With NEASC Warning Lifted, NHS Looks To The Future

By Eliza Hallabeck

When a 2006 New England Association of Schools and Colleges report first placed the Newtown High School on warning status, it pointed to one area as a main concern: overcrowding.

At the start of March, NHS Principal Charles Dumais was notified via a letter the warning status had been removed, thanks in large part to the completed high school expansion.

In the letter, the Commission on Public Secondary Schools cited the completion of the expansion, the positive impact of the renovation work, the addition of a ninth grade mentoring program, the enhancement of the grade nine transition experience, and the implementation of monthly half-day releases in place for professional learning communities as reasons why the warning status was lifted.

Since learning of the news, Superintendent Janet Robinson reported to the Board of Education during its meeting on Tuesday, March 15, the school and district are looking to the future.

In the March 1 letter the commission also requested school officials submit a Pre-Self-Study Report by February 1 of next year, “to document that Newtown High School is appropriately prepared for its upcoming self-study.”

“People should feel very comfortable now,” said Dr Robinson at the board meeting. “We are well on our way to full accreditation.”

Dr Robinson said Mr Dumais is focusing on a timeline of things to take care of before NEASC visits the high school again to check in 2015. One of the things the school is doing to prepare for the visit is have teachers and administrators take part in NEASC review committees for other schools.

“There is no better professional development for what they are going to be up against than participating in a team,” said Dr Robinson. “I’ve been on numerous teams, [Assistant Superintendent Linda Gejda] has been on a team, and we have teachers at the high school who are on teams.”

At the meeting, Board of Education Chair William Hart congratulated members of the Newtown community for supporting the high school expansion, which eventually led to the NEASC warning being lifted.

When the news that the NEASC warning had been lifted first reached the district earlier this month, both Mr William Hart and Vice Chair Debbie Leidlein said they were pleased at the announcement.

Mr Hart said that he understood the NEASC action was a primary driver for initiating the recently completed high school expansion. He added though that he and Ms Leidlein thought the district would have pursued the improvements cited in the warning directive, even if the association took no action against the district.

“I know that the high school crowding happened over time — and the NEASC report gave us a good heads up,” Mr Hart said. “But I believe the board would have been supportive of all these improvements all along.”

A Motivator For Best Practices

“It was important to stay the course and address the issues of concern, but I don’t think it was as devastating to the school as some people made it out to be,” Ms Leidlein said. “We had every intention of addressing these issues; NEASC was simply stating the consequence if we didn’t.”

Ms Leidlein said from day one, she viewed the NEASC action as more supportive than a punishment.

“It was certainly a motivator to improve best practices,” Ms Leidlein said, adding that a lot of people did not see the action from a glass half full perspective, but as a glass half empty.

“Once people perceived it was a horrible thing, they looked at it as a negative instead of a corrective tool,” she said.

She said as the Board of Education continues working to make improvements throughout the school system, she is already anticipating the next NEASC visit and accreditation process five years from now.

“Before I joined the board I had done a lot of talking to people as a parent and PTA president,” she said. “I tried to educate myself as much as I could about what a NEASC warning status meant. And once I joined the board, we were always moving in the right direction to get us off warning.”

The original 2006 report said, “For Newtown High School to be successful in fulfilling its potential and truly preparing all its students for a knowledge-based, technologically driven world, the community of Newtown must do much more to support the teachers’ efforts to improve learning for every student. The overcrowded facility, the lack of adequate numbers of teachers, the overworked staff and the limited technology are all issues that the community must address quickly.”

The report continued, “The Newtown community does not ensure an adequate and dependable source of revenue to provide and maintain appropriate school programs, personnel, services, facilities, equipment, technological support, materials and supplies for student learning. Despite the financial resources of the community and its citizens that places Newtown in the top ranks of the communities in Connecticut that are able to provide revenue, Newtown High School is ranked 139 out of the 169 school districts in Connecticut in per pupil expenditure.”

Moving forward, NHS Principal Dumais said Newtown is staying focused on 2015, when NEASC representatives will next visit the school district. Other things are being done between now and then to prepare the school for the visit.

When new NEASC guidelines were released in October, Mr Dumais posted the information on this blog, www.dumais.us/newtown/blog, to allow community members to keep up to date on the requirements along with the school.

“Presenting well for NEASC is always important,” said Mr Dumais. “I think the fact that we were on probation makes it even more important for us.”

By February 2012 Mr Dumais said the school is expected to file a pre-self-study report with NEASC to note what the school plans to report on in its self-study, which will be used by NEASC representatives to measure the school in 2015.

“The key for us is going to be starting that process early,” said the high school principal.

As part of the effort to prepare the school, Mr Dumais also said a number teachers at NHS have started participating in NEASC evaluations of other schools to be better equipped to prepare the school for its own study in 2015.

“We will be focusing some of our attention on learning the standards, becoming familiar with them, and figuring out what we do that fits in those standards,” he said.

While a lot of time will be spent studying the new standards and making sure everything is ready at the school, Mr Dumais said the effort will not just stay focused on the NEASC requirements, but will also focus on what is in the best interest of NHS and its students.