Superintendent on the state of the school district

WEBUTUCK — District Superintendent Richard Johns gave a state of the district report to the Board of Education last week during its board meeting.

In his report, Johns described his concerns with the previous school year and gave some suggestions for the upcoming 2008-09 school year.

"In my opinion, the most important issue before the board and myself is to look carefully at the leadership drain that occurred this year and do what we can to ensure that it not repeat itself," Johns wrote in his report. "We must attract capable and innovative people for these key roles. We must work for a system that supports these leaders and understands that no single person can be everything to everybody."

Indeed, a "leadership drain" was a major problem for the 2007-08 school year. Webutuck High School Principal Kenneth Sauer, Elementary School Principal Michael O’Neil and Eugene Brooks Middle School Principal Scott Richards all resigned during the summer of 2007.

O’Neil’s replacement, Joel Freer, resigned this summer, in 2008. Kathleen McEnroe was just recently named Freer’s replacement. The fact remains, however, that the school district has lost four principals within two years.

"I think part of the problem is that, when it comes to salaries, we are in the low end of the county," Johns said in an interview after the meeting. "The argument is that because we are in a small school district our pay is not as high as other districts. However, we also do not have as many staff members, which means the few people we have are doing a much more of an array of responsibilities. This continues to be a difficult paradox for us."

School board President Dale Culver agrees that leadership retention is a problem for the district.

"Quite often smaller districts cannot afford to pay higher salaries that bigger districts provide," Culver said. "We lose people to those districts with higher salaries."

Johns recommended to the district that they develop a strategy to retain district leaders.

"I think the most important thing is to recognize that it’s a hard job to be an effective principal," Johns said. "Often people can tolerate a less-than-perfect salary if they feel appreciated."

Another area Johns touched upon in his report was increasing student successes on state Regents exams.

"We’re doing a pretty good job of getting more kids over the bar," Johns said. "But we have to remember that we don’t want to say ‘Hey, we have a 50 percent success rate, and now we have 80 percent! Hurray, we won!’ It’s not like that. We have to remember our job is to maximize children’s successes, not minimize."

Culver said the district needs to concentrate on the areas that have room for improvement, especially considering the class failure rate for the 2007-08 school year.

"Hopefully, principals will have action plans in place to deal with those issues," Culver said. "We had some issues in the ninth grade and none of us will be happy until we fix those problems."

Current Webutuck High School Principal Jay Posephney said the school has put into place support structures to help students this year.

"We’re going to have a ninth-grade boot camp, which will involve teachers meeting with students and talking to them as a group," Posephney said. "We’re going to work with them on their study skills, organizational skills and time management skills. We will work together and be supportive to the students."

The official start of the school year is Wednesday, Sept. 3.