I am reaching out to my fellow cadet leaders from across the country for help. Recently, one of our local middle schools has been re-designated as an Aerospace Charter Magnet School beginning next school year. After a meeting with them, they are strongly interested in beginning a School Enrichment Program for 6 -7 -8 grade and basing their curriculum on CAP Aerospace texts.
The school has not been meeting test scores for the previous seven years. 96% of the students qualify for the reduced / free lunch program. Under the charter, 51% of the school's teachers have to be hired from the outside. Unusual as it is, they have a small Army JROTC program which will be switched over to CAP Cadet Program and expanded to at least 150 cadets.
There is only one local squadron, mine. I envision a situation where the cadets will also be able to participate with local squadron with training, ES, NCC, etc on an ongoing basis. The cadets that wanted to, after they leave the 8th grade, would be able to transfer to the local squadron and continue their CAP career.
Also under the charter, the school's principal has been given very wide latitude with ways to change the school and has asked me to meet with the Curriculum Integration Committee regarding everything. I have been in contact with LTC Gerry Levesque (Sheldon District, Texas 245 cadets) and he has been very helpful. However, I need more. Any thoughts, obstacles, solutions, etc (brainstorming) would be great. You may also PM me if you desire to do so.
Thanks!
Have you contacted your wing staff? External DAE? DDRA? Wing/CC?
THese folks absolutely need to in the loop and can access more folks/information.
You can also contact Curt LaFond at NHQ. The CAP schools programs work out of the same directorate.
Your first obstical is going to be that you will have a fairly large squadron with little or no leadership.
You may consider TDYing some of your senior cadets to help out.
Also get with the teachers that will be heading up this squadron and get them throug Level I, SLS, TLC and the BOC as soon as possible.
Get them SIMS! Get them SIMS! Get them SIMS! (did I mention getting them SIMS?)
Get with wing and see what they can do to do some cadet level leadership/basic training courses. CAWG has some great weekend course that you can steal.
Do some wing level activites at or near the school so that they can get intregrated with the larger CAP family.
I would not push ES too soon. Let the new staff focus on just the CP and AE parts of the program at first....ES will follow.
Good luck!
PM sent.
I took a look at the SIMS site (squadroncommand?) the other day and got the feeling that support is basically in the gutter, and that it may be quite sometime for any updates to be made, if ever.
With that, I suppose most any tool is better than nothing, the question would be, probably for another thread, is this one in the "most" category, or not.
I was directly interested in test tracking and saw that it basically completely lags in that regard if what I read is any indicator. I'm not all that inclined to install a bunch of stuff just to find out. I may revisit FileMaker again and make something that does just test tracking with a download for member data.
Quote from: a2capt on May 06, 2010, 04:15:17 AM
I took a look at the SIMS site (squadroncommand?) the other day and got the feeling that support is basically in the gutter, and that it may be quite sometime for any updates to be made, if ever.
With that, I suppose most any tool is better than nothing, the question would be, probably for another thread, is this one in the "most" category, or not.
I was directly interested in test tracking and saw that it basically completely lags in that regard if what I read is any indicator. I'm not all that inclined to install a bunch of stuff just to find out. I may revisit FileMaker again and make something that does just test tracking with a download for member data.
I doubt we'll ever see updates to SIMS as we're
slowly transitioning to eServices for everything it seems.
Quote from: mynetdude on May 06, 2010, 04:38:49 AM
I doubt we'll ever see updates to SIMS as we're slowly transitioning to eServices for everything it seems.
Not that it's that bad of a thing, except for use during meetings there are units that still don't have some sort of regular internet access.
Quote from: a2capt on May 06, 2010, 05:08:23 AM
Quote from: mynetdude on May 06, 2010, 04:38:49 AM
I doubt we'll ever see updates to SIMS as we're slowly transitioning to eServices for everything it seems.
Not that it's that bad of a thing, except for use during meetings there are units that still don't have some sort of regular internet access.
SIMS doesn't require internet access? What do you do with the data stored in SIMS then?
On a side note, I understand one must be a school teacher employed at the school to administer the CAP school enrichment program. Are there any provisions to allow CAP members to run the school enrichment program along with a teacher whom is also a CAP member (I believe for the CAP enrichment program the teacher must also be a CAP member)
SIMS doesn't require internet access, but .. ahem.. eServices .. does.
The switch to eServices, combined with the lack of updates to SIMS, especially if something new is added that should be tracked, then that kinda makes SIMS a moot point. .. and back to the internet need.
