Schools- Hyde Park, VT

Hyde Park Schools

HYDE PARK SCHOOL DIRECTORS

The Hyde Park Elementary School Directors hold their regular meetings on the first and third Monday of each month, at 6:30 PM, at the school library.

Elementary School Directors:
Jim Lepinski, (3 year term),Term Expires 2009
Dan Regan, (2 year term), Term Expires 2010
Katharine “Kalee” Roberts, (2 year term), Term Expires 2011
Vacant, (3 year term), Term Expires 2010
Brian Marshall (3 year term), Term Expires 2011

Directors of Union High School District #18:
John Eisenhardt, Term Expires 2009
Kalee Roberts, Term Expires 2010
Beth Bailey, Term Expires 20__

Documents:

Hyde Park School District Budget for 10/11 (pdf)

Three Prior Years Comparisons (pdf)

ANNAUL REPORT 2009

In this year of bad news, we have some things to celebrate. Our Principal, Michelle Mathias, successfully completed her Doctorate in November and some of our teachers have finished their Master’s degrees. We’d like to congratulate them, and offer our appreciation for their hard work and dedication to teaching.

Unlike many school districts in Vermont, our enrollment is up substantially this year, and it looks like that will be the trend for at least another year or two. We like to think that’s a sign that families appreciate and respect the work that our faculty and staff are doing.

We have several new teachers or teachers in new positions. We continue to be impressed and pleased with the quality of teachers who come to Hyde Park Elementary School. All teachers are involved in rigorous professional development addressing curriculum and student assessment paid for with ARRA stimulus funds. This is discussed in depth in the principal’s report.

Last year we reported that we had done an analysis of our Special Education programs. We have implemented most of the recommendations by providing appropriate services at lower cost within the school. Our faculty and staff continue to work on improving the effectiveness of Special Education services. We are pleased at the progress that our children with special needs are making, and we remain committed to insuring that we meet the needs of all Hyde Park children. Currently, 21% of our students receive Special Education services through an Individual Education Plan (IEP) as compared to 15% statewide. We are concerned by the cost shifts made to local education budgets as cuts are made to state human service programs.

Our faculty and staff continue to work toward further improvements in curriculum and instructional practices. Lamoille North Supervisory Union has hired Dave White as Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment. Part of his work is to continue the curriculum alignment work among all the schools in Lamoille North.

We are very pleased at how well Dr. Mathias and her staff have managed the district’s budget. We were able to end the last fiscal year with a small positive fund balance. Unfortunately, this year, we have had some major unanticipated expenses which make it very difficult to end the year in the black.

Our proposed budget for next year is an increase over this year’s; however, per pupil investment has only increased by $8/student. Our increase in enrollment means that all of our classes are full with the addition of a third kindergarten class. We expect to need the same number of teachers and staff next year. Also, the number of children needing special services continues to be quite high, which also is reflected in the budget. We have had to do some unplanned maintenance and repairs this year, and will have to do more next year. The Board would like to thank the members of the Short Term Facilities Committee for their thorough and thoughtful work. A summary of their report (included in this Town Report) identifies their recommendations, one of which is a need for long term planning, which is addressed in Article 6. We simply cannot continue to defer maintenance and keep our facility safe.

We are, therefore, proposing a budget that maintains current staffing levels and slightly increases investment in building maintenance. With our enrollment increase and greater expected reimbursement for some Special Education expenses, the proposed budget will have only a small impact on the tax rate. In line with its guiding principles, the Board continues to explore ways to insure an academic and social atmosphere that will assist each learner toward his or her highest potential.

Jim Lipinski
Henri Moser
Dan Reagan
Kalee Roberts
Brian Marshall

HYDE PARK SCHOOL DIRECTORS’ REPORT
ON THE
STATE OF OUR FACILITIES

Last year the Board established a committee to study HPES facilities needs. That committee, the Short Term Facilities Committee, met regularly and has produced a report with recommendations.

The committee used a report “Hyde Park Elementary School-School Safety Review Checklist” which was generated from an inspection done on February 6, and 10, 2009 by a Vermont State Fire Marshall, a Vermont State Electrical Inspector, and a Vermont School Safety Facilitator, a “Hyde Park Elementary School Known List of Known Building Issues” which was compiled with input from school faculty and staff in early 2009, and the “5-Year Maintenance Plan” from the “Hyde Park Elementary School Action Plan.” They worked closely with our maintenance manager, Brian Rafferty, and our Principal, Michelle Mathias. A number of community members and board members attended committee meetings or provided information.

During the course of their work, the committee recommended that the Board commission a professional inspection of the facility. That inspection was done and it helped to inform the committee’s work. The inspection report and the report of the Short Term Facilities Committee are available on the school’s website, www.hpes.org , and printed copies are available in both the school library and the town library.

The Board took very seriously the recommendations of the committee regarding safety and security issues that needed to be addressed right away. As the committee was doing its work, some of the issues raised in the School Safety Review were being addressed. Most of that work has either been completed or is planned for the next year pending approval of our proposed budget. Some of that work may be eligible for grant funding.

The committee recommended that the Board undertake further investigation of a number of near-term issues, and that two new committees be established to continue this work. The first would be a small group that would work with the maintenance manager and the Principal to make near-term assessments of the condition of the facilities and make regular reports to the Board.

