NHP-GCP Superintendent’s Report: APPR and Summer Special Ed

The following are the remarks of New Hyde Park-Garden City Park Superintendent Robert Katulak made during the public meeting of the NHP-GCP Board of Education on Aug. 6, 2012:

It’s been a very busy month with the work advancing from the . All the demolition work has been completed and now the renovations and re-builds are starting. We look forward to seeing all the infrastructures and repairs being ready for the start of the school year as well as the new library and the new computer lab at the , which was the last school to receive it.

The district and the teachers’ association have come to a collaborative agreement for which will be voted on by the board this evening and then submitted to the state tomorrow morning. This is the new mandated Annual Professional Performance Review Plan, also known as APPR, that evaluates all principals and teachers and takes into account student performance and growth measures in the total evaluation.

Judy LaRocca, director of curriculum and instruction and technology, and I have been working diligently to create the annual professional development plan for all administrators and teachers for this coming year. That includes two superintendent’s conference days, a scoring day as well as two-hour professional developments on one Monday each month. The focus this year will be on the implementation of the common core learning standards and the new Star Readings and Star Math and Literacy assessments required by the New York State Department of Education.

All the materials, supplies and text books continue to arrive daily, so we should be ready to begin school with a full compliment of instructional materials for the students on the first day of school.

Lastly, this is the last week for the special education summer program, which ends officially on Monday, August 13. The program has prevented the academic summer slide which we read about for many of our students and helped to expand student mastery of of some basic skills in reading and math for the neediest of students. We also did a thematic approach for social studies and science for the concepts that students will be learning this coming year so they have a little bit of a head start and a preview so when somebody’s talking about cell structure and cell theory in sixth grade, they’ve already been exposed to it.

We hope that you will enjoy the rest of the summer and we look forward to seeing everyone at the start of school on September 4.