For his play Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name?”

Well, if it concerns Allen Schools’ new gymnasium, quite a bit actually. That very subject brought much humor to the December 12^th Allen School Board meeting.

Superintendent Jeff Hiatt said the naming of the new gym is a work in progress, as he is currently taking suggestions from teachers. However, at the December 12^th meeting, he presented Allen School Board with suggestions from students, grades 7^th through 12^th .

And the students came up with some whoppers for sure. In fact, some were a little too risqué to release publicly.

However, there were plenty of others.

“So they talked to them about, ‘Let’s be nice, let’s not try to be funny’” Hiatt said at the meeting. “But after all, you’re dealing with junior high kids, so there’re some funny ones in here.”

Funny indeed.

“Number one was liked by all junior high boys,” Hiatt said to much laughter from board members. However, the name suggestion wasn’t read aloud.

Board Clerk Jami Rinehart found humor in a particular suggestion, but it too wasn’t read aloud.

I heard some of the kids saying this one, and I was like, ‘No, no, no, no,’” she said laughingly.

Board Member Kelly Hurt got a laugh out of another suggestion, “Allen’s Newest Gym.”

Rinehart liked a suggestion, “The Big House.”

Some of the suggestions included The Mustang Barn, Highway 48 Gymnasium, The Big Gym, The Allen Stadium of Basketball, Mustang Corral, Mustang Place, The Penthouse, New New Gym, Wild Mustang Gymnasium, Allen Gym, The Shoe, The Horseshoe, Mustang Arena, Allen Field House, Main Event Center, Mustang Corner, Mustang Alley, Mustang Hub, The Spirit Gym, The Mustang Barn, The East Gymnasium, The Main Gym, The Main Street Gym, Allen Basketball Gymnasium, Allen Basketball Center and Mustang Academy.

Report Card

Also during the meeting, Hiatt spoke of a state website called Oklahoma School Report Cards. The address is www.oklaschools.com.

“You can go right here to your student, click on your student, it will pull up,” he said. “If you haven’t done so, you can check on how your child did testing. It even breaks it down and compares it like everything else in the charts, how they compare to others.”

Unfortunately, Allen Schools was given a D on the state report card as far as state testing was concerned.

Hurt said he understands why the report card score for Allen Schools was poor for the last school year, as there was a changing of superintendents and principals.

“The report card this time next year (should) be better,” Hurt said. “This one, you can kind of understand, with the wheels falling off as we went through the year.”

Hiatt said he was told that a school that teaches state standards, then they will receive a C grade.

“If you teach it, you should be a C school,” he said. “If you’re below a C, odds are you’re not teaching the standards.”

Hiatt said another issue from the past was the fact that Allen Schools had old text books.

“We were teaching stuff that wasn’t on the tests,” Hiatt said. “So, to the teachers’ defense, they were teaching, but what they were teaching (the students) weren’t getting tested on. So we’re trying to fi x that problem. That’s the main thing, if we can teach the standards, then I’ll worry more about trying to improve instruction.”

During the meeting, elementary Principal Amy Mayhue spoke about instructional intervention, which helps students improve in an area or areas of need. She said they have increased interventions quite a bit in third, fourth and fi fth grades.

“Third grade gets a full hour of reading, and fourth grade is getting a full hour of reading and math that they didn’t get before,” Mayhue said. “Fourth and fi fth grade have not had intervention in the past, so they are now. The other part is I’ve added the Educational Galaxy (an online assessment, practice and instruction for students) that they’re working on in the Chromebooks during intervention when they’re not working with a teacher. What’s wonderful about that program is it has two components. It has a component for the kids who are on level, and then for ones who are behind.

Mayhue said they can put the students on whichever program they need to be on, and the kids don’t know that they’re on a different one.

“So what it does, if it’s on the side that is below level, it takes them all the way as far back as first grade and fi lls holes and gaps that they have all the way back,” Mayhue said. “I was working with a fourth-grader this week and he was working on a first grade math skill in decomposing numbers. It was the only gap he had. So we went all the way back there.”

Mayhue spoke about next year.

“I’m super excited about next year because we have a lot of plans for more math intervention, all the way down,” she said. “So that will help us. Because I really feel like -- and Mr. Hiatt started this -- we have to work on our kinders. We have to work way back there if we’re going to fix this. Because those gaps begin there. And so, our kindergarteners, I’m so proud of them. Their interventions, they are doing something very, very right. They went from having 50 percent of their kids below level at the beginning of the year to now, that is in half. I’m very proud of them. Whatever they’re doing is working. These kids are learning their letters, they’re learning their sounds, they’re doing what they need to do.”

Mayhue spoke of gifted kids

“I feel very strongly that our time spent on gifted kids every Friday is also going to give us a big bang for our buck, because it’s going to give those kids the thinking skills that they need in order to do that test. And those are the kids that we want to score advanced.”

Hurt asked Mayhue how well she thought Allen students will do next year (on the state report card), to which she replied, “I don’t see us coming up to an A,” she said. “I don’t even really see a B at this point. I’m hoping for a C at this point. I’m hoping at least a letter grade up. If we do that, I think we will have done a lot.”