and more goals to achieve Recognized status.

Reading was seven points higher than the state average with math equal to the average. Writing was one point above average, but social studies was nine points below.

Beene said this is because so few children are in the class. With so few kids in the social studies class, one or two low grades can severely impact the overall score.

On commended performance, the cream of the crop, scores below the commended performance average were below by only one or two points. MISD science passed the average by six points while social studies passed by five points. The end result here was MISD tied the average for all tests.

These reports exclude 8th grade science and TAKS - I.

The school had full participation in the testing, which beats the state average by just over two points.

MISD documented great progress in the number of students who failed TAKS last year. The report stated 46 percent of the students who failed TAKS mathematics last year passed this year, which beats last year's progress by 29 percent, and the average by 12.

Student information also came out with the report.

In the report, MISD has 20 pre-kindergarten students, 14 kindergarten students, 14 1st graders, 13 2nd graders, 17 3rd graders, 17 4th graders, 15 5th graders, 20 6th graders, 16 7th graders and 7 8th graders.

The school, according to report, had 124 White students, 24 Hispanic students and five African American students. Up to 79 students ranked economically disadvantaged, while 12 were LEP (limited English proficient). The report also classified 54 MISD students as atrisk.

In December, Beene said, the school's enrollment was at 146 students.

In the 2005 to 2006 school year, the attendance rate was 1.9 points greater than the Texas average, while there was a 0 percent annual dropout rate.

The document reported in the 2006-2007 school year four teachers had one to five years experience, three had six to ten years, five had 11 to 20 years of experience, and two had over two decades. The school had a 10.9 student per teacher ratio.

At the end of the report Beene said he was very proud of his staff and school for all the work put into making MISD a recognized campus.