Hello, this is Tommy Hunter, principal at Ardmore High
School. After today you will not be getting a phone call that begins with this
message. I am blessed to have been named the Executive Director of Human
Resources and Operations for Limestone County Schools. I am humbled and excited
about this new opportunity to serve our students but a little sad about not
being the principal at Ardmore. I have great memories of my time here and will
continue to be around because I will still have children attending Ardmore and
Cedar Hill. I have made lasting friends at Ardmore and it is still “Great to Be
an Ardmore Tiger.”
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Monday, May 18, 2015
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Public Education Funding
Reading, writing and arithmetic have been taught in this
country for hundreds of years. Most adults have learned these skills in school
at some point. The days of students never attending school is pretty much a
thing of the past. Gone are the days that students worked on the family farm
and were so isolated they never got the opportunity to attend school. Schools
have changed tremendously over the past 100 years and will continue to change
as we move through this decade.
The standards and concepts students are taught continue to
evolve but some things have remained more constant. Students learn many social
and emotional lessons at school in addition to the content standards they are
taught. Students learn to get along with peers and to work collaboratively.
Students learn to control their emotions or at least manage them to respond in
a socially acceptable manner. Just like math standards, some students learn
these emotional skills better than others. Obviously home life also has a
tremendous impact on student learning.
Public school continue to engage in a balancing act that
tries to stress academic goals while teaching life lessons that will impact the
students for the remainder of their lives. Life lessons are very difficult to
quantify and many times get overlooked during the discussion of public
education. We must continue to remember that a person has many dimensions to
their life and as a society we must try to help parents as they instill the
values that will help our young people become citizens of a well adjusted
society. Many issues such as bullying have been plaguing mankind for centuries
are still around to day. While diseases such as polio may have been basically
eradicated from the human population, conflict between human beings continues
to plague us today. While we will never totally eradicate social problems, we
must continue to try and teach students to cope with conflict in a constructive
manner.
Each year when state legislatures meet across the nation and
education budgets are debated I hope legislators will stop and see the big
picture and realize that schools are crucial for the fabric of our society to
remain intact. While reading, writing, and arithmetic are crucial and are at
the center of what public schools offer, they are not all that schools offer
society.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Snow Days
The term “Snow Day” conjures up a variety of emotions. To
some this term is one of pure elation because it means a day out of school. The
fact that a warmer day out of school was lost does not dampen the excitement of
seeing your county on the television scroll or receiving a phone call or text
from the school. Teachers and students alike have been known to wait anxiously
for the announcement that school is canceled.
Many parents on the other hand cringe at the thought of
having to find something to do with their young children. Many will lose a day
of vacation, others will have to pay for a sitter and some are fortunate enough
to have family that is retired that would love to keep the kids for a day. Snow
days many times brings on anxiety trying to find alternate plans for their
children.
There is no perfect decision when it comes to making a call
on weather related closures and delays. For the most part, crystal ball companies
have gone out of business and short of a crystal ball reading there is no way
to definitively know what is going to happen and when. School systems get
tagged alarmist or lazy if they call off school too much or early and labeled
as uncaring and cold if they do not dismiss school soon enough. Thoughts of children being stranded at school
away from their parents cause parents and school officials both to feel great
anxiety. Even worse is the thought of a bus losing control on an icy hill and
causing harm to precious children.
The people that have to make this call most assuredly take
all scenarios into account when making these laborious decisions. I am not one
of these people so I am not justifying my actions but I do know how much
thought and investigation goes into these decisions. Most school systems will
rightly error on the side of caution. The worse scenario is to do anything that
increases the likelihood of harm coming to students. Delays and cancellations
are never easy for anyone and will continue to stir emotions, but at the end of
the day, safety tops everything.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Chamber Meeting
Here is a portion of what I shared with a recent meeting of the Ardmore Chamber of Commerce. We are fortunate to have such a wonderful business community that supports our school. We want to help our students reach their full potential and we need the help of everyone in our community.
Research has
shown over and over that POVERTY is the number one enemy in schools. Throughout
the country, low income areas consistently struggle with test scores. This is
not an excuse, but it is a fact that must be dealt with in order to overcome
it. Over the last eight years our number of students on free
and reduced lunch has increased 5-10 percentage points. It is not that poor
parents do not want their children to learn, but they are occupied with trying
to make a living and many times do not have the time to follow up with their
children’s education. Poor students many times do not have the life experiences
that other students have that can make learning more real.
Drugs and
the poverty they cause is also a huge problem for schools. It is a sad fact that we have
students who do drugs, but many of our students who do drugs have
parents who do drugs. If parents are high or looking for ways to get high, they
are not able to properly take care of their children and education is not a big
priority. As we know drug use and poverty sometimes go hand in hand.
It is really
a sad paradigm, education is perhaps the best way to break the cycle of
poverty, but poverty is the most prohibitive factor to getting a quality
education. Cycles are difficult to break and every year we have graduates that
are the first in their family to graduate high school. Regrettably, each year
we also have students drop out and continue the cycle. We are working hard to
break that cycle and will continue to do everything in our power to break the
cycle.
Schools can
NOT overcome the poverty of their students without parental and community
support. Great teachers are crucial and certainly cannot be overlooked, but the
school as a whole must find a way to engage the parents and enlist their help.
This is where the community is a crucial factor. We must all find ways to
encourage education and look for ways to help parents meet the needs of their
students.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Phone Message on Feb. 10
Limestone county students will attend school for a half day
on Wednesday February 11 to allow teachers to attend professional development
training. Periods 4, 5, 6, and 7 will meet on Wednesday and afternoon tech
students will attend tech. school. Lunch will be served and school will be
dismissed at 11:30.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Technology Message February 6
The faculty at Ardmore is excited about the “Bring Your Own Device” program, and we are finding more and more classroom uses for student-owned digital devices. Please be aware that students will continue to be held accountable for appropriate device usage during school hours, and devices should be put away during class time except for teacher-approved activities. Parents are also encouraged to monitor device usage to discourage inappropriate online behavior at home or at school.
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