The second would be a larger group, perhaps comprised of several sub-committees, to do long range planning. This group would be asked to look at demographic projections, possible changes in school governance, economics and financing, and education delivery models. Although the facilities work was begun through a realization that the community has some serious decisions to make around the condition of the existing facilities along the lines of “repair, renovate, or replace,” we came to understand that the larger and more important questions was “What is Hyde Park community’s vision for our school ten, twenty or fifty years from now?” Although we feel that we will need to make some very important decisions over the next few years, we also feel that those decisions are so important that they must involve the entire community.

Toward that end, the Board has been working to develop a charge for the long-term committee, and is looking for people to serve. We hope to have regular communication with the community as we move forward.

The Board would like to take this opportunity to thank Duncan Nash, Mary Walz, and Rikki French along with all the other folks who assisted them for their work on the Short Term Facilities Committee.

HYDE PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL’S REPORT

To the people of Hyde Park,

I want to extend my greetings and my thanks for your support this year in terms of your commitment to our school through your vote to approve the school budget last year. We have been extremely busy working hard to insure that your children are well served.

Demographics:
Hyde Park has been bucking the trend of declining enrollment with a 16% increase in total enrollment. We have jumped from 220 students last year to 255 this year. Our students qualifying for Free or Reduced Lunch has grown from a high of 47% last year to our current level of 51%. The number of students on Individual Education Plans (IEP’s) and receiving Special Education services has also grown from 17% last year to 21% this year. That means one in five students are receiving support from Special Education.
While the enrollment is spread across grades, our lower grades are especially full, indicating that the enrollment trend will continue into next year. The increased enrollment resulted in the addition of a third kindergarten in order to maintain smaller class sizes. Our preschool class is full in both the morning and the afternoons. We anticipate that there will be at least 25% more kindergarteners than preschoolers as is typically the case and are therefore planning to maintain the third kindergarten. This action is based upon research on the effects of class size in early education which finds that students attending smaller classes do better in school over time.

Curriculum and Instruction:
We are in the midst of exciting changes at HPES which will better enable us to serve the students of Hyde Park. The federal stimulus money has funded a year-long professional development effort at the school in which all professional faculty has been working together on a program called Response to Intervention or RIT. The program is coupled with AIMSweb, a web based program that provides us with the means to track our students’ progress against their peers in our school, in Lamoille North Supervisory Union, and against 500,000 students nationwide. The data is collected minimally three times a year. Those students identified as having specific problems are immediately set up with a program of intervention to help bring them towards the target levels and are monitored more frequently, insuring a better ability to catch students with difficulties earlier.
Twelve of the faculty and staff attended a math lab school last summer through Lamoille Area Professional Development (LAPDA). The staff worked with Mahesh Sharma, who shared his knowledge of mathematics, brain based research, child development and instructional strategies. Teachers were able to observe Dr. Sharma teach children using those skills, and were then paired up with students to practice the methods he taught. HPES will be hosting another lab school here at HPES this summer. In addition to HPES faculty and staff who will attend the training, we will be recruiting up to 30 students to participate. This would be a great experience for students who want to learn more math in an interesting, fun and memorable way.
The faculty has been engaged in a process of curriculum and assessment mapping which has included a systemic examination of both our Math and Literacy curriculums and assessments. We are relying on the data provided through a number of assessments including not only the NECAPS, but AIMSweb, and multiple other formal and informal assessments. The work is driven by the data that we have been able to gather to determine gaps and duplication. The effort is intended to fine tune our work to insure that the essential curriculum is mastered by the students.

Technology
We have had a giant leap forward in technology at HPES this year. With careful fiscal management, we were able to put a significant upgrade in technology in place. All computers in the library were upgraded, making instruction in the library far more efficient with faster computers. Those library computers that were not too old were placed in lower grade classrooms, replacing even older units. Each floor of the building now has a laptop cart, allowing teachers to have computers for almost every student in their classroom. The mobile carts allow us to move the laptops to the students, providing greater efficiency both in terms of their use, and the funding needed to provide technology to students. All classrooms are now attached with an LCD projector and a document reader, and all teachers now have current laptops, insuring that they are able to seamlessly use the technology. This has been a tremendous instructional addition to the school, as teachers from kindergarten on up share the world outside Hyde Park with their students.
The stimulus funds have contributed to our technology upgrade with equipment including an interactive network system in which students can visit other classrooms and sites around the world and ask questions in real time to individuals they see on the screen. This is very exciting technology that we have just had installed.
We have also enhanced our internet presence thanks to Elisa Clancy who got us up and running on Google Applications for Education, a free web site host provided by Google. All faculty are able to update their own pages without the need of a technology specialist, not only saving money, but saving time. The website is far more powerful in terms of the level of current information from the faculty, administration and the School Board. Visit us at www.hpes.org!

Facility
I have been working with the Facilities Committee and want to extend my personal thanks them publically. They did a tremendous job, and their organization and synthesis of the issues currently facing the school is very thorough. The growth in enrollment is stretching us and we are using every nook and cranny in the building. There are some inefficiencies caused by the lack of space for which we simply have no solutions. We are doing the best we can with our current configuration, but if enrollment continues to grow, we will have a problem meeting the needs of our students in the existing space.
I want to thank the people of Hyde Park for your support of my own professional development. I have received a Doctor of Educational Leadership and Policy from the University of Vermont. The research for my dissertation was a study of the relationship between funding and student outcomes. The research shows clearly that different funding levels result in differences in student test scores, and the differences in scores grow larger over time, especially in math.

Respectfully,
Michelle B. Mathias, Ed.D., MBA