Taschner: Oh absolutely. You know, certainly the feedback of everybody in the process and knowing that that’s one of the other things that we are going to be doing and what a great resource to have someone who has been a part of that process and who’s been teaching in that building. And has…and who has such a strong physics and science background. So you know, part of what we’re trying to do…and I guess the good thing is, like I said, everyone wants him. That’s a good thing, right? [laughs] Rather than nobody liking a candidate.
The Times: Will there now be 1 principal and 3 assistant principals at the 11/12 center?
Taschner: At the 11/12, yes.
The Times: What about at the 9/10 building?
Taschner: You know, I think that’s one of the things on my radar for future…is making sure that there’s enough administrators…it’s not about trying to create this large administrative team. I think people can see…and to a fault at some point, people were upset. You know, I’ve tried to really decrease and flatten the central office staff, decrease the number of people at a district level so that the…resources are in the buildings. That has been from the beginning, since I got here and I haven’t strayed from that. We’re going to put the resources in the buildings.
The Times: I remember when the decision to place the directors into the buildings, was made last year.
Taschner: It has been helpful for children, the parents know people more and so…and even as we go through this process of reorganizing…you know, there are districts that are our size that have far more administrators than we do. And someday…and we need those administrators to function effectively. But we’ve tried to say, how can we do this now? Our resources are limited, and we only have so many so what can I do to keep most of the resources in the buildings and supporting students. And in the future it is absolutely my goal to have yet a third person at the 9/10 building. And if you think about it, our middle schools which are 500 and change, 500 and a little bit of change and 600 and some at south, have 2 people. So when you think about…you take that 500 number and double it…
The Times: It sounds like there should be an extra person there as well. How many students are enrolled at the 9/10 center?
Taschner: I think they have…I think they’re both around 1100…they vary a little bit. And the other part of it is the courses they take. So it’s not just total student enrollment, it’s about how many students are in each building at different parts of the day because remember, if students are taking certain classes, they’re…even though they may be a 10th grader, they may be taking a class in the 11/12 building because the students move back and forth between those buildings. So that creates a different overload on the buildings and in trying to make sure… that we have those things…now they function as a team very well between those 2 buildings and I’ve seen that…as the administrators move back and forth to help each other out when they can too. But every time we do that, it does take away from the academic part in being able to provide support and classroom support for teachers, which is a really important part of what we do as well.
The Times: My next question is regarding special education; you had stated that principals have been taking courses all year to receive special ed. training but that going forward you would not hire a principal without a special ed. background. Is that true?
Taschner: Let me back up, that’s not…that’s what I was quoted as saying but that was not quite right. Let me just clarify that…because it was a long conversation that that came out of…in which…it was a long conversation so it was…I appreciated the person who came in but…here’s a couple of things we talked about. People were concerned that principals don’t have any training in special education. That’s not true. Principals, as a part of their coursework to become a principal do have to go through training in special education. And I talked about the fact that that is critically important to me. I said that the district has made a…a commitment to special education in a way that many districts don’t, in that every elementary teacher we hire, we look for dual certification; in general education and special education. And we do that because we are committed to serving students with disabilities, to recognizing…children who may be students with disabilities…so the teachers have that broad base of knowledge that comes from studying special education and general education. And how to be able to serve students in classrooms and to do it very well. So that’s a huge commitment and we’ve been doing great…we got…we have gotten outstanding candidates this year that we are getting ready to bring on. And we’ve made a similar commitment even at the secondary level in saying when we bring special education teachers on, we want them to be highly qualified. We want them to have not only a special education degree but a certification in a content area, such as English, math or science…or social studies. So that, if there is a need where a student needs specially designed instruction that can’t be taught in the classroom, the teacher they’re receiving it from is highly qualified to do it. And the state says in fact, that we have to do that. But we could…you know…some schools do models where they might have 2 people in the classroom, which is great…co-teaching is a great option as well. But we have students that receive instruction specifically from their special education teacher in say, math. Then we want that to be someone who is highly qualified in math and who has training and certification in that.
So principals, on the backside of that, have training…in special education as well. And the state recognizes that because they say that yes, the person that holds the principal certificate is in fact…able to observe and evaluate special education teachers. And the way they are able to do that is because in fact, they’ve had training on that. And so in addition to that, we’ve spent this year…going through…the principals have gone through a number of different trainings on…not only…I’ll start with generally what is really good classroom practice; that allows students of varied abilities to be in a classroom and to benefit…and to derive meaningful, educational benefit from that experience. And we spent a lot of time training on that, and we’re going to spend…continue to…you know, professional development is ongoing and we’re going to continue to do that over the course of the years. It never stops…we never get to stop learning. And that…part of that is meeting with advocacy groups, part of that is helping develop parent trainings, it’s about learning about IEP writing and how to make goals that really are helpful …and how to assess students in a way that parents can understand it…so it’s not just a probe…you know, ‘Your student read 26 words out of 30.’ Not that but listen, here’s what we know that they are able to…do and that they understand, and here’s this goal and here’s how I can show you they accomplished it. That’s what we’re working to…so when a principal is sitting in an IEP meeting, they are able to help be a strong advocate for the child. And that they can question and that they can talk about the reading and that they can talk about the math. They have gone through training in Orthography this summer, they’ve gone through math training this summer. So the principals are knowledgeable and…you know, people have said…’Well, they have so much to do.’ And I say the most important thing we have to do, is children. And…you know that’s where we need to spend the most of our time. So if there’s ways…and you have to as a principal…you find ways to get the other things done. [laughs] You know? To get the assembly monitored and to get this done and to…you find other ways and other people who can do those because you know that your background in education…there are children who are counting on you to have the educational expertise to be able to go into a meeting and say, ‘Wait – have we tried this in math, have we tried this in classroom practice?’
The Times: At the last board meeting, you stated that special education needs a dedicated person. Are you actively looking for a candidate specifically to manage special education in the district?
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