53.0°,
Overcast Rockville Centre students are tan, rested and ready
Summer vacation ends for village students
It was back to school for Rockville Centre students on Tuesday, as a fleet of bright yellow school buses and legions of parents took their children to school on what otherwise would have been a sunny — and quiet — late-summer day.
A new class of 237 kindergartners were probably the most enthusiastic about the start of school. They join approximately 100 children who are new to the district, which educates about 3,550 students — a number that is little changed from last year.
During the annual inspection of district schools on Sept. 1, school board trustees, district administrators, teachers, staff members and representatives of the PTA found spotless buildings and classrooms, ready for the year ahead.
Over the summer, district staff kept busy with curriculum adjustments and infrastructure improvements.
According to Christopher Pellettieri, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, the district is adding foreign language instruction for fourth-graders this year. Pellettieri said that administrators updated the elementary health curriculum and enhanced English and Spanish curriculums at South Side High School, as they do every year.
He added that South Side Middle School will pilot an eighth-grade Earth science e-portal this fall, a first for Long Island schools, which was developed in conjunction with giant educational company Gage Cengage.
Pellettieri also said he has been trying to "make heads and tails" out of changes New York state has implemented in the scoring and proficiency ratings of its English Language Arts and math tests. He said he is expecting new and longer tests next May, but has received no word yet from the state on what they will actually look like.
Superintendent Dr. William Johnson said that district staff has been studying ways to continue to incorporate technology in support of instructional goals. The maintenance staff completed a districtwide summer project that mounted projectors to get them and their wires out of the way in order to make better use of SmartBoards in elementary classrooms.
