BOOKS OF THE FUTURE? A dragon made out of an outdated book donated to the Gateway district art department, in lieu of recycling, on display in the Gateway Library. (Photo by Amy Porter)
HUNTINGTON – Last night the Gateway District School Committee heard presentations by Gateway Director of Academics Joanne Blocker, Pupil Services Director Alice Taverna, Technology Director Angela Burke, Gateway’s new District Librarian Bill Brown and School Superintendent Dr. David Hopson on the level services budget voted on by the School Committee at the December meeting.
The presentations included a strong emphasis on technology and training, as Gateway prepares teachers and students to meet Massachusetts Common Core curriculum goals, and prepares itself for the upcoming ten-year accreditation cycle.
Taverna spoke about expanding federal and state requirements for special education students, including preparing students for transition into jobs and independent living. Gateway now has a training apartment to help students learn to wash clothes, clean, cook and other life skills for independent living. Taverna also expressed concern about mental health and behavior issues in the junior and senior high schools. She said the school is getting saddled with interventions that outside agencies used to do.
“We’re not doing psychotherapy, but we’re being drawn in that direction,” Taverna said.
Burke spoke about the changing technology landscape in the school. For example, the MCAS tests will be replaced starting in the 2014-2015 school year with PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers), which has been adopted by 26 states, including Massachusetts. PARCC will be a computer-based test. The goal of the technology department is to have two students for every test-capable device. Last year, the student to device ratio was 2.9. Next year’s budget includes an increased request from its current level of $70,000 for replacement of computers, to $95,727, in part to lease an additional 125 laptops. Gateway also currently has ten Chromebooks, 350 Macbooks, and 120 iPads deployed in classrooms, among other devices in the school.
Brown also spoke about obtaining new digital titles for the library.
“I’m a big fan of actual books myself,” Brown said, “but this is the future.”
Brown also plans to fill in gaps in non-fiction across grade levels to meet the needs of the state-set Common Core goals. Brown has also introduced new learning areas in the library, separating middle school fiction and reading areas from high school areas. A corner of the library has been set aside for classroom workshops, and is waiting for equipment, including a white board for virtual field trips, that was awarded in a grant to the school. Brown said outdated books, i.e. old encyclopedias, are donated to the art department to turn into works of art, which are on display in the library.
Following the presentations, Dr. Hopson said the budget Version 1.0, which had been voted by the school committee in December, kept student services level but at an increased cost of $532,463, or a 3.24 percent increase over the current year’s budget. The bulk of the $500,000 increase for the level services budget is due to the end of an Educational Jobs Grant that helped offset health insurance in the amount of $258,000 this year. Another $240,000 is due to a reduction in “Circuit Breaker” funding, which helps to pay for out of area placements for special education students. The total budget request is $16,976,586.
At the end of the meeting, Gretchen Eliason, chair of the finance subcommittee, which had met earlier in the evening with members of the finance committees of several towns in the district to go over the budget, moved to reduce the increase in the Gateway budget to 2.5 percent down from the requested 3.4 percent increase, which would subtract $121,000 from the budget. The motion passed with one against, and four abstentions.
A public hearing on the budget will be held on Wednesday, March 6 at 7:30 PM in the Gateway Performing Arts Center.
In other business, the school committee spoke about the need to amend the Regional Agreement in order to move forward with Worthington’s request to withdraw from the district. After a somewhat heated discussion which included concerns about the financial liability to the other six towns in the district, as well as fairness to Worthington, the committee voted to table the discussion to a special meeting on February 27 at 7:30 pm.
