Schools are very different in summer than they are during the school year, yet summer remains a very busy and focused time for staff who work in July & August. Gateway students are still taking part in various activities so we have a good number of staff and students using the facilities for our wrap-around program with summer activities, our middle school/junior high school camps, activities for students with additional needs, and summer tutoring. Some of these programs are essentially self-supporting or operated through grants, while others are part of the requirements for students who have individual education plans. It is nice to see students taking advantage of these opportunities and to know that the buildings don’t just sit empty throughout the summer.
As anyone who has spent any time in Gateway’s buildings—or on our grounds—knows, everything is clean, well maintained and supportive of our educational endeavors. While daily upkeep is important during the school year, the base of our success in keeping up the facilities is the hard work and dedication put in over the summer by our maintenance, custodial, and grounds keeping staff. Deep cleaning, yearly maintenance and upkeep, painting and updates to the facilities are all done during the summer. This ‘prep’ work ensures that the facilities are at their best when school starts and provides a great starting point for keeping everything looking, and running, great throughout the rest of the year.
The ‘slow’ summer season is also very busy for our secretarial and financial staff as they close out one year, complete the mandated reporting requirements, and begin preparing for the new school year. It’s almost a blessing not to have all the students and staff here throughout the summer, as that would make it nearly impossible to complete all of the transition activities that must be done as part of switching to a new school and fiscal year. Thankfully this summer is a bit easier than last summer was, when we were still preparing budgets for town approval (which was a lot of work, expense, and anxiety for virtually no overall change in town assessments when all was said and done).
Summer is also a time for reflecting on what worked in the past year and looking ahead to what might be changed in the next year. This is when the leadership team pulls together all of the data collected in the last year to use in future planning. This year we have much data from the Gateway 2025 activities, changes in state requirements, pulling information together as part of a review of district functions by a consulting firm (as required by DESE), and providing follow up to the state’s coordinated program review of the district. And if that’s not enough, the high school will also undertake its accreditation self-study this year, an in-depth and exhaustive review of how the high school operates. I’m confident that all of these planning and review processes will show that Gateway is doing an excellent job of providing for our students’ needs in an efficient and cost effective way. What we always hope for is some additional insights into how we can do even better to improve the delivery of educational services to the children of the district. There are some exciting possibilities being reviewed by the leadership team that we’ll be gathering information about and presenting for additional staff and community input as we move forward to meet the bottom line that came out of the Gateway 2025 project – keep schools local, build upon all of the good things being done for students, share our successes with the community, and somehow provide even more opportunities for students from pre-school to high school as well as supporting alumni and the community. A tall order but one that we believe we can fulfill with support from our communities.
