Good morning and welcome back! I hope everyone had a very enjoyable summer.

In a few moments Dr. Space will tell you about himself, so in my introductory remarks, I’d like to share with you how the Board of Education came to select Dr. Space and our expectations for the coming year.

When the Board began its search for a new superintendent, we kept asking, “What type of leader do we want?” People kept telling us ‘Just look for a Gary.”

Well we took a more pragmatic approach. With the help of BOCES and input from various stakeholder groups, we identified the future needs of the district and determined the leadership skills necessary to address these challenges. We determined that we wanted

Someone who will understand and support the needs of the students and whose priority will be on achieving educational excellence

Someone who is willing to surround himself and collaborate with good people

Someone who has the ability to understand the impact on everyone else when making a decision

Someone who will commit to the district and the community and who will communicate honestly and often with the staff and community members

Someone who had integrity, had a sense of humor, and was not a Red Sox fan

35 people applied for the job including district superintendents, superintendents, assistant superintendents, and other administrators.

24 were from NY and 11 from other states.

We were delighted with the candidate pool. And I want to thank you for that. Dr. Higgins and Dr. Langlois have been involved in many superintendent searches and indicated that this was one of the richest candidate pools they’ve seen.

I attribute that to you. Good leaders seek good opportunities and the great work we’re doing here in PV is attracting good leaders. So thank you for making the Board’s job easier.

The BOE interviewed 6 candidates and selected 3 finalists.

To assist us in interviewing the 3 finalists, the Board formed a confidential committee of 13 school, parent and community members. The committee was comprised of representatives of the administrators union, the PVFT, CSEA, the district office, PTA, PVBA, Town Board, Rotary, and the PV Library. The committee was charged with presenting the board with a list of strengths and areas of concern that the board should take into consideration for each candidate.

After our final round of interviews and the committee feedback, the board felt that Dr. Space possessed the skills and abilities to be an effective leader and selected Dr. Space as the front runner. We interviewed 15 references and Guy Cohen conducted a site visit of the Taos Municipals Schools. Then on May 17th, the BOE unanimously appointed Dr. Space as Superintendent.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Space to PV!

This summer the Board met with Dr. Space at BOCES on August 7th with the objective of improving how we do business. We also began a discussion of our expectations for the current year

The Board’s goals as well as our system of governance are being built around three themes. We want to be known for academic excellence. We want to provide a safe learning environment. We want the taxpayers to know we are fiscally responsible.

To that end, we identified 4 goal areas:
1) Instruction
2) Finance
3) Communication
4) Environment

For each goal area we have an objective and will have specific actions to achieve the goal.

In the area of, Instruction, our goal is to “Provide a structure, including the use of technology, to enable each student to maximize his or her potential. “

The specific actions we’re discussing include: differentiated instruction, implementation of the technology program, community service as a graduation requirement, and a follow-up on our post graduates.

Our Financial goal is – “Manage financial resources effectively.”

Paul likes to refer to this as the year of the audit. Our internal auditors completed their risk assessment and the Comptrollers audit report and the external auditor’s reports will be issued shortly, so we will be reviewing the recommendations of these 3 audits. In addition, we want to pass the next budget and analyze the expenditures for health insurance.

In the area of Communication – our goal is “To improve communication to ensure that the community is knowledgeable with respect to all appropriate district matters so that they can be active participants in the education of our children.”

We are discussing how to better keep the community informed year round, how to improve the website and the perception of who we are.

And finally, our Environment goal is – “To plan for and provide a healthy and safe environment.”

We need to move forward on the elementary school construction project and address the needs of the bus facility.

We will continue our discussion of goals and objectives at the September 6th work session and will likely adopt the goals at the following meeting. Once adopted, the goals and specific action items will be published on the website and we will monitor progress quarterly.

We’re very proud of the strategy that we’re pursuing and we’re looking forward to your helping us achieve these goals. Thank you and have a great year!