Dr. David Hopson
Difficult as it is to believe, summer break for students is nearly half over, a result of getting out of school so late in June this year due to weather related school cancellations. As difficult as this may be for some students to embrace, this short summer break has also created challenges in getting all of the normal summer maintenance completed. I do have complete confidence that our custodial and maintenance staff will complete, to their normal level of excellence, all of the tasks required of them this summer. As I’ve mentioned in the past, summer is not the easy and relaxed time that so many non-educators believe.
In addition to the deep cleaning, maintenance, repair, and upgrades by the maintenance and custodial staff, our technology staff have a similar amount of work to complete. Between cleaning, maintaining, repairing, and updating all of the districts’ computer equipment, the technology department also does much upgrading of the core infrastructure including wireless computer access, telephone services, video and sound equipment, and our building security systems.
Also this year, the staff of the technology department is an integral part of the process of selecting a new director of technology as Angela Burke, our director for the past 6 years, leaves to take a new position as computer information officer for the Collaborative for Educational Services in Northampton. In her new position, Angela will be in charge of many more people, and a wide range of technology and information items, certainly a challenge that I’m sure she’ll meet with great finesse.
This spring and summer have been a particularly busy one in terms of hiring staff to replace retiring staff and those moving onto new positions. Unlike most years, this year includes the need to replace many administrators. Hopefully we’ve completed the task of finding a new elementary assistant principal to replace Liz Bienia who has become an elementary school principal in Springfield and we will successfully complete the process of finding a new junior/senior high school assistant principal and a director of technology.
For many years, Gateway has been fortunate with regards to staffing. Our teaching staff has traditionally stayed in the district for many years, often retiring from the district after a majority, or even all, of their time as teachers being spent in the district. As with many other work places, this stability in the work force has been changing with many teachers now staying a few years before moving onto new opportunities. Gateway has also been blessed with a low turnover in new administrative staff. While we’ve had changes, many of them have been in house (i.e., the elementary principal becoming the Director of Academics and the elementary assistant principal moving into the Director of Pupil Services). We’ve also had several administrators move onto new jobs with significant increases in salary, as they’ve become principals or superintendents. Despite our changes in administrative staffing, our administrators stay longer than the average of 3 years found elsewhere. While this provides continuity in moving forward, I know that for a school such as Chester, who has seen new administrators just about every other year, that continuity is still missing which creates an additional set of challenges for Chester staff. I do want to publically thank all of the members of our greater school community who have participated in the screening and selection process for new staff as I believe that such input provides for a much better process and a better chance of finding people who will fit in and support our students as the district moves forward in meeting our responsibilities.