Quote from: mynetdude on May 06, 2010, 05:25:31 AM
SIMS doesn't require internet access? What do you do with the data stored in SIMS then?
Once the initial download of the MIMS data is done (nice to have but not absolutely required), there is no requirement for Internet access.
We all wish to good luck with your school program. However one problem I have had is the age group. Over the past several years I have had to deal with 11year olds...and they are just not mature enough to understand our encampments, and military style dicipline. Some of our aerospace is actualy written for 8th garde and above. Finding uniforms, especially BDU's is getting especially hard. We hunt the yard sales, old military stores, etc. Not much luck. But hang in there. Hard8.
Actually, I've found that support for SIMS is alive and doing very well. I've been using the latest version since November. This version supports the text-only download from NHQ and eServices, and does all of the conversions to the databases automatically. I really haven't noticed any difference between the older versions and the current.
SIMS has been a great resource, and has made my job as DCC/admin/personnel officer much easier. I'd like to take records completely electronic, but there are just some things that have to be kept in hard-copy form (test sheet toppers, participation letters, activity certificates, etc.). Just log the info under the proper tab in SIMS, then chuck the hard-copy into the member's file for storage.
I also use eServices for cadet promotions. It gets a little cumbersome having to enter the data in two places, but it makes life much easier. I use it as a backup to SIMS, as well as a separate data backup process for the SIMS database. I've gotten several "Best practice" mentions on SUIs for using technology to streamline record keeping.
I think the SIMS topic is a huge hijack, but...
I can't think of a single thing that we need to keep paper copies of for member records, and I don't.
We shouldn't have original certificates so that's out, and there is no reason you can't scan and e-file everything else.
I literally produced all of the documentation for my SUI electronically. The inspection team sat next to me, asked the ?'s and I showed them the product. I'm thinking on my next round that I'll put together a ppt. and project it. Click my presenter when asked and drink coffee from the back of the room.
I would highly recommend that you have a very detailed discussion about record keeping and tracking, and even more strongly would recommend that you do all of this electronically, and specifically host from a non-personality based system.
Set up a Google education edition account, and file everything in gdocs. Make sure you have a detailed naming convention, decide who has access on what levels, invest in a high quality scanner. And get with the school IT people to generate a robust backup plan. Assign people official email addresses for correspondence and access, and shred paper as soon as you can. Requiring more than one file drawer for CAP is a thing of the past (or should be)
I am postured so that I can literally transfer the entire archive of files for my group in a few clicks and without ever sitting at the same table as the next guy.
Additionally, you should start working with the appropriate people at the school to plan a budget, and work through other logistical concerns. Work with the administrators to decide what level of involvement they are expecting from you and what you can expect them to reciprocate with. Make sure you have direct, honest, undersold discussions detailing the realistic abilities of the wing and it's resources. Then, overproduce and have frequent discussions about progress and vector. These should be at least weekly for a while.
Start small AE and CP only at first. Focus your efforts on the 6th and 7th graders, but don't neglect the 8th. Remember life gets easier as more people learn how things are done. If you develop next year's cadre this year, they will help develop 2012's cadre and so on until the cadet program is basically running itself.
I would strongly recommend to the administrators that they not push for the full 150 for a couple of years. Just as with anything new too much too soon can ruin the learning curve and generate unproductive results. Start with 50 or less and build from there. Once the framework is set you can grow.
Since such school programs are becoming such a large part of CAP (around 10% of cadet members and growing the last time I checked), I would hope we had some sort of cookie-cutter guide for approaching these situations. But, then again, I don't think we have any sort of recent guide on how to start a regular CAP squadron either.
In looking at the CAP school program web site http://members.gocivilairpatrol.com/cadet_programs/opportunities/cadets_after_school.cfm I see that NHQ is actually not encouraging in-school programs anymore and would rather see CAP done as an after-school activity. In other words, just basing a CAP squadron at the school rather than trying to integrate CAP into the regular school curriculum as a regular class.
See this presentantation on what CAP envisions: http://members.gocivilairpatrol.com/media/cms/Cadets_After_School_Layout_1_6FD244EF263B6.pdf
I think that this might actually be a better way to go. Surely it is a lot easier administratively to deal with it as another extracurricular activity rather than as a for-credit class. I think CAP's AE stuff could be taught as a class, but trying to deal with that many kids in the CAP program itself would be a monster headache. I'd rather work with those that are really dedicated to the program. Of course the numbers won't be anywhere near the same and won't look as impressive, but you would have a solid squadron.