SAU 16 BLOG

August 2021

Back to School

Welcome back to school! On behalf of all SAU 16 staff members, I want to wish you all a happy end of summer days and welcome you to the 2021-2022 academic year. Whether you were able to travel near or far, spend time with family and friends, or simply relax on your own, I hope that you have had a wonderful break and are ready to begin a new chapter in our evolving journey together.

While we believe it is important to look back at all that has transpired over the past year, we also want to emphasize that moving forward in this “new normal” is where we aim to go. It is a fact that while the virus that scuttled most of our plans for such a long time is never going to go completely away, we are learning to implement new habits to return to our normal routines, like attending school every day with all of our friends and teachers beginning on August 30. In order to accomplish this, we acknowledge that we will need to introduce some strategies, old and new. All of our schools have presented this information to their respective school boards and are eager to share with you, if they have not done so already.

Welcoming New Staff

Speaking of schools, there has been a lot of activity over the summer that we are excited to share with you. On Tuesday, August 24, we welcomed over 40 new certified educators to our schools with a New Staff Orientation held in Julia’s at Seacoast School of Technology. We have been blessed with a hiring class that exceeded our expectations and are grateful for their desire to build strong relationships with our students and colleagues and accept the challenge of delivering our rigorous and challenging curriculum. I am certain that you will enjoy meeting them and all of your families’ teachers over the next few months.

Academic Convocation Awards

We celebrated our annual Academic Convocation on Thursday, August 26 at Exeter High School. Hosted by Exeter High School Senior Alex Wahl, the event marks the start of the new school year and recognizes a few of our staff members with special awards. Delivering the keynote addresses were EHS Junior Molly Lankler, CMS 8th Grader Emma Miller, and Swasey Central School 5th Grader Carson Curtis. EHS Senior Will Olszewski privileged us with his singing of the National Anthem, and Eve Dion (MSS Grade 2), Rylie Bonner (NES Grade 3), and Grace Dion (LSS Grade 4) led us all in the Pledge of Allegiance. Earning “Leaders to Learn From” awards were Swasey Central School Nurse Rebecca Doucet, Swasey Central School STEAM Teacher Lisa Brown, and Exeter Region Cooperative School District Food Service Director Jeanne Pierce. This year’s Joan and Dick Eustis Distinguished Service to Students Award was presented to the men and women on the Facilities Maintenance crews in all 11 schools with Rusty Lyster SAU 16 Director of Facilities Maintenance accepting on their behalf.

School Construction Projects

Construction at Exeter High School is almost complete resulting in more individual and small group learning spaces as well as meeting areas for staff and students. The CMS Renewal Project is winding down after almost 15 months of construction and three years of planning. The $17.8 million project added new classrooms, individualized learning spaces for special education programming, an additional elevator near the main lobby, meeting and office space, a multipurpose room, and a completely renovated cafeteria that can accommodate each academic grade for grade-level lunch periods. This has had a profound effect on the academic programming and ability to be more flexible in grade-level team scheduling. All of our elementary schools have undergone extensive cleaning and preparation for the new year, and repair and scheduled maintenance projects including parking lot/driveway paving, ventilation performance upgrades, and LED lighting have been completed at many.

Portrait of an Educator

Schools are beginning a soft launch of the Portrait of an Educator, an asset-based evaluation model for faculty and administration that works from an appreciative professional learning perspective. We will spend the year learning from staff who wish to participate in the model and help it evolve into the premiere growth tool that directly impacts student learning and ultimately assists all educators in SAU 16. The final product will be included in our Professional Development Master Plan, a guiding document that is revised every five years and submitted to the NH Department of Education. Our Balanced Scorecard was presented to the SAU Joint Board on June 14 and will be used to measure student, staff, and system growth on an annual basis. The metrics that were created to report accountability were designed by three different panels of staff, students, community leaders, school board members, and parents. Information that is gathered will be organized and reported using a dashboard, and the information will be reported in the aggregate (non-identifiable). We expect our use of the Balanced Scorecard to expand as we learn more about the strengths and opportunities within the metrics that have been introduced, and we are excited to begin building the dashboard over the next month.

CMS History Teacher of the Year

Jacob Goodwin has been named the 2021 New Hampshire History Teacher of the Year. This award is given annually and was presented by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization dedicated to K-12 American history education. Jacob rose to the top of a list of 55 nominations from the Granite State and was one of 8,150 teachers across the nation nominated by parents, students, teachers and administrators. It is very exciting for us to celebrate Jacob’s prestigious award. He, along with all of our SAU 16 teachers, are dedicated to teaching our youth and making positive contributions that result in educational excellence and reflect so positively across the communities we serve.

SST Project on Display at McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center

A student project on the colonization of Mars is now on display at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center (Discovery Center) in Concord. Students worked with instructors and scientists from NASA on a four-month project that combined six academic programs and each class had a different role in the research, design and construction phases. The final display has information panels along with two interactive touchscreens and an interactive kids' game and opened on July 1. We hope to have this wonderful display at SST soon for everyone to see.

MSS Launched First Free Books on Bikes Program

Over the summer, Emily Darby, reading specialist and teacher, and Maureen Kiesel, library media specialist launched the first Books on Bikes program in New England to engage with the community and to keep children reading. The volunteer literacy program was very popular and gifted 655 books to children in pre-school through age nine from 10 bicycle rides to the Exeter Farmer’s Market and the Exeter community pool and recreation park. With the success of this summer’s program, the two teachers are in the process of creating a non-profit to continue this initiative long-term and with the hopes of adding more stops next summer.

EHS Teachers Presented with Champion Awards

The Council for Youth with Chronic Conditions presented Geoff Taylor and Dan Provost with Champion Awards on July 29. This award was in recognition of their hard work and dedication to a child with a chronic medical condition during the height of the pandemic which was especially hard on children with chronic medical conditions. Geoff and Dan were nominated through a video from EHS junior, Bayleigh Clock, for helping her participate in school in a meaningful way this year.

There is so much more to share and we look forward to doing it over the next 10 months in this space. We are very excited to be beginning another school year with you and we wish everyone a happy and healthy start!