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December 15, 2002
Ed Tech Leaders of the 2002 (cont'd)
National Winner
Timothy Jenney
Superintendent
Virginia Beach City Public Schools
Virginia Beach, Va.
If Timothy Jenney looks familiar to readers of Technology & Learning, it's because he was featured on the cover of our June 2002 Guide for School Technology Leaders. Given the widespread technology accomplishments he's achieved in his district, we're happy to recognize him in a more formal way as the national winner in the administrator category.
In just a few years, Jenney accomplished an extraordinary feat: he transformed Virginia Beach City Public Schools into one of the most technologically advanced facilities in the nation. He did this in the face of budgetary problems, legal and political issues, and a certain level of local skepticism regarding his use of business models to solve education challenges.
The changes that Jenney has initiated have two clear purposes: first, to provide teachers with the technology, training, and support they need to do their job, and second, to ensure that the technology directly contributes to student achievement. Every innovation the district undertakes has to relate in a clear and understandable way to these purposes.
Teachers and other staff are given a range of opportunities to maintain their technology skills. For example, Technology Standards for Instructional Personnel provides face-to-face classes for staff as well as self-training modules on the district intranet. So far over 4,000 teachers, guidance counselors, and administrators have passed online tech skills tests through TSIP. The payoff for the district's investment in this area is a highly professional staff well prepared to help students meet the community's expectations.
Other technology innovations Jenney has promoted are so simple you wonder why you didn't think of them. The district Web site, for example, has a Scholarship Central feature that helps parents and students track down college scholarships. The School Locator feature provides new residents with information about the schools serving their neighborhood.
A statement by Jenney from the Web site of The Broad Center for Superintendents, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to support outstanding leaders to become urban school superintendents, summarizes his perspective: "I believe it is possible to create a renaissance of learning and to rally community support for one of the largest sources of human potential for our future that exists anywhere. In this country, we cannot afford to write off 57 percent of the nation's future workforce. The quality of all of our lives depends on the success or failure of public education with all of our children."
Advanced Technology Center
An exciting aspect of Virginia Beach's technology program is the Advanced Technology Center. Offering secondary and post-secondary students technology instruction and workforce training, the center is a collaboration between the school district, the city, and Tidewater Community College. Each partner contributed more than $12 million to establish the facility, and the Commonwealth of Virginia added $10 million more and provided the land on which the center was built.
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