It was back to work for the Scarsdale School Board on Monday September 12. The meeting covered a broad range of topics, and here are the highlights: School Board President Jill Spieler announced the names of appointees to the new Education Foundation Steering Committee which will be chaired by Ellen Miller Wachtel. Committee members will include, Joyce Hirsch, David Shuster, Joshua Silverman, Eric Staffin, Florie Wachtenheim and Beth Zadek. The Committee’s Board liaison will be Liz Guggenheimer and Dr. McGill will serve as the administrative liaison.

The Steering Committee already held their first meeting and reviewed their charge. In the coming month they will identify school needs that could be funded by a foundation, fundraising strategies, community relations and governance and legal steps necessary to launch the foundation.

In addition, Spieler reported that the Board considered closing Huntington Road in between the Greenacres School and the Greenacres field during school hours per parent’s requests. However, the Village Attorney has determined that this is a state issue and that the Village does not have the authority to close the street without state legislation. The road closing would require a vote from the State Senate and Assembly and the Village has reached out to Amy Paulin and Suzi Oppenheimer.

In his remarks, Dr. McGill reported a smooth school opening and relayed that for the most part the schools were untouched by the storm. However, there was flooding in the Scarsdale High School basement.

Speaking about college admissions McGill reported that 66% of the SHS graduating class of ’11 were admitted to schools ranked “the most competitive in the country.” He said, “This is a very impressive statement about our families, athe students, and the school district – where teachers and administrators are determined to get the best out of each student.”

Joan Weber provided the personnel and enrollment report, and said that during the spring and summer the district hired 16 teachers, one nurse, and two civil service staff. At the high school, Fred Goldberg and Kelly Hamm are serving as co-principals and Chris Renino is a new assistant principal, Ann Liptak, a long-time English Teacher at SHS will now replace Renino’s as English Department Chair and former math teacher Doug Vermese is now a co-head computer teacher. In total, there were 11 retirements from the professional staff .

On enrollment, Weber provided the following numbers:

• 190 children left the district and 185 entered
• In the five elementary schools, 2143 students were projected and as of now there are 2,118 students. The district had projected 108 elementary school sections and there are currently 107. At Greenacres, the kindergarten split into four sections as did the fifth grade at Quaker Ridge.
• At the middle school 1,188 students were expected and there are now 1,158 and at the high school, 1,449 were projected and there are now 1,404. Overall the district has 4,715 students versus a projection of 4,769. The numbers are now in a state of flux and will be finalized in October.

It is interesting to note the following enrollment trends:

• The entering kindergarten class included 303 students, while the high school graduating class of 2011 had 374 pupils.
• Overall, enrollment is expected to decline by 15 students per year over the next five years.
• 74 new international families moved to Scarsdale this year from 23 countries.

In terms of class size, Weber provided counts on class sizes at the middle school and the high school. Average class sizes at the high school are as follows:

• English 22.4 students
• Social Studies 22.5 students
• Math 20.9 students
• World Language 16.6 students
• Science 21.8 students

Overall 7.7% of high school classes have over 25 students which is an improvement over last year.

Rather than supply average class sizes at middle school, Weber provided stats on the percentages of students in classes of various sizes.

• For Spanish 6.5% of students are in classes of 26 students and 3% are in a class with 27 students.
• In French classes, 18.8% have classes of 26 students
• In math, no sections are larger than 25 students.

Retirements: Edgewood School Principal Scott Houseknecht offered remarks about retiring third grade teacher Margaret O’Farrell who taught there for 24 years. Saying “she will be remembered with great fondness,” he told the group that O’Farrell “made a point of knowing everyone: and was “truly everybody’s teacher.” Among her contributions to the school were the Chinese New Year parade and the third grade musical production, a favorite among students. O’Farrell acknowledged everyone with a birthday card and had more visits from returning students than any other teacher.

Weber ended by reporting that the District will be actively recruiting a new Principal for SHS and hopes to announce an appointment by the Spring of 2012.

Last, the state’s new Race to the Top legislation will require Scarsdale to develop teacher evaluations and evaluate all teachers on a 100-point scale. A certain number of points will be derived from student performance on state tests and local assessments will account for 20 points of the 100 points. Scarsdale is now in the process of developing our own assessments for this portion. The November Board of Education meeting will be devoted to a discussion of this topic.