Gateway Regional School District Superintendent Dr. David B. Hopson.
As we wind our way down to the end of this school year (Graduation is set for Friday, June 2 and the last day for students is currently scheduled for Wednesday, June 14) it’s important to note the high standards set by previous graduates as they’ve entered life after high school. Each year, I’ve written on the success of our graduates getting into technical schools, colleges and universities and the fact that Gateway has had many graduates attending top-tier postsecondary institutions, going onto to complete graduate programs, and being successful in life overall. I expect that many of our readers were able to note the success of two recent graduates (2013) who received the award for Distinguished Senior in their respective majors at Springfield College. This award is presented to the graduating student selected by the faculty of their department for their dedication to academic excellence, their contributions to the academic life of the college, and to their commitment to the humanist ideals of the college. Brooke Fairman graduated with a degree in Sports Management and a double minor in business management and coaching. Olga Tereshchuk graduated with her degree in Physical Therapy and a minor in business management. Brooke will be pursuing a career in Sports Management while Olga is continuing at Springfield College to pursue her doctorate in Physical Therapy.
These are just two of the many successful graduates from Gateway who are making a difference in their advanced education pursuits, in the workplace, and in our armed forces. As important is the difference Gateway graduates are making in their local communities with the most recent example being this past weekend’s election of Cara Letendre to the Blandford Selectboard. Like any school system, we can only take part of the credit and have to give much of the recognition to our students’ parents, some to the community they’ve grown up in, and a host of other factors unique to each individual. Yet it is often mentioned how important education is to the success of individuals and thus to our workplaces, our defense and our governmental institutions as was so eloquently outlined by Thomas Jefferson, “Educate and inform the whole mass of people . . . They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”
Much of what is done today in education follows that principal, from the idea of a free and appropriate public education for all students to the idea that every child deserves an education that meets his or her needs. Translating these ideas into reality provides some interesting conundrums that we often react to when considering funding public education, including the myriad reporting requirements, laws and regulations, and family/parental/student rights to ensure an appropriate education, even if the cost for some students may be many times the average cost of educating our students. When we discuss the cost of education and ask why the cost is so high compared to decades ago, we overlook the changes in law that mandate special services to students who need additional help to be successful in their education (whether this is due to a physical, social, or other impediment to learning) and overlook the increasing percentage of students who need some type of assistance to succeed. The integration of students who need assistance into the daily operations of a classroom, the interaction between all students, and the idea that we have to attend to the ‘whole child’ rather than just the academic rudiments has done much to improve education overall. While perhaps difficult to comprehend, it’s as important to us to have a student with significant challenges manage to become independent in caring for themselves as it is to have a student graduate as valedictorian and be accepted to an Ivy League College.
