Superintendent's Message

Dear Parents/Guardians and Staff,

Wasn’t that eclipse incredible? It was a great day to be outside and spend time with neighbors to all share in this amazing site.

CSWD is collecting solar eclipse glasses in partnership with Astronomers Without Borders, an organization that sends glasses to places with upcoming solar events. You can drop off glasses at any of their locations (see details here) or bring them to your school by noon tomorrow (Friday, April 12th).

As we spring forward toward the end of our academic year, I wanted to share updates about our literacy and math academic programming. We are excited by the learning our students are doing throughout their day that centers critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. All things that center on District Mission Statement and Ends Policy.

We are also excited to announce that we are closing in on identifying the new K-5 Literacy Program that we will implement next year! A huge thank you to our District Literacy Leadership Team and teachers who pilot the two programs. This comprehensive process started at the end of last year with the goal of identifying a program that includes a structured literacy approach to the explicit instruction and guided practice of foundational skills and content knowledge-building component that is grounded in science and social studies.

For next year, our 4th and 5th grade teachers will all be specializing to support deeper learning for math and literacy. The teachers focused on math will be implementing a new program as well, Illustrative Mathematics. This vertically aligns our math coordinated curriculum and program from grades 4-11. This will allow teachers to focus on evidence-based practices and targeted professional learning. Additionally, we are adding a new elective Discrete Mathematics, which is a college-level course intended to broaden students’ understanding of different strands of mathematics. This course will join our current offerings of AP Statistics, AP Calculus BC, and AP Calculus AB.

In addition to these updates, as a district we continue to build our curriculum to meet the modern needs of our students. We will be sending surveys to families to hear their thoughts and ideas around academics. In the next year, we will engage in further community involvement around our Pre-K-12 student needs through the development of Portrait of a Learner, which are agreed-upon set of district-level aspirations for what every learner will know and be able to do when they leave school.

On Monday, April 15, the district is holding an event for our multilingual families at Central Offices, 577 Dorset Street. This event is an opportunity for families to register their students for next year as well as learn more about our School’s Out, SB Recreation programs and job opportunities in our district. The event is from 12 pm - 7 pm. If you are planning to attend or have any questions, please email Carol Blakely at cblakely@sbschools.net.

As you may know, there is a national, state, and local shortage of bus drivers. While we offer training and have implemented hiring and recruitment strategies, we, along with many local school districts and bus companies, such as CCTA, GMT, still face shortages for bus drivers. We have investigated private busses who also have long waitlists and are not available to provide services to us.

One of the main challenges we have faced during our bus driver shortage is needing to assign new and unfamiliar routes to drivers who are covering for staff absences and route cancellations. Whether they are an experienced, new, or substitute driver, our staff told us they could benefit from having a GPS-based tool that could assist them in navigating these different routes, the way we all use Waze or other travel applications. The same technology company that has provided us with the StopFinder app has another solution called WayFinder, which allows us to load all of our routes onto a common platform that can then be accessed by any driver, in any bus, to guide them in their navigation using a tablet mounted in the bus. The driver simply needs to call up the correct route on the tablet and follow the navigation instructions. In addition to providing this navigation assistance, the software also includes the name and picture of every student that is assigned to that particular route, which can be helpful if the driver is also unfamiliar with the assigned route’s passengers. We have been waiting for the delivery of these tablets for some time, but they have finally arrived and the transportation team is working on installing them in all buses and training drivers on their usage. We trust this will prove useful in multiple ways to alleviate the challenges of driving unfamiliar routes.

The district is hiring! Please follow the links to read the full descriptions for these roles.

Principal, FHTMS

(open until April 28)

Assistant Principal, SBHS

Bus Drivers (and Bus Aides)

Training available obtain Commercial Driver's Licenses to eligible candidates, full and part time positions available as well as van drivers and bus monitors

Special Ed teachers:

Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School

Lunchroom:

Middle School

Elementary

Traffic Monitors

Substitute Teachers

Full job descriptions are available on School Spring. If you have questions on hiring processes or on employment, please contact Elissa Galvez, Employment Specialist, egalvez@sbschools.net (802) 652-7247.

Thank you for reading!

Violet

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