Education a passion for curriculum chief

District 30 bills itself as “The Friendly Schools,” and that is exactly what brought Dr. Roxanne Garcia France to her position as the elementary school district’s instructional leader.

France arrived this summer as the new assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and said she has received a warm welcome from the Valley Stream community. She has a long educational career that has spanned four states, and has held a variety of teaching and administrative positions.

The Long Island native entered the education field in 1988 as a teaching assistant for ESL at her alma mater, Uniondale High School. She was studying for her bachelor’s degree in business at the time, but quickly realized education was her calling. Switching gears, France got her master’s degree in elementary education and special education at Hofstra University.

The next chapter in her career was spent in the south, starting in Cobb County, Georgia, where she taught at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Moving to Broward County, Florida, she worked with children with autism and designed a program to include them in a general education setting.

France moved to central administration, overseeing programs for children with special needs at more than a dozen schools. It was a job that required a lot of traveling. “The back seat of my car was my office,” she said.

As it turned out, her own daughter had autism. In an effort to find her proper treatment, France moved to North Carolina, where she briefly worked as a substitute teacher in Cumberland County.

In 2003, she returned to Long Island. Working for Hofstra, she was assigned to the Roosevelt School District to provide teachers training in science, math and technology. Roosevelt later hired her, and she worked her way up to assistant superintendent. France also had a three-month stint as interim superintendent. She recalls the state commissioner of education calling her on her cell phone, while she was online at CVS, offering her the post.

France comes to Valley Stream following a year in North Bellmore. “I felt that this was a better fit,” she said. “There’s a sense that you’re a part of a learning community.”

In her interview for the job, France said she was impressed with the questions that were asked. She said it shows that District 30 is a place where education matters, and where there are high expectations for students and staff.

Superintendent Dr. Nicholas Stirling said he and the Board of Education chose France because of her experience, knowledge of curriculum and passion for education.

“Her belief in the potential of all students and teachers makes her a good fit for the district,” Stirling said. “She will lead with a focus on maintaining high expectations for staff and students, supporting data analysis to drive instruction and ongoing development of a curriculum that will meet the needs of our diverse learners.”

Her responsibilities are to make sure that the curriculum meets the new Common Core Learning Standards, to ensure that teachers have the resources they need to do their jobs effectively, and to help teachers and principals use data to improve student achievement. She also conducts teacher observations and analyzes test results.

France said the theory of Common Core is good — raising expectations to ensure that students are college and career ready after high school. She likes that it creates a uniform curriculum from state-to-state, focuses on critical thinking skills and pushes non-fiction reading. However, she said, the change to the new standards were implemented too fast.

With experience as an educator at the middle and high school levels, France says she knows where students need to be when leave the district after sixth-grade. The elementary years, she said, are critical to a child’s success in their secondary years. “We are part of a continuum,” she said. “If we don’t get it right here, we lose them.”

After much of her educational career was spent in large county school systems, France said she enjoys being in the small districts on Long Island. In District 30, she works with three schools and tries to get to each building regularly. Although she hasn’t been a teacher for years, France says she still loves visiting classrooms to interact with students.

France is married with two children. Her daughter is a freshman at Baldwin High School and her son is a freshman at Tuskegee University in Alabama where he plays basketball. As for France, she’s a freshman in District 30, and she plans to stick around for a while.