Superintendent holds round of meetings

By TOM KANE

FREMONT, NY – People always want to know what’s happening.

In fact, the expression is almost a cliché.

“Hey! What’s happening!” is as much a serious inquiry as it is an automatic greeting.

It was with this in mind that Sullivan West Superintendent Alan Derry held, and will continue to hold, a series of meetings with parents, teachers and students of the district.

“First, it was a kind of ice-breaker for them to get to know me, and second it’s going to be a way for me to know just what’s on people’s minds,” Derry said.

Derry intends to continue with the meetings after the holidays.

“I’ll meet in the fall and the winter with parents from the school buildings, once a month with students and regularly with teachers,” he said,

This fall, he met with parents from every school building—four of them—as well as with teachers and students of these buildings—on all levels: elementary, middle school and high school.

“With elementary parents, the subject of recess came up in every building,” he said. “Happily, we have worked out a way to re-instate those recesses.”

Transportation was another question on elementary parents’ minds.

“We got a great response from all parents in our transportation survey and we’re going to keep improving transportation,” he said.

Block scheduling was discussed with both middle school and high school parents.

“Most everyone likes block scheduling, but we have to be aware of state tests in the middle school when a subject has been completed much earlier,” he said. “We need to thrash that out.”

Most of the high school parents were satisfied with the program but wanted more advanced or honor-level courses, he said. “We need to work on that, too.”

Derry found high school students more positive than any other group.

“They all liked the fact that we’ve merged and they would never go back,” he said.

One concern that surfaced in the elementary meetings was that students must have the same program with the same books, the same materials and the same goals.

“That is not the case and we need to address it as soon as we can,” Derry said.

Derry said that he will soon establish a budget committee made up of parents, teachers and students—about 25 or 35 people—so that the budget process will be transparent.

“I don’t want a situation like this past year when parents said they didn’t know there would be an increase and cuts in faculty,” he said. “We don’t want anymore surprises like that.”