The Penfield Central School District announced last week that John Carlevatti has been appointed the new superintendent of the district. Carlevatti, a Penfield graduate, comes from the neighboring Webster school district. In Webster he has served as deputy superintendent, assistant superintendent, and as a middle school principle. Prior to that, he served in similar capacities in the Newark and Greece school districts. Carlevatti officially joins the district on July 1. Interim superintendent Tomas Strinning will continue through June 30. The district started the search for a new superintendent at the end of the last school year following G. Susan Gray's announcement that she would be retiring at the end of the 2007 calender year. The Penfield Central School District, located in Penfield NY (a suburb of Rochester), operates four elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school.
As with any change in leadership, I feel that this will be an opportunity for new thinking, problem solving, and great change. As a graduate of Penfield High School, I think there is a lot to be proud of in this school district. But as with anything, there is always room for improvement. Based on my observations, I have compiled a list of things that I think the new superintendent should address:
1) Fix the math program. This has been a problem for at least the past five years, as the district moved to math teaching involving more exploratory and group work approached to learning math. This is also known by critics as "fuzzy math." It was quickly obvious that the program was a complete failure: students were confused, state test scores plummeted, and parents were demanding answers. Despite a public demand for a change back to more traditional and time proven teaching methods, the Board of Education and superintendent resisted. Parents went so far as to form a lobby group to protest the district, calling themselves "teach us math." The dispute was heavily covered in the local media and even attracted the attention of The New York Times. While things in the past few years have started to return to normal as new textbooks were selected, there are still loose ends to tie up.
2) Foster a closer relationship between students, faculty members, administrators, and the community. This has long been a complaint of students and faculty members, especially at the high school. Despite having at least 6 administrators, there always seemed to be a disconnect between them and the students/faculty at the high school. The most visible, and arguably the most liked, administrators have since retired or moved on. To create the best learning environment possible, there needs to be a tight knit sense of community in all of the schools - although this is mostly a problem at the high school. Improving the website would be a good start. the current template based site is terrible. There are no student-oriented pages, there is no real effort made to capture the flavor of school activities, and no real incentive to ever visit the site.
3) Cuts costs where possible. Every year the budget goes up. While I recognize the sky-rocketing costs of health care benefits for employees, there is no excuse for a high school to have at least 7 full-time administrators (all of which I think it's safe to assume are pulling six figures). Schools were so quick to protest County Executive Maggie Brook's FAIR plan that called for cuts in school funding, yet just last week it came out that the Greece school district had grossly mismanaged school funds during its capital-improvement construction and renovation project. Seeing the resources that were available, I agree with Brooks' assertion that schools could afford to tighten their belts a little and eliminate excess spending.
No comments:
Post a Comment