MASSENA -- The 2017-18 school year at Massena Central will bring 20 new faculty and staff and ambitious new plans to increase attendance and links between families and the school.

New Jefferson Elementary faces include music teacher Esther Tupper, fifth grade teacher Brenna Snyder, teacher aide Rachael Mott, special education teacher Christine Millhausen, second grade teacher Katherine Lomanto, fourth grade teacher Kristin Kellogg and teacher aide Karissa Donnelly.

At Nightengale Elementary, there is one new faculty member, sixth grade teacher Megan Morley.

New additions at Madison Elementary include special education teacher Kimberly Maxfield, kindergarten teacher Cassandra Kotz, special education teacher Patti Blais and teaching assistant Ann Simpson.

At J.W. Leary Junior High, new staffers include physical education teacher Zachery Marcellus and teacing assistant Amy Perry.

New hires at the high school include art teacher Meagan Fontanes, teacher aide Jenna Fregoe, teaching assistant Ellen Hodge, keyboard specialist Bailey Marolf and Briana Takhtani, a long-term special education teacher substitute.

Districtwide, Kristin Colarusso-Martin will be the Community Schools site coordinator.

Community Schools Coordinator

The Board of Education at their August meeting voted to spend $55,000 in state grant money to hire Colarusso-Martin as their community schools site coordinator.

Superintendent Pat Brady said her job will be “working with the school and the community to support our students and families.”

Community Schools is a new state-funded program that he says is aimed at “[removing] barriers that students have to being successful in school.”

“This could be mental health issues, medical services, tutoring, mentoring, after school programming to better connect them to the school, to name a few. She will be working with the school community resources … and families to support individual students,” Brady said.

He said some parents could expect to see Colarusso-Martin coming to their home to offer services.

“Sometimes it means she’ll be doing home visits. There may be some family needs that may get in the way to children coming to school or not being engaged in school,” Brady said. “It’s a big project, a very important project, and one we see is very integral to make sure students most at risk have what they need to be successful.”

Colarusso-Martin is resigning her position as coordinator of the Massena Drug Free Community Coalition to take the Community Schools post.

“Kristin has been very well connected to resources in her previous positions at the local, county and state level,” he said.

Brady said reducing chronic absenteeism is a big goal for the 2017-18 year.

“Parents can expect that we will be reaching out more this year to speak to them about attendance. This will, each building has created an attendance committee where they look at individual students and try to figure out why the students is not coming to school and work with those families and make sure they are coming… unfortunately it takes outside agencies to get involved. It’s not a route we’d like to necessarily go down, but sometimes it is necessary. But there will be focus on attendance and parents can expect … particularly those students who are missing a lot of school,” he said.

iReady Program, New Webpage

Grades kindergarten through eight will be assessed with a new program called iReady, which includes a feature students can use at home to practice for tests.

“During our strategic planning process, we identified a need for a consistent instruction and assessment program linked to ELA and math … Common Core and that it can give us consistent information on how well students are doing to meet the standards, instead of relying on 3-8 math and ELA exams at the state level,” Brady said, which led them to the iReady program.

Teachers will be trained in using it at a staff development day.

“It also will help to support parents. Parents are going to have access to iReady at home and they can work with their children with this online program to improve their ELA and math skills. It provides tutorials. … students can start at a comfortable level. As the continue to answer questions to gets more difficult … they start to master it, they fell better about their skills,” Brady said, adding that the at-home component includes a tutorial.

“We expect sometime in September we will be opening that product up to the parents to use at home,” the superintendent said.

The school website, mcs.k12.ny.us, has been revamped and includes a new calendar feature that parