St. Johnsbury School District

Report of the Superintendent of Schools

Annual Report for Town Meeting

March 6, 2012

Exercise your right to vote!

In this, the second of three years of our School Improvement Grant project which we entered as a result of being identified as a Tier I school, we have begun to see significant changes in the instructional and behavioral programs at school.  Many of these changes were developed and planned for in the last school year.  Others have come about through the leadership of our new administrative team.  We were joined by Dr. Martha Dubuque as our new Principal for Instructional Programs.  She partners with Bernice Burroughs, Principal for Behavior, Climate, and General Operations to oversee the entire educational program which includes students from grades Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 8, one of the largest elementary/middle schools in Vermont.  Together they make up the building level administrative team, supported by three key grant-funded consultants: A data/assessment specialist, a literacy consultant, and a mathematics consultant. 

At the District level, we have moved to a Superintendent at 40%, supplemented at 20% to serve as the School Improvement Director, funded by the School Improvement Grant and monitored closely by the Department of Education.  The installation of building level Co-Principals has allowed me to focus on the duties of a Superintendent, as outlined in Vermont Statutes Title 16 § 242.  Directing all Special Education Programs and addressing issues involving students ages birth through 22 is a Director of Student Support Services. The Business Manager is the third District level administrator.  She oversees the fiscal health and all financial activities of the District. 

As I prepare to retire from the State of Vermont Education system, and to leave my position in St. Johnsbury, I can reflect on some of the accomplishments that we have made over my five years here, and on some of the challenges that remain. 

Our School Improvement Grant is focused on the following areas:

• increased professional development with on-site consultants in instructional supervision, math, and literacy;
• a model of specialization of instruction to focus some teachers on math and others on literacy or science and social studies;
• creation of a school-wide system to address positive behavior and climate, and literacy instruction;
• support for struggling students;
• professional development focusing on learning and the brain.

We supplement this work with our other federal grants which we plan to use again to support lead teachers in literacy, math, science, technology, and behavior. These grants enhance our instructional program by ensuring small class sizes, up-to-date technology systems, and classroom-based professional development.

The economic conditions are a continuing cause of concern.  We have worked hard to produce a budget with a minor increase in spending that will still have a downward effect on the tax rate.   This continues a trend over the last four years of frugal fiscal management.  At the same time, we have paid off our sizable deficit that was discovered and investigated four years ago.  How can this be possible?  As with most budgetary explanations, there are several factors – some of which will be discussed in the report of our Business Manager, Kathryn Ducharme.  As opposed to sloppy budgeting, what you see in this budget as well as in our audit reports (which for the second year in a row have given the District a clean bill of health) is careful accounting and solid fiscal management.  In broad terms, we have seen:

• conservative budgeting which made allowances for unexpected expenses that did not materialize;
• extremely cautious budget management with firm internal controls and accountability to watch spending closely;
• final corrections on past accounting errors;
• excellent work on both the part of our Business Manager and our Director of Student Support Services which served to maximize reimbursements from the State over and above expectations;
• lower expenses for high school tuition than anticipated. (This is due to the impossibility of foreseeing how many students will move to the District for their high school years, and our efforts to assure the taxpayers that we are making every effort to only fund the tuition of those students whose sole legal residence is St. Johnsbury).

It has been a privilege to serve for the last five years as the Superintendent of the St. Johnsbury School District.  I would like to thank the administrators, teachers, and students whose hard work and sense of purpose has made this job a pleasure. This community has built a state of the art facility which is kept in immaculate condition and offers to its students all the advantages of a 21^st century education.  The efforts currently underway to sharpen the instructional program and guarantee a safe and respectful environment should guarantee the citizens of this town the total school program that we all deserve. 

Thank you for your support.

Respectfully submitted,

Nicole Saginor, Ed.D.

THIS IS THE YEAR!

In the spring of 2010, the St. Johnsbury School was notified belatedly that its standardized test scores placed it in the category of a Tier I school.  This designation created by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law was designed to identify schools who had not met “adequate yearly progress” over a period of time.  The measure of adequate yearly progress, known simply as AYP, is a complex formula whose bar for reaching it increases every three years, until theoretically all students reach proficiency in the year 2014.  This has not happened in Vermont, and it has not happened nationally.  It is for that and other reasons that NCLB is in the process of being reviewed for adjustments and waivers.

Yet our status as a Tier I school, as unwelcome as it was, served as a tool for reflective analysis which we undertook last year with the help of federal School Improvement Grant funds.  The task was to transform the school, its culture, and its student performance so that we could meet AYP by the end of three years. It was a challenging year which sometimes seemed overwhelming.  Yet, we found our way through it and can point to several achievements which have put us on a path forward.  

Some of these achievements that are setting the stage for this year are:

• The development and piloting of a set of Standards of Professional Practice meant to serve as a picture of expected high quality teacher performance standards that is research-based and correlated to improved student achievement;
• An analysis of our school by an external team sent by the State Department of Education outlining the strengths of our schools and identifying areas to address;

• An analysis of our math and literacy programs carried out by consultants to guide us in increasing our intensity and effectiveness in these two tested areas;

• The formation of a Professional Design Team whose task it was to create structures and resources to support the professional development of our teaching faculty, including the Standards of Professional Practice, the refinement of the report card, and the designing of a new schedule to increase instructional time;

• The use of “collaborative work time” for each house for the analysis of student work in order to maximize instructional interventions;

• The use of weekly after school work time to establish outcomes at each grade level for literacy and math so that expectations are set high and are clear to all;

• The development of a new classroom model to maximize effectiveness of math and literacy instruction by pairing teachers who will specialize in either math or literacy, supported by math and literacy specialists at each house level;

• The adoption of a co-teaching model to add flexibility to the special education strategies we can use;

• Training of a team in the Vermont Integrated Instruction Model (ViiM) that will pull together a school-wide program of Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) with a “response to intervention” approach to instruction that will be supported by our consistent use of student data and progress monitoring to ensure that student needs are addressed in time;

• The adoption of a new after-school program with an exciting skill-based curriculum.

Some of these are completed activities, some are ongoing, and others were first steps in a process that will naturally develop new initiatives.  The work that we did last year was both reflective and transformative, but was not always comfortable.  We believe that we will make modest gains this year in our yearly testing.  However, with the stage set by our actions last year and the addition of our new Principal for Instruction who will work with our Principal of General Operations to lead the school forward, this is the year that will bring the results we need.  I say it is the year because it has to be the year.  We have worked hard, done our research and training, and now it is time to reap the benefits of that work.

We will be holding a Community Forum on October 26 to hear from the citizens of St. Johnsbury what outcomes they expect the St. Johnsbury School to produce.  We will use this opportunity to listen and to participate in the dialogue.  We do this because we cannot ultimately succeed without the support of our community.  I look forward to hearing the constructive participation that will help us build a common purpose to educate the children of St. Johnsbury for the benefit of all.

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