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WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017
BECAUSE COMMUNITY MATTERS
Loveland gets new social studies curriculum Marika Lee mlee1@communitypress.com
THE ENQUIRER/SHEILA VILVENS
Students from Grant Career Center spend a day working at the new 15-acre horse farm recently gifted to Empower Youth in Clermont County.
Bank gifts horse farm to Empower Youth Sheila Vilvens svilvens@enquirer.com
When the Community Savings Bank in Bethel recently foreclosed on a 15-acre horse farm on the edge of town, it didn’t put the property on the market to recoup its losses. Instead, the bank gifted the property, valued at about $150,000, to Empower Youth – a group formed in February of 2015, with a focus on giving youth a future regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances. Students in Bethel Schools, Amelia, Grant Career Center and Fayetteville-Perry are all in Empower Youth’s service area – which continues to grow. “What they do and the passion they have to do it with just impressed us,” said Community Savings Bank CEO John Essen of Delhi Township. The gift is just a start. The property needs a lot of work, he said. They will need as many people as possible to get involved. Donated labor and materials will be helpful. The opportunities the property provides Empower Youth are limitless, Essen said. “We could be a gateway to the reducing poverty issue not only in Bethel but in the entire Southwest area. We’re not just feeding people. We’re really
THE ENQUIRER/SHEILA VILVENS
Community Savings Bank in Bethel presented Empower Youth with a 15-acre horse farm, valued at $150,000.
trying to change lives,” he said. The Bethel area has a 38 percent poverty rate, he said. In Clermont County, with a population of just over 203,000, there are about 15,000 residents served by the food assistance program SNAP and 40,000 on Medicaid, according to Shonya Agin, assistant director of public assistance for Clermont County Job and Family Services. The focus of Empower Youth is to break the chain of generational poverty, Essen said. On a recent sunny day, Scott Conley, one of the Empower Youth founders, and a group of equine and steel fabricating students from Grant Career
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Center were at the farm working. Among the students was Makaykla Ragland, a senior in Grant’s equine science program and a member of Empower Youth’s Board of Directors. To her, the gift is an opportunity to transform not only Empower Youth but the community. The biggest thing Empower Youth does is build relationships, she said. “A lot of kids, they don’t have anyone. So, it’s nice to come here and have a mentor,” Ragland said. She includes herself among the students who have benefited from Empower Youth. See BANK, Page 2A
Loveland City Schools is working to increase critical thinking and interactivity with its new social studies curriculum. “In a day and age when we can all get out our phones and find a date, a time in history, a fact, I think getting kids to be critical thinkers is the most important thing we can do,” said Katie Rose, a seventhgrade history teacher at Loveland Middle School. Rose, teachers from multiple grade levels and Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Amy Crouse reviewed the district’s entire social studies curriculum and determined what should be modified or upgraded. The district did the same with the science curriculum last school year. “The teachers felt like there were so many good resources out there but it was hard to get them all and they wanted the kids to have access to that. They wanted the materials they taught and the lessons they have to be interactive. They wanted students to investigate, create, explore, do projects,” Crouse said. The Loveland School Board approved purchasing the new materials by a vote of 4-0. Board member Linda Pennington recently retired from her position on the board. The total for the coursework, including professional development for teachers, is $304,303. “Dr. Crouse does an absolutely fantastic job at realigning everything and getting it organized,” said board member Michele Pettit.
While most of the curriculum will have online portions, Loveland Primary School teacher Kelly Cooper said trade books were chose for the kindergarten through second-grade students. The books are smaller than textbooks and have a workbook in them. “At a young age it is better to have the books in hand,” Cooper said, adding her students are still learning to read and that plays into their history education. Loveland Elementary School teachers Sandy Geiger and Andy Price said third- and fourth-graders will have textbooks paired with an online curriculum to prepare them for the fourth-grade standardized test which is taken online. “We looked for material that will help us introduce the kids to the fourth-grade test. We are trying to make our own resources so we can use the Chromebooks. We proposed getting a group of teachers together over the summer to create our own folders to teach our own content standards and support them with a textbook that we are already using,” Geiger said. The district purchased 1,600 Chromebooks with levy passage in 2014. They are used in grades three to 12. The district has about a 1:2.5 device to student ratio. Loveland Intermediate School teacher Drew Bayliff said the fifth-graders will continue with the same materials from textbook company TCI. “We’ve been with them for a long time. It is a great experience. It’s tailored to the Ohio
THE COMMUNITY PRESS/ MARIKA LEE
Loveland Primary School teacher Kelly Cooper addresses the school board about the new social studies curriculum.
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