Royal Oak recently was selected by Disney as one of only 30 stops on its nationwide 'What Will You Celebrate?' tour, spotlighting Disney theme parks and offering chances to win a free 'celebration vacation'.
Royal Oak business owners enthusiastic about the Disney coming, quickly created a 'Family Fun Night' as a way to celebrate and bring more families into the downtown.
Radio Disney (AM 910) on Friday agreed to jump into the mix too. They'll be kicking out the Disney tunes from their base outside The Baldwin Theatre on Lafayette.
Family Fun Night activities are planned for this Friday, Oct. 3 from 5-8 p.m. Some Highlights Include:
Free Parking Downtown from 5-8 p.m.
Cool Disney-inspired, kids-eat-free menus or special discounts
Coloring Contests, Prizes, Games, Giveaways
Kids' Castle Moonwalk at Sixth and Main (Fresard's Auto Body Shop)
Late Shopping - 'til 8 p.m.
A Drive-In Movie at Dusk at Main Street & I-696
Kids can come dressed as their favorite Disney Character
Green Brainstorming Session Wednesday, September 17 at 7pm Royal Oak Farmer's Market
The Royal Oak Environmental Advisory Board wants your ideas and assistance in making Royal Oak a more environmentally responsible city. Join us on September 17 at 7pm to brainstorm ideas about recycling, yard waste/compost, air quality, hazardous waste management, energy, water quality, and transportation.
“Think Green” Partnership between Library and City Environmental Advisory Board
Royal Oak, MI — March 20, 2008 – Instead of giving away the usual plastic bags for carrying home library books, the Royal Oak Public Library is gearing up to sell re-usable book bags, made of recycled plastic bottles.
In August Blue Lake International Exchange Program (a truly wonderful youth music experience) is coming to Royal Oak.We are having both a French group and a German group come through (different dates).
This program benefits everybody it touches; I see it as a community wide opportunity. We (Royal Oak High School Band and Orchestra Boosters) need goodwill ambassadors! -- Host European visitors and experience an international exchange—and never leave home! See HERE for general info...more details will follow as we move forward.
Even if you're not interested in direct involvement, keep your eyes posted for announcements of the performances.
BY LORI HIGGINS • FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER • March 8, 2008
Some parents say they welcome a proposal to voluntarily test their children for drugs, saying the effort will help prevent drug abuse and spark needed conversations about drugs between parents and kids.
The proposal -- which Royal Oak Superintendent Thomas Moline intends to present to the Board of Education in May -- calls for middle and high school students and their parents to approve random drug testing throughout the school year. Only parents would receive the results.
If approved, testing would begin in the 2008-09 school year. The testing is part of a proposal from the Save Our Youth Task Force, a community group that was formed after the heroin-related deaths of young people in and around Royal Oak in 2005.
"We're not here to play gotcha. We're here to engage the parent and child," said Moline, who also said the district's policy would be the first in the state.
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There's no guarantee that a child will be picked for testing, but just being on the list will be a deterrent, Moline said. The program would be modeled after one in San Clemente, Calif.
Catherine and Kirk Goddard, whose 19-year-old son Zack died of a drug overdose in April 2006, have been members of the task force since it began and cochair a subcommittee.
Their son began experimenting with drugs in middle school, something the Goddards did not discover until he was in high school.
Catherine Goddard said she thinks a drug testing program might have helped prevent her son's drug abuse.
"We'll never know," she said Friday. "But I can't help but believe it certainly would have opened up more conversations with him."
• Over 26 percent (40 percent freshman) of the students who signed up said they used the program to say no to drugs. Putting that in real numbers means that more than 400 students at San Clemente said no to drugs with the help of this program.
• 17 percent of all students said they used the program to say no to drugs even though they were not enrolled.
• 26 percent of students who were using drugs prior to enrollment said their use declined after participating.
• 15 percent of students said they stopped using drugs after being enrolled.
• 60 percent of all students said the program resulted in a conversation about drugs and drug use in the home.
• 57 percent of all students said the program is helpful and should be continued.
Teachers pay more to keep insurance Health plan change to save district $400,000 annually by Catherine Kavanaugh, Daily Tribune Staff Writer
ROYAL OAK -- Public school teachers agreed to contribute more toward health care costs in order to keep their insurance carrier as part of a new three-year contract.
The 365 members of the Royal Oak Education Association maintained coverage with the Michigan Education Special Services Association but union officials describe it as a "reduced" plan boosting co-pays for prescriptions from $5/$10 for generic/brand drugs to a $10/$20-plus plan.
Expansion Management Magazine Names Royal Oak Schools One of Nation's Best
Royal Oak, MI. - Royal Oak was recently recognized with a "gold medal" as one of the top metropolitan area public school districts in the United States by Expansion Management Magazine. Of 140 Michigan schools studied, Royal Oak was one of 29 to earn the "gold medal" distinction, putting them in the top 16 percent nationally of districts evaluated.
Expansion Management Magazine, a monthly business magazine for executives of companies that are actively looking for a place to expand or relocate their facilities, recently published its 2007 Education Quotient study, a ranking of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) with the best overall public school systems. The magazine rates secondary school districts as a way of providing its readers with a basis for comparing the type of work force they are likely to encounter in communities around the country.
