What are we doing? While this letter is intended to initiate conversations about our future, there are a number of decisions that we have made or are in the process of making for next year that deserve communication. In some cases, these decisions complete work that began prior to my arrival.
We are establishing a curriculum development process that will evaluate every curricular area every four years. This process will include funding for outside experts, staff professional development, and new aca- demic materials to ensure that each year’s review is thorough and that the results are well implemented.
We have created a new administrative position of Director of Curriculum for next year and expect to fill this position soon.
We will teach math every day at all grade levels next year. This decision will allow us to offer more comprehensive and thorough instruction. We are also evaluating our Upper School math curriculum as a logical extension of the Lower School math curriculum review completed last year.
We are repositioning our learning resources staff to better accommodate academic needs. Courtney Graham will continue her work as our Lower School reading specialist and will also work as our Lower School learning resources instructor. Jackie Munz will concentrate on learning resources in our Upper School.
We have realigned our technology staff to devote more attention to student and teacher education. Tom Rankin will concentrate on educational technology; Frank Torrano will concentrate on systems and infrastructure. Our technology staff is also working to develop a robotics curriculum.
We continue to consider a one-to-one laptop program in the Upper School beginning in the 2017–2018 academic year and hope to finalize plans by the end of this school year.
We have started a process to review the school’s disciplinary policy and expect to make changes to our policy for next year.
We are in the process of creating a new position of Assistant Director of Admission to help manage the volume of applications that we receive and to commit even more attention to diversity and Upper School student recruitment.
Other ideas include an evaluation of our six-day schedule, the possible expansion of our modern language program, the development of an engineering curriculum, and a review of our writing curricu- lum. These ideas will continue to percolate and may well evolve into actual work in the coming months. While these decisions are more mechanical than strategic, we believe that they will help position us to provide an even stronger education next year.
State of the School Report | 2015–2016
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online