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Guilford Goes Back to School

Guilford students have headed back to school. The 2016/2017 school year officially began Aug. 31 and while there is nothing as exciting as a new high school to unveil this year, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Paul Freeman said students, staff, and parents still have a lot to look forward to.

Freeman said much of the focus this year will be continuing the good work the district is already doing from an instructional standpoint.

“We are continuing our focus on mathematics instruction at a district level,” he said. “We are continuing to work with our teachers in what is called professional learning communities—basically really working on professional development and teacher training in-house.”

Freeman said the district is also working to maximize instructional time.

“We are working this year with instruction strategies that are referred to in the literature as high leverage practices,” he said, “making sure that the work in the classroom is leveraging the most learning for students...That is a piece that we will be focusing on.”

This school year begins after a difficult budget season in which the Board of Education (BOE) cut $750,000 from its requested budget increase after two failed referendum. Freeman said students should not see much of a change in the classroom, however.

“We really worked to structure those reductions to shield the students,” he said. “We have shielded class size in important areas and we are continuing to invest in professional development. I do believe we have been able to shield our core mission of teaching and learning.”

A significant portion of the budget reduction was recognized through retirements ($250,000), which allowed the district to hire new teachers at a lower level on the pay scale, according to Freeman.

“We welcomed 18 new teachers to the district,” he said. “I am very excited about the talent we hired and I am very excited about the enthusiasm that we are bringing. We were able to recognize savings by making those hires at very low steps on the salary scale.”

This year the district will launching a working group to examine homework.

“We are going to begin a community conversation looking at the research and talking to our community about the role of homework in our schools,” Freeman said.

Freeman said the goal of the conversation is to understand what the best homework practices are for the district.

“We really want to look at the research,” he said. “I can tell you now some people believe there is too much and some people believe there is too little. We want to understand what the appropriate role for homework in the schools would be.”

In addition, the district will continue the conversation over school start times. The conversation began last year with students and officials looking at the benefits of later start times, particularly for high school students. While that conversation will continue, Freeman said they will take a closer look at the financial impact of changing start times, and also bus schedules, after a difficult budget year.

“It is still an open conversation and we had finished the conversation last year noting that the community was still a little split on support for that idea,” he said. “Following last year’s budget resolution, we recognize that there was going to be a significant investment to move in that direction, so we left that conversation open, but we are going to have to re-asses our position on whether we move ahead quickly or more slowly and thoughtfully in that direction.”