The study features in-depth data on more than 2,800 public school districts throughout the country with an enrollment of at least 3,300 students and contains comparative rankings on academic performance (college board scores, graduation rates), spending on public education (student-teacher ratios, teacher salaries, per pupil spending) and the relative affluence and education of the adult population within the community.
The new Royal Oak High School, which merged 650 students from Dondero High School and 1,100 students from Kimball High School this year, is drawing a lot of attention from educators statewide.
The new high school opened at the beginning of the school year in the former Kimball building, which now boasts a Royal Oak High School sign, as well as new Ravens sports teams.
Students at Oak Ridge Elementary will be seeing double when they come back to school.
A mural painted at the school during the summer features some Oak Ridge students under the phrase "When people share, care, help and listen, we create peace."
The painting was made by Kristen MacPhee, an artist and Oak Ridge parent.
The mural depicts actual Oakridge students who posed for photgraphs, which MacPhee then designed into her hallway mural. MacPhee has been known for her murals and trompe l'oeil furtniture designs, ever since she assisted with the Leaping Whale mural in Downtown Detroit.
Oakland County passes, but some local declines are troubling
Oakland County is standing proud overall, but many local school districts were disappointed by the high school Michigan Educational Assessment Program test, which is used to gauge the quality of local schools.
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Royal Oak bucked almost all the trends to gain ground in math, science, social studies and writing.
"The Adequate Yearly Progress standard imposed by the federal No Child Left Behind law has raised the expectation for our students four times in the four years since the law came into existence -- Royal Oak Schools has cleared that bar each time," said Royal Oak Superintendent Tom Moline. "I am not certain how long our district can maintain that situation, but for now we are very pleased with our teachers' efforts and our parents' support of their children."
Royal Oak was one of the few districts that could be satisfied.... Continued
Royal Oak district explains timeline for elementary buildings.
ROYAL OAK -- The Ravens are feathering their nest at Royal Oak High School, which opens in September in the former Kimball High School site.
The contractors are moving into the future Royal Oak Middle School -- what used to be Dondero High School -- for a year of remodeling with an opening date in fall 2007.
Now the parents of younger children want more information on the consolidation of the elementary schools.
Superintendent Thomas Moline is reminding residents that Royal Oak will be down to six elementary buildings by the 2008-09 school year -- if not sooner. The kindergartners through fifth-graders will go to Addams, Keller, Northwood, Oakland, Oak Ridge and Upton elementary schools.
Lisa Bradford, perhaps best known for rallying voters to pass the last school bond and operating millage, took a seat Thursday on the Board of Education to fill out the remaining term for Deborah Wright.
The mother of two and Troy-based Realtor was appointed from a field of 10 applicants. She was sworn in by Karen Patrick, the superintendent's administrative assistant, and then joined the board for a 4 1/2-hour meeting that included certifying the rate of the millage that passed May 2.
Voters approved a levy of 3.5 mills on residential property but the rate was lowered a couple times, including last night to 2.9 mills, because the tax is regularly adjusted to keep within its limit of generating $850 per student.
Graduation day is here for high school seniors and one thing is certain for most within the class of 2006 -- more graduations will come. Learning is an unavoidable process through a lifetime and constant upgrade of skills is an expectation of today's work world. The high school diploma is now a steppingstone to more required education.
A point Bill Gates made to me is that if you had a choice, thirty-five years ago, between being a B student in the Bronx or a genius born in Bangalore, there is no question; your life opportunities would be so much better if you were a B student in the Bronx. You could be a super-genius in Bangalore, but you really couldn't translate that into anything. When the world is flat, it is just the opposite. You do not want to be a B student in the Bronx, because every genius in Bangalore can now plug and play more directly than ever.
One of the things I do in the book is profile the Microsoft Research Center in Beijing. As Gates explained to me, it is now the leading research center for Microsoft. They have three research centers, one in Cambridge, one in Redmond, and since 1998, one in Beijing. I don't know if you know how they organized this research center: they went to the leading scientific and technical universities around China, a country of 1.3 billion people, and gave IQ tests to the top 2,000 students. Then they chose twenty for their research center in Beijing. Do you know what kind of salmon you have to be to swim upstream in China to make it to the Microsoft Research Center in Beijing, which the Chinese government allows to grant postdoctoral degrees? As they say at the Microsoft Research Center in Beijing, when you are one in a million, well, there are 1,300 other people just like you.
So we don't have the education here — as Bill Gates said, our high school education is basically obsolete. On test scores for math and science at fourth grade level, we are ahead; by eighth grade we are even; and by twelfth grade we are behind—which means our students are getting dumber as they go through school, to put it bluntly.
Disappointed in stagnant test scores, the staff at Longfellow Elementary School has turned to educational games to reinforce math concepts lost on some students. They discovered measurable success.
The enrichment program that features games like Mathematics Pentathlon helped 100 percent of third-graders and 96 percent of fourth-graders pass the Michigan Educational Assessment Program test.
Schooled For Better Times Michigan must become a diploma-plus state by Detroit Free Press, May 9, 2006
The road to a brighter economic future for Michigan starts in school.
For decades, it was not necessarily so. The state prospered through good-paying factory jobs in the auto industry that did not require much in the way of formal education. Those jobs are rapidly vanishing, thanks to automation, outsourcing and global competition. Modern jobs require more. Simply put, to earn, you have to learn.
