Gardner school system facing changes in new school year

By Owen Boss

GARDNER — More than 20 teachers retired at the end of last school year in the district, and students returning to school this fall should expect to see some changes in both school staff and security, according to Superintendent Carol Daring. Although the school system lost a large number of teachers over the summer, Ms. Daring said the school was able to fill many of the positions that were left vacant. “We had 24 staff members retire at the end of the school year last year, 21 of them were teachers and three were paraprofessional employees,” said Dr. Daring. “Since then, we have had six more resign and go elsewhere, so we are up to 30 changes and that is as of today. We were able to fill almost all of those positions, but one area we are having some difficulty with, not unlike other school districts, is the fact that we have two speech and language therapist positions that are still open.” According to Dr. Daring, because Gardner operates with a teacher induction program, all new teachers will be matched with a mentor, and will attend a orientation this summer. “We are having a new teacher orientation that runs all day long from 8:30 a.m. to about 2:00 p.m.,” said Dr. Daring. “What we do is we bring them all to the middle school and we orientate them and they get introduced to the administrators and we talk about best practices.” Also changing this coming school year will be the implementation of more all-day Kindergarten classes, something Dr. Daring said is crucial to offering the best early education to children in the community. “Two years ago, we only had one full-day kindergarten, and last year we were able to form two with state grants,” said Dr. Daring. “This year, we are adding two more so we will be able to offer five full-day programs.” Middle and high school students will also see changes in security levels at the school, which Dr. Daring said is a necessary precaution in today’s society. “We are going to be implementing one of those call notification systems,” said Dr. Daring. “Many districts around us are doing this. For example, if there is a no-school day we can make one call and it will within five minutes notify all of our parents and all of our staff.” Also, Dr. Daring said changes in security and staff procedures that will be made this coming school year at the high school will eventually be included at all of the local schools. “We have done more work on our security systems,” said Dr. Daring. “Every staff member will have a lanyard and at the high school the I.D. badge will be a card reader to let the staff into the school.” Another change Gardner High School students can expect is the monitoring of the schools’ 47 doors, all of which will be alarmed. “The high school has an automatic door locking system,” said Dr. Daring. “And if anybody breaches the security and tries to go out anything, besides the front door, an alarm will go off, and that is new this year. It just makes sense to implement something like this at the beginning of the year.” oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 7 on 8/29/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 205)