Maria Rice (photo by Lauren Thomas)
Maria Rice
Maria Rice has been New Paltz Central School District schools superintendent since 2004. Her current contract, approved in 2013, extends her tenure through June 30, 2018.
What are the main issues facing your district next year?
One big issue that is facing the district now and into the future has to do with the whole APPR situation; right now there is a great deal that is unknown. We don’t quite know what that new guidance is going to be and what the expectations are. Implementing an Annual Professional Performance Review based on those laws has been quite challenging anyway, because we want to continue to maintain who we are as a district. We want to focus on learning and the whole child, and on having a community of professional learners as well as student learning, and the APPR nonsense has interfered with a lot of that. We’ve been trying to make sure it doesn’t undermine our vision of education.
The other has to do with the tax cap. We completely understand the need to try to contain costs and taxes rising, and it’s very difficult for many people, but we are committed to making sure that we’re providing the best and highest quality education that the community can afford. So we need to work with that tax cap, but if the tax levy increase is what they’re projecting, at zero percent for next year, and we don’t get more revenue, it’s going to be extremely challenging to maintain our high standards and the quality of some of our programs. We might have to eliminate some of them.
What are your top priorities for 2016?
Our first and foremost priority is to continue to maintain the educational programs that we have, and if at all possible, to expand them if there is ever a way to do that within the confines of our financial situation. We’d like to keep moving forward in creating quality and enhancing curriculum and to make sure that we are providing enough resources and services to our students, whether it’s academic support, special educational support or mental health support.
Another priority has to do with our capital project. It’ll be both a challenge during the time they’re fixing the buildings, to make sure that we’re as transparent as possible, and making sure education is going on in quality ways and children are safe and comfortable as much as possible while we are renovating our buildings. Another priority is to communicate well with the community so that they know what’s going on as well as our students and our staff.
At our last board meeting we decided to revisit our educational master plan and our whole vision of who we are as a district. The board said, ‘Let’s revisit what it means to be a successful student. Let’s redefine that, and look at it in other terms than accomplishments on the state tests.’ Because when you have 65-75 percent of your students refusing to take [grade] 3-8 tests, or any test directly related to the APPR evaluation for teachers, then it skews your results, and we believe that our students are more than a test score. So what the board is saying, is ‘Let’s reach out to our students and staff and parents and community and see what they see as success and redefine it, and then come up with measures and indicators about whether or not we’re doing a good job.’ That to me, is a new, exciting priority for 2016, to define success in a different way than just a test score.
Looking back at 2015, what do you see as your district’s major accomplishments?
Our community supporting us to move forward with such an expansive capital project is a major accomplishment. And I think we made some major gains this year educationally in creating some very exciting and interesting curriculum specifically designed to meet the diverse learners in our school district.
One example is the multisensory reading instruction. We have a program at our elementary level and secondary level called co-teaching, with a special educator as well as a regular educator in the classroom, and there may be students in that classroom with special needs, but it doesn’t have to be a special needs child; this multisensory instruction in reading is just another tool to be able to help students achieve. We have committed to institutionalizing it, so that any child that might use that method of learning to read, and coupled with our balanced literacy program, could be successful more quickly. And that’s in addition to Reading Recovery and some other supports that we have to catch students to make sure that they’re successful prior to failing.
Our whole literacy framework for assessment is being formalized at the K-5 level to ensure that our students are learning. Instead of just using the standard benchmarks, we can do corrections and work with students to make sure we know where they are so that they can move forward at a really well targeted pace.
And our interdisciplinary units that we’re just starting to get off the ground are really exciting. There’s a tremendous amount of research that says when you can do a really well-designed lesson that integrates different subject areas and skills, students are able to grasp it and learn in a variety of ways and then reapply that knowledge elsewhere.
We also met the challenge of facing the new changes made by the state and federal government to Part 154. [English as a Second Language (ESL) is now English as a New Language (ENL), with accompanying changes in instructional requirements.] That was a huge overhaul and in many ways, it undermined some of the quality of the program that we had. If you talk to some of the other districts across the state, some of them said that was equally as challenging as the APPR implementation. We had to figure out how to balance these new mandates that are unfunded with the quality of the program that we had before, so that we don’t cut necessary educational opportunities for students that need English as a Second Language kinds of resources, and still comply. It was a very big job, but under the leadership of our assistant superintendent, Michelle Martoni, the entire team came up with a good program.
Looking back at 2015, is there anything you would have done differently?
Yes, I think selecting the fourth- and eighth-grade science tests, the state science tests, to be connected to the APPR, was a mistake. Those are two really good tests, and the minute that we connected them to the APPR, even though parents knew they were good tests and they would inform us about science learning as well as about our science program, we had a lot of parents opt out.
I think I should have realized sooner that we should have used a local exam for that. Because the parents concern was that it didn’t matter about the quality of the test, it had to do with the fact that it was absolutely inappropriate to connect a teacher’s evaluation in the way in which the state did to these state tests. I understood that on one level, but I kept thinking, ‘But this is a good test. And that wasn’t the point; and the point was very well taken by the community.
The reason we did it was because we’re doing everything in our power to cut back on the amount of tests that we give children, so here was one that’s mandated that was a solid test that we already gave, and why create another test to give kids to comply with the APPR. We were trying to look at any way we could use anything that already existed.
What are you personally looking forward to?
I’m looking forward to being able to see this capital project start to unfold. Right now everything is in the design stage, and getting approval for things that are necessary, like a septic, but not necessarily exciting, like a new classroom!
I’m also looking forward to continuing to focus on our new and exciting curriculum and learning pedagogy that our teachers are implementing . Just going into different classrooms, it’s really exciting to see how things are progressing by the engagement of students in the learning. I look forward to getting into more classrooms to do that. It’s the best part of my job, being with the kids and seeing learning unfold. When I see something from the state that makes no sense, and I get very frustrated, going into a building and seeing good instruction, interacting with children and staff, makes me understand that it’s all worth it, because my job is to ensure that they’re going to have the resources, the time and everything that they need.
The teachers here are so in tune with the needs of our children, and they’re excited about being here to teach our students and engaging them. The most important thing is that we’ve identified what kind of a district we are, and what we’re committed to and what our driving principles are. We have our own educational standards and I can go into classrooms and I can see that vision taking place in the instruction today; it’s not something for the future. Our teachers just truly believe in teaching the whole child, and you can see that in the relationship that they have with them. I’m very fortunate for the staff that I work with.
