Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

For a hundred years or more, America’s greatest institutions of higher learning have relied on a tried and true recipe for success: Hire the greatest minds in our society as professors and charge students a fee to be able to learn from the lectures and stories that those great minds would tell in their classrooms. The recipe served colleges and universities well for so long is now being threatened by two factors: The exponentially rising cost of a college education and the increasing availability of free knowledge as a commodity through the Internet. Higher education today is facing a brutal reality that could threaten the very fabric of the system in much the same way that the music industry had to find a way to reinvent itself when peer-to-peer file sharing sites like Napster first came into being over a decade ago. Jessica Hullinger recently wrote about the Future of Education , giving several reasons why higher education won’t die, but it will undergo some radical transf...

Dear Parents and Guardians of Ninth Grade Students, On Thursday, May 14th, Mallory Noe-Payne, an associate producer for WGBH Boston’s project On Campus will spend part of the school day learning about competency education at our school. Through her involvement with On Campus , Mallory reports out on trends in higher education, both in the greater Boston area and beyond. With the rise of competency education in colleges and universities today, she is hoping to use her visit at Sanborn to show how competency education is affecting college readiness at the secondary level . Our school is honored to have been selected by WGBH to be studied further. During her visit, Ms. Noe-Payne will be observing three of our teachers in the classroom setting: Carissa Maskwa, Mark Giuliucci, and Brian Gray. She hopes to talk to both teachers and students about how competency education at Sanborn is preparing them for their post-secondary goals. She will be audio-recording parts of her clas...

After a long winter, Spring has finally arrived. For many, especially those who spent a season buried under record-breaking snowfalls, the warm weather means that it is time to plant the family garden. Home gardens have been on the rise since 2009 when the White House announce med plans to plant their own kitchen garden . Describing fruits and vegetables as “brain food,” first lady Michelle Obama’s personal plight to promote healthy eating habits for children have made their way to schools, and school gardens are now on the rise in America. Last week, Education Week’s Evie Blad predicted that the ongoing USDA farm-to-school census that is currently underway would show a rise in the number of schools that have established school gardens. In her blog article School Gardens Are a Growing trend. What’s Growing in Yours? , Blad noted that back in the 2011-2012 school year, thirty one percent of farm-to-school food programs already had their own school gardens. With the increased...

Dear Parents and Guardians of Students Attending Sanborn High School’s Prom, Prom night is the night that every high school principal dreads. When I leave the Atkinson Country Club Saturday night at 11PM, I will be a miserable wreck until the next morning. Each year, on prom night, I pray that I won’t get a call from a police officer letting me know that something tragic has happened to one of our students as a result of a poor decision made on prom night. Parents, I urge you to make sure you know where your children are after they leave the prom venue. Call them. Call them again. Call the adults of the homes are staying at for the night. Call them again. Bother them all night long with calls and text messages. If you are hosting a post-prom event for your child and his or her friends, make sure you have checked in with each of the kids at your gathering to be sure that they have connected with their parents.  On prom night, we are all the parents for all of th...