Megan and James Dunphy help their mom Shelia Dunphy decorate a board outside of her kindergarten classroom at Veterans Park Elementary School. Megan enters the fifth grade at Branchville Elementary School this year, while James is a rising third grader. —Steve Coulter photo
With temperatures dropping and the end of summer approaching, it’s that time of year when children must put away their bathing suits and sunglasses and take out their textbooks and calculators. School is back in session.
Doors open today Tuesday, Aug. 27, for students kindergarten through ninth grade, with high school upperclassmen returning to the classroom Wednesday, Aug. 28.
“It’s really exciting that the start of the school year is finally here,” said Superintendent Deborah Low. “There’s been a lot of hard work put in to prepare the district for 2013-2014 and we look forward to having the kids back in school after a nice, long summer break.”
Students will have to shake off the classroom cobwebs that vacation has left and adjust once again to the regimented school schedule.
Fortunately for the district’s 5,133 projected students, they are not alone in the transition phase.
“A lot of new things are taking place this year — new kids, new teachers, new technology,” Ms. Low said.
While 5,133 students are projected to run through the halls next week, the actual number of students enrolled in the district, 5,259, is a lot higher.
However, it is all subject to change.
“There are kids still moving in and out of the district and we anticipate that to continue through the start of school next week,” Ms. Low explained.
The district won’t complete the number of kids until Oct. 1.
At the kindergarten level, the district will see the greatest influx of new faces as 301 kindergartners — 46 more than projected — will be spread across the six elementary schools to begin their academic journey.
“It’s quite a significant number,” Ms. Low said. “All the enrollment numbers are floating at this point, especially at the high school because they find out about withdrawals later than the rest of the schools, but I expect that all those kindergartners will show up — that number won’t change much.”
Ms. Low speculated that the rise in the number of kindergarten enrollment mirrored the recent resurrection of the real estate market.
She added that Ridgefield welcomes 140 new families to town this year, many of which already have more than one child.
“There’s certainly been a lot of local real estate activity with people either buying or renting here in town,” Ms. Low said. “Our school system has a good reputation and we’ve found people settling here for a variety of reasons but one constant is the attraction to the Ridgefield school system.”
Kindergarten isn’t the only grade looking at an increase from the projected enrollment. Ms. Low estimates the district is currently over-enrolled by 125 students.
With this potential surplus of students, an obvious and unavoidable question lingers — who will teach all of them?
After a retirement ceremony in June that saw the loss of 767 years of experience, 39 new teachers will work across the district to address a variety of needs.
A bulk of the new staff will be assigned as special needs teachers and paraprofessionals, Ms. Low said.
“We need special needs staffing at all three levels — elementary, middle school and high school,” she said.
At the elementary level, there are 110 teachers — only one more than projected — for more than 2,100 students.
Elementary schools
Barlow Mountain Elementary School, which celebrates its 10-year anniversary this fall, is the largest school in terms of over projected students. The school expected 321 students this year, but instead will welcome 349 kids next week.
“I am confident that we will have another wonderful learning year,” said Rebecca Pembrook, who is entering her seventh year as principal. “As a staff, we work collaboratively to celebrate our successes as well as focus on areas for continued improvement.”
Due to space concerns, the school has lost two of its three intensive special education classrooms. Ridgebury Elementary School will be the new home of these classrooms.
“We are excited to welcome RISE — Ridgefield Intensive Special Education — as part of our school,” said Ridgebury Principal Jamie Palladino.
“This program will be moving to Ridgebury from Barlow and we can’t wait to make new friends and work with the new teachers.”
Ridgebury, along with Farmingville, Veterans Park and Scotland, are on target for their projected number of students and teachers.
Despite the evenness of enrollment in these schools, the effects of the over-enrolled kindergarten class are evident.
“My current enrollment is 329 students,” said Veterans Park Principal Lisa Singer. “Funny enough, projected enrollment was 329 students. However, the difference is my kindergarten is much larger than projected” by 12 students.
Branchville, the biggest of the six elementary schools with 397 enrollments, is also on target with one less teacher than projected.
