Education Strategy

Rochester, Minn. The Rochester School Board has chosen a veteran school administrator from Iowa to be the district’s next superintendent.

Michael Munoz currently works as the chief academic officer for the Des Moines Public Schools. He’s also worked as a teacher, counselor, coach and principal in Iowa and Nebraska.

School Board Chair Dan O’Neil said the board voted unanimously to offer him the vacant position.

“His connection to the community through some of the community sessions that he had and his communication of clear intent for being an educator, for being all about the students, those two things, communicating and connecting, were superlative,” O’Neil said.

The Rochester School Board will now to enter into contract negotiations with Munoz.

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St. Paul, Minn. — More than three dozen people have applied for an open seat on the St. Paul School Board.

The seat was left vacant in November when board member Vallay Varro stepped down to head an education non-profit. The St. Paul School Board now has to appoint someone to fill that seat for the year remaining in Varro’s term.

With the application period now closed, the district says 41 people applied. Familiar names include two former St. Paul School Board members, Al Oertwig and William Finney. Finney also used to be St. Paul’s police chief.

Another applicant is David Unowsky – he used to own a well-known bookstore in St. Paul called the Hungry Mind. <

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California will toss out its current curriculum and require students to read the same textbooks and learn the same arithmetic as children in most other states, the Board of Education decided Monday.

The board unanimously adopted national academic standards to be in sync with schools across the country. So far, about 30 other states have also adopted the so-called Common Core State Standards.

The new content means discarding the standards California officials adopted about 13 years ago – standards widely considered among the best in the country.

Yet despite initial concerns that the new national academic standards would dumb down California’s curriculum, state education officials said Monday that with just a few tweaks and some additional content, the new standards will give kids a stronger, more organized approach to math and English.

“The Common Core standards build upon the best of California’s rigorous standards with the best of what other states and high-performing countries offer their students,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell.

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