School's In Session

It’s first day of school in Waterford and there have been some major changes this year thanks largely to a tight budget. Overall, the district has , two fewer buses, some freshman sports are gone, the high school is under heavy construction and the first day was pushed back a week because of a tropical storm.

Yet Superintendent Jerome Belair couldn’t be more excited.

“I’m pumped,” he said. “I’m totally pumped.”

This will be Belair’s first full school year as superintendent. He started at Waterford in February. He took the summer both to figure out how to do more with less and to come up with two new goals for the school year.

“Well, I think one of the things that we try very hard in our planning is how are we adapting to less staff,” he said. “So, one of the benefits of having a summertime and one of the real assets in a school system is you use the summer to reflect and then plan. Because quite frankly, if you don’t get it done in the summer, it’s not going to happen in the school year.”

With fewer employees, there will be slightly larger class sizes in the elementary schools, longer bus rides for some students and fewer art classes. The remaining employees will just have to pick up the slack, Belair said. “This is our best thinking right now; let’s see how it works,” he said.

Also, the district has one clear goal: literacy. Reading is something used in every job and is necessary to become “college- and career-ready,” Belair said.

“It's great you can read a novel, but you are not reading a novel on a job,” he said. “It's reading to perform a task or reading to gather information.”

Also, the staff at the elementary schools will “re-emphasize” the intervention teams, Belair said. This becomes particularly important with slightly larger class sizes to ensure no student falls behind.

Intervention teams are required by the state to ensure people are not “over-identifying” students as students requiring special education. What happens is when a student is struggling in a particular subject, the teacher and the paraprofessionals will work with that student to try to bring them up to speed, Belair said.

“We’ve got that in place; let’s make sure we are really paying close attention, as the class sizes have increased, to really monitor student progress,” he said. “That’s a safety net we really re-emphasized.”

Waterford High School

Waterford High School, as most know, as part of its renovation set to be complete at the end of 2012. The construction will have an effect on athletics, although not so much to day-to-day academics, Belair said.

The football field is under construction and won’t be ready until the Thanksgiving game against East Lyme. So, the team will play every game except that one on the road.

Also, because of budget cuts. Freshman football was not cut because the board of education said it was the only sport without a town equivalent for that age group.

Also, as part of budget cuts, students will now pay for their advance placement tests and their caps and gowns.

And while several positions were shed as part of the budget process, two new teachers will be at the school. Krystle Bartek will work part-time at the high school, part-time at the middle school as a special education teacher, and Tessa Castleberry, a former Pfizer scientist, will now teach biology.

Clark Lane Middle School

Clark Lane will welcome a new principal, James “Jim” Sachs, formerly an assistant principal at Berlin High School. Sachs replaces Michael Lovetere, who held the post for six years.

Also, after much , the science talented and gifted program will be installed as a twice-weekly after-school program. The class will be taught by teacher Robin Shine and cost the district nothing.

Two software programs, Study Island and Fast ForWord, will no longer be offered.

Oswegatchie Elementary School

For Principal Nancy Macione, along with the other two elementary school principals, the first day of school is still an event. You stay up the entire night before, both anxious and excited, even after over 30 years in education, Macione said.

“It is very exciting and a little nerve-wracking no matter how many times you do it,” she said.

At Oswegatchie, echoing what Belair said, the intervention team and literacy will be focuses. For the intervention, the goal is to get a support person to focus directly on the area of weakness, “to remediate students early on,” Macione said.

And while that might be a challenge, having the new kindergarten students never is, Macione said. At first they are nervous, but always, by the end of the day, they fit right in, she said.

“Once they get here they usually love it,” Macione said. “And I have to say we have such a nurturing staff, so the child just feels comfortable.”

Great Neck Elementary School

This is the first time in three years former Southwest School principal and current Great Neck School Principal Pat Fedor isn’t starting her school year at a different building. And with the second year at a state-of-the-art facility, it's still a joy, she said.

“Oh, it's just a wonderful building,” Fedor said. “We love it.”

And the first day of school is always a day of new, clean everything, from new backpacks to new haircuts to new faces, she said. And generally, the kindergartners come in “not blinking, and just a little on edge,” but at the end of the day, can’t wait to go back, Fedor said.

The school will again have the mentoring program where fifth-graders mentor first-graders. And while the training for the mentoring is mandatory, actually mentoring a student is not, although the participation rate stands at 100 percent, Fedor said.

“It's just a really positive program,” she said. “It really empowers the fifth-graders, and for the little ones, it’s a big deal to them that the big fifth-grader actually knows their name and talks with them.”

To welcome everybody back in style, a sing-a-long will be held at 9:45, Fedor said. Fedor also invited Patch, and we will have pictures later today.

Quaker Hill Elementary School

Diane Gordon taught first grade last year. This year, Gordon will teach second grade to the exact same group of students.

“Its called looping,” Principal Glenda Dexter said. “There has been so much research that shows it is better to have the same class for two years.”

Gordon will swap with Stacey Cardello, who will teach first grade this year and then the same class again for second grade next year. Dexter asked parents if they would be interested in having their students loop, and she said “an overwhelming number of parents wanted to do it.”

Said Dexter: “At the onset of the school year, the teacher already knows the children, and where they are academically.”

The first day will be spent getting the students acclimated to the new building, Dexter said. Within a few days, the students who participated in the governor’s reading challenge will be honored, she said.