Middle schools
While East Ridge Middle School remains on target with its 767 projected students, Scotts Ridge will have 18 more than expected — 489 in total.
Ms. Low said the high school is “most volatile” between its projected and actual numbers because of late withdrawals. Currently, there are 1,837 students enrolled — 59 more than projected.
“We anticipate it coming down, that’s for sure,” she said.
Student enrollment and new teachers are only the tip of the iceberg for the district as it approaches the 2013-14 school year.
Curriculum changes
The district faces heavy curriculum changes as well as new teacher and administrator evaluation plans.
All nine schools will focus on meeting Common Core standards that have been adopted and fully implemented by the 2014-2015 academic year.
“As we move away from the CMT, we move closer towards measuring ourselves by the state’s Common Core standards,” Ms. Low said.
“Our focus remains on the Common Core and we are making a big push this year to make sure we meet the state’s requirements.”
A new math program, Math in Focus, will be extended from the elementary schools to the sixth grade.
“This program is very conceptually driven and focused on communicating mathematically and understanding concepts deeply through problem solving and real world application,” Ms. Singer said. “This will be our third year departmentalizing instruction in grade 5 to begin preparing students for middle school by experiencing moving classes for a few academic subjects.
“The purpose of this structure is to transition more students to more than one teacher and allow teachers to become a specialist in an important academic area.”
In addition, elementary schools will introduce a new writing program for kindergarten through second grade as well as fifth grade.
Science and social studies is the third area of the curriculum that will be modeled to align with the Common Core standards.
“Rather than infusing writing into science and social studies, content will be infused into the writing process,” Ms. Singer said.
The switch to meet Common Core standards won’t be the only obstacle teachers will face this year.
The district will complete its implementation of a “hybrid” teacher evaluation model that incorporates state mandates for teacher assessments, while being specifically tailored for the Ridgefield school district.
“We took the state’s requirements and molded them specifically for us,” Ms. Low said. “We’re familiar with the teacher evaluation rubric that was implemented last year but this year we are going to dig a little deeper and push for the entire model which includes more classroom observations, parents and student feedback, student performance, and the evaluation rubric.
“All the components are weighted differently.”
Teachers won’t be alone in their assessment. The district is also implementing an administrator evaluation model that is a hybrid of state requirements and district priorities.
If the students, teachers and curriculum changes weren’t enough, the district is also overhauling its phone and cafeteria payment systems.
“There are changes on the technology side of things,” Ms. Low noted. “There will be a different software product in all cafeteria registers that can do more and is more capable than what we previously had.”
Phones and food aren’t the only area receiving a technology facelift.
Digital bus routes
School buses, which have changed providers from Baumann & Sons to First Student Bus Company, will have every route available digitally at ridgefield.org.
“The routes won’t change very much,” Ms. Low said. “The basic outlines and routes are all the same, as well as the number of physical buses and vans. The stops will be adjusted slightly to meet the addresses of our new students.”
She added that the move to a digital bus schedule had been in the works for some time now, but would not comment if the transition had anything to do with school security.
In addition to the technology changes, both middle schools will be implementing advisory programs.
“East Ridge and Scotts Ridge have been developing these for a while,” Ms. Low said. “They are age appropriate but modeled after the advisory process that goes on at the high school.”
As for the high school, Ms. Low said there will be a continued increase in graduation and course load requirements, which is a part of a two-year plan that was implemented at the beginning of last year.
“The high school is in its second year of implementing the new graduation requirements which have provided additional learning opportunities,” said Ridgefield High School Principal Stacey Gross.
RHS will also have a newly designed library and media area, a new science lab station, and a new turf field.
While Common Core, special education, and graduation requirements are going to be recurring themes throughout the 2013-14 calendar year, Ms. Low said the district has only one focus looking ahead to next week — enrollment.
“Our focus will remain on the over projected enrollment at both the kindergarten and district wide level because its larger than we expected,” she said. “We welcome all of our students back but right now we’re over our district-wide projection and that’s something that we will have to figure out this fall.”