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Mary K. McDade, Teacher at Legacy School, Cleveland Heights
Having taught everywhere from urban schools to the Ukraine, McDade brings diversity of experience to her small school.
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Bill Lecher, Senior Clinical Director, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
After changing careers, Bill Lecher helps others along the path toward health care jobs.
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Byrd Prillerman, teacher, Brookhaven High School, Columbus, Ohio
A former inner-city student has become an inner-city teacher who is focused on students.
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Tom Hill, athletic director, Cleveland Heights High School
Is a campus-wide athletic program at odds with efforts to develop five small schools with unique identities? Cleveland Heights High is finding the pride generated by sports teams can support small school goals.
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Alesia Gillison, Leadership Institute at Brookhaven High School
Alesia Gillison always believed in small schools. Now she leads one. “When I got here, it was like actually living your vision –living your dream. This was what it was supposed to be, this was what I’d been working for, and all of the frustrations of the past just kind of blew away.” Now in her second year as small school leader, Gillison keeps goals and successes in front of her students – and she made a personal decision that proves how strongly she believes in the program.
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Scott Walter, Teacher Leader, Libbey SMART School
Mounds of paperwork, continuous discipline issues, a pie in the face – Scott Walter didn’t know what he was getting into three years ago when his peer teachers encouraged him to apply as teacher leader of the SMART school.
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Jean King-Battle, Teacher, PRIDE School
A veteran teacher finds a home – and a mission – for herself at Cleveland Heights’ PRIDE School. Jean King-Battle compares her role in developing student leaders to that of a pied piper.
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Peter Fisher, Student, School of Multiple Intelligences, Lima Oh
In the scene playing out on screen, a boy in a high school cafeteria is forced to give up his cereal. Enter the ghost of “frustration.” The boy is pushed down in the hallway. Add the ghost of “sadness.” The boy is whacked in the head. Add “fear.”
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Kasey Greer , Executive Director, Heights Community Congress
The Heights Community Congress offices are nondescript, vintage 1970s social service agency, just upstairs from a well-known independent film house. But Kasey Greer, executive director, feels right at home there. She is busy connecting people and getting them talking about small schools and the community’s role in student life.
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Janet Beening, Libbey High School
When you walk into her room you know immediately. From the zillions of student photos taped to the panes. From the kids clumped in groups of three or four. From the way the teacher pushes in the CD and slides on top of a desk. She’s one of them. One of the good ones.
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Kim Dykstra and Linda Ray, Brookhaven Student and Teacher Step Up to Tutoring Challenge
In a hallway filled with hand-drawn rainbows, a first grader reads aloud from a Clifford the Big Red Dog book about manners. When she’s finished with a page, she looks up and grins widely at her teacher, a freshman boy from Brookhaven High School’s North Star School of Exploration who is wearing a yellow shirt with his small school’s logo and the words “Bearcats read… Do you?” in navy. “Oh that was so good!” he fawns over her. “Let’s read some more.”
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Joy Henderson, Crucial Link in Cleveland Heights, Small Schools Effort
Joy Henderson never intended to spend her career in education. She was a geologist for BP Chemicals, working in the eastern plains of the Rockies before she had her two children. But today she is mining education reform in an effort to bridge understanding between the Heights High small schools initiative and the parents and community it serves.
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Pamela Dimo, Student, Business and Communications School Euclid Campus
Whether she is pressing her peers to keep a pep rally's attendees in line, or urging them toward new expectations, Pam Dimo epitomizes how nothing succeeds like success. And, in her second year as a class representative to Euclid's Business and Communications School's Student Leadership Team (BCS SLT), Dimo's drive has led her to numerous triumphs.
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Jeff McClellan, Small School Leader, Lima High School Campus
The hallways of the new Lima High School campus building are a glimmering red, gray, and black - the colors of their mascot, the Spartans. But more importantly, the hallways are relatively calm these days. Gone are the noise, the chaos, and the congestion of 1,300 students jammed together at once like they were last year. The small schools on the Lima campus have staggered their schedules this year, each starting and ending at different times.
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Carla Hegyi, Teacher, Brookhaven High School Campus in Columbus
In late August, English teacher Carla Hegyi used an overhead projector to illuminate phrases like "be trustworthy and truthful," "respect yourself," and "change the world" on the hallway walls of the Brookhaven High School in Columbus. The campus is home to three small schools, Legacy, Leadership, and North Star, that opened just last year with the support of KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Kathy Stone, Small School Leader, Libbey High School
When you ask Toledo small high school leader Kathy Stone which is the most important of the three 'R's, she says unequivocally-"relationships". Stone and co-leader Gayle Schaber have embraced a personal, hands-on approach, which includes maintaining regular contact with parents.
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Donna Perdzock, Director, Euclid Public Library, Euclid High School's Center of Strength
Donna believes you need to be invested in your community to make change. Her commitment to Euclid City School District's high school reform effort, part of the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative (OHSTI), is one way she backs up this belief.
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Talisa Dixon, Small School Leader, Columbus Brookhaven
The culture of the new Leadership Institute of Student Development – one of three small schools at Brookhaven High School in Columbus – is defined by small touches that Talisa Dixon, as leader of this small school, made sure were in place when this inner-city high school was redesigned earlier this year. Sometimes there are flowers on top of the lockers, or signs reminding students to respect themselves and others. In every classroom the mission of the school is posted for its teachers and students. But Dixon’s involvement in small school reform began well before the school opened.
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