Superintendent Lays Out Goals as State Raises Standards

At the first Board of Education meeting since the beginning of the new school year, Massapequa School Superintendent Charles Sulc presented his goals for the upcoming term while warning that state officials are raising academic standards.

The superintendent's presentation Thursday focussed on a wide range of areas including promoting stronger instruction, looking at a changing administrative structure and strengthening the district's financial management operation.

But prior to laying out his vision for the school year Sulc discussed changes the state has made in scoring English and math tests administered to students in grades 3 to 8 and the impact it could have on the district.

The tests are scored on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 meaning"below standard," 2 meaning "meets basic standard," 3 meaning "meets proficiency standard," and 4 meaning "exceeds proficiency standard."

State Education Commissioner David Steiner raised the "cut scores" to those tests in July, so that it has become more difficult to reach the proficient level.

Sulc said the changes in the cut scores are an outgrowth of a meeting the commissioner had with school district administrators in which Steiner outlined a plan to raise standards in the state.

"He wants to create a new standard of proficiency in the Board of Regents, and that new standard is college readiness," Sulc said, adding that the move comes at a time when America have fallen behind other countries in graduating students from college.

"He said the bar has to be raised and we have to do many, many things for our kids and we need to do many things with our curriculum. We need to raise the standards and we need to assess the standards in a better way."

Sulc said that several other changes may also be coming as a result of the new proficiency standard including such things as real time reporting of data to Albany on such things as period by period attendance. Schools will also have to create a growth model to show student progress.

While the superintendent said Steiner was "in the right place" as far as challenging students more, he is concerned about the price tag.

"There are resources associated with these changes that districts are going to need, and is there going to be funding for these resources?" he asked. 

Sulc said the uncertainty about the new programs would factor into budgeting and his goals for the upcoming year.

In laying out those goals, the superintendent said they planned to take a close look at the special education particularly in the middle school curriculum this year.

Special education services have been bolstered in recent months according to Sulc.

"We've expanded our ability to become more personalized by virtue of adding more (Committee on Special Education) chairs, as well as increasing the supervision that we have," he said.

"We've put a lot of resources in there, and we'd be remiss if we didn't look at it."

The district will also look into ways they can assess student performance in light of the changes being put forward by the state and will launch a pilot program at the Birch Lane School, which Steiner has indicated he might consider using as a permanent assesment program in the future.

The district also will examine how administrators will react in light of a reorganization that shifted several of them to new schools.

"When you look at all of the changes between people who are new to the district or new to their positions, we have about 30 of them," Sulc said. "That transition has to be seemless."

The district will continue to put a significant amount of resources into technology, according to Sulc, and he hopes to have a Web portal set up for parents at Ames High School by the second quarter of this year with portals opening at the district's other secondary schools after that.

In an effort to strengthen financial management, they will look for new sources of revenues and new cost saving measures. 

Sulc said the district was "pretty well equipped to have long term budgets set up for a three to five year period right now."