By DONNA BURROUGHS
Superintendent, Triton Community School Corporation

BOURBON — Project Tomorrow, the national education nonprofit group, announced the selection of both schools from Triton School Corporation as Speak Up Loud and Clear schools. Formerly known as Speak Up 200, Speak Up Loud and Clear is a collection of the top K-12 schools in the country that encourage and involve authentic student, parent and teacher ideas and views in the education planning and decision-making.

We are pleased to announce that Triton Elementary School and Triton Junior-Senior High School were selected to receive this national distinction from the 35,000 schools nationwide that have participated in the annual Speak Up surveys since 2003.

More than 520,000 K-12 students, teachers, administrators and parents, representing over 8,000 public, private and charter schools from all around the country participated in the Speak Up 2014 surveys which were open for participation in fall 2014.

In making the announcement, Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow, noted, “We are very encouraged to know that some of the most innovative districts in our country are using the ideas of students as well as parents and teachers as input into their decision-making. By empowering student voices, the 2014 Speak Up Loud and Clear schools provide the education community with powerful examples of the value of including stakeholders in these important discussions around education transformation and school improvement.”

Across the nation, Speak Up Loud and Clear schools are using the data from the online Speak Up surveys to develop strategic plans, make budgeting decisions, enhance their curriculum, and determine professional development needs.

Our Speak Up Loud and Clear schools will be prominently featured on the Project Tomorrow website and receive special recognition from Project Tomorrow. Additionally, Project Tomorrow will promote our schools’ distinction to our Congressional representative and state Governor to demonstrate the power of educational innovation at the local level.

Project Tomorrow has tapped into the expertise of this year’s Speak Up Loud and Clear schools to develop new questions for Speak Up 2015 which will be open for student, educator, parent input and more at www.tomorrow.org. Additionally, their success stories are being shared with our partners and national policy organizations to inform national and regional education reform efforts.