“It’s going to be a great year for us,” said Erik Kelt, the principal of the Springs School, at the school board’s first meeting Tuesday night of the academic year. Although it was only five days into the semester, Mr. Kelt said he can already feel a “different atmosphere” and “a lot of positivity.”
The board had determined at the end of the last academic year to focus more closely on the curriculum, to ensure that students are meeting educational benchmarks set by the state. Toward that goal, the administration has invested in an online curriculum management platform called Atlas.
Mr. Kelt told the board that all teachers have now been trained in how to use the platform to map out their lessons for the year. Those curriculums are then saved, creating a database that future teachers will be able to consult to see exactly what material their students have already covered, enabling them to “vertically align” their own lessons accordingly.
The school is also continuing to implement evidence-based “instructional best practices” outlined by the State Education Department as part of its Literacy Initiative. The department released a new guide in January to help school districts across the state in reviewing their literacy curriculums for students in kindergarten through third grade.
The PTA president, Danielle Fine, stated that while the previous school year had been “quite a banner year for fund-raising,” the PTA hopes to surpass the numbers this year and raise roughly $170,000 — “by far” the largest goal it has ever set. She also announced plans for a new custom paving stone fund-raiser, with donors buying engraved bricks to create a path in the school’s garden. The PTA hopes to have a website “up and running” by the time of the Back to School Barbecue on Friday, Sept. 19.
The PTA will also run its regular fund-raisers throughout the semester, Ms. Fine said, including the fall book fair in October, the turkey trot in November, and the Natalie’s Elk Shelf holiday store in December.
The district is continuing to explore “regionalization” by creating shared services with neighboring school districts, pooling resources to save money, and the board has approved a yearlong agreement with the East Hampton School District, which operates its own school bus driver training program, to train potential drivers for Springs. In the past, they have had to travel to a program in Riverhead.
District Superintendent Nancy Carney told the board members that explained that the school currently has “exactly enough drivers” for its routes — which causes logistical problems whenever even one of the drivers is out. There is one candidate driver training in East Hampton, she said, and the school hopes soon to have enough substitute drivers to allow transportation to run smoothly.
Also on Tuesday, the board approved an agreement with the Family Service League to conduct evaluations of students deemed to be “at risk” or in need of treatment services by school personnel.
The maintenance staff was commended for completing numerous jobs over the summer, including installing new lockers in the middle school wing, repairing the gym floor, performing asbestos abatement in nine classrooms, installing new speed bumps to control traffic leaving the campus, and installing air-conditioning in the band room (done in response to complaints that instruments had been warping because of high humidity).
A complete renovation of the library, necessitated by the discovery last month of asbestos in the flooring, was also completed just before the start of school. The library ceiling was replaced as well, to ensure structural integrity. The floor was taken out and abated “within days,” Ms. Carney said, adding that many staff members had volunteered to “put the library back together” in time for the first day of school.
The meeting concluded with an update on enrollment, which is “down slightly” this year; the kindergarten and Pre-K classes are right now the two smallest. This is in line with a broader trend of decreasing enrollment in schools across Long Island, Ms. Carney said, but expressed hope that the numbers will balance out again, as Springs is “probably the most steady population that we have here on the East End.”
The board will next convene for a short meeting at 5 p.m. on Sept. 25 to approve a districtwide school safety plan, which must be submitted to the state by Oct. 1.