Welcome to the web site for Urbana City Schools. I invite you to take some time to learn more about our district by using the links provided. Please make use of the available district calendar and plan to join us for one or more of our many public activities.
The 2012-13 school year is the third year of participation by the Urbana City School District in the Federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Race to the Top (RttT) Fund. During the four years of this program over $290,000 in funding will be provided to the District for improvement initiatives. With these funds we are implementing the new Common Core standards in English language arts and mathematics and the Ohio revised social studies and science content standards. In addition, data systems to measure student growth, improved student performance assessments, and new staff evaluation systems are being implemented with these dollars.
Urbana Junior High School has been awarded a Formative Assessment Middle School (FAMS) grant from the RttT funds provided to Ohio. About $60,000 in support will be used by the staff as they develop formative assessment strategies to provide evidence of student understanding so that teachers are able to make informed changes to the instructional process.
We are also entering the third year of implementation of our assessment and grading guidelines. A district-wide task force worked for over a year to generate new guidelines for assessing student work to improve consistency and to focus on student mastery. The goal is for grades to be more accurate and based on what students know and are able to do without the influence of factors such as behavior and extra credit. More information can be found under the Grading and Assessment tab on our home page at http://www.urbana.k12.oh.us .
Thank you for your interest in our district. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.
Charles Thiel
Superintendent
Email: Charles.Thiel@urbanacityschools.org