Old Saybrook schools start classes on Wednesday, Aug. 29 and the new school year will bring changes at the top as staff, parents, and students say good-bye to retiring Superintendent of Schools Joseph Onofrio while welcoming Heston Sutman, chosen as the district’s interim superintendent for this year.

A related change will move Associate Middle School Principal Mandy Ryan into the job of interim director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, Sutman’s former post. The one-year vacancy for associate principal at the middle school in turn was recently posted for potential candidates to apply.

Mario Gaboury, the Board of Education chairman, said his board will continue its deliberations in September with respect to a search for a new permanent superintendent. Gaboury said the board had not yet reached any conclusions about the search process, but that the issue will be discussed at the board’s fall meetings.

The new district leadership team will oversee and usher in year one of a new standards-based curriculum that emphasizes depth over breadth, and year two of the district strategic plan implementation.

The new standards-based curriculum will change the way that academic subject areas will be taught. The new approach will narrow the number of skills and concepts to be taught, but require that each curriculum content area be taught in greater depth. The focus will be on mastering key skills by focusing on depth, not breadth.

The new curriculum design matches well with the new Common Core State Standards, the multi-state standards that will be a basis of a new standardized test that debuts in 2014-’15. The new test, created by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, will be administered to students in 20 to 25 states and will replace the current Connecticut Mastery Tests and Connecticut Academic Performance Tests (e.g. CMT and CAPT).

In year two of the district’s strategic plan, parents, staff, and the community will benefit from a re-design of the school district’s website. The goal will be to create a common design template improved function to facilitate communications.

A grant the district received will fund training of school district staff and teachers in a new program designed to improve school climate: the Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports (PBIS) program.

Also planned is use of a new software tool to track student performance called Inform, a new longitudinal data system compatible with the existing Power School program. Similarly, this year all schools will be developing individualized student success plans using another software tool, Naviance.

Middle school students will see two new course topics into the wheel rotation. The new course is called FOCUS and will introduce to students topics like study skills, career readiness skills, and social-emotional skills. The course will be taught by school counselors.

“I’m excited about the new student success plans because the plans will help students connect with their future,” said Onofrio.

Also this fall, the school district’s middle school will re-institute the technology education program to benefit students in grades 6 through 8. The re-vamped program will add elements focusing on design, engineering, and materials as well as more traditional skills like working with tools.

Staff additions to address new priorities in the district this year were accomplished through the re-allocation of staff salaries and consulting services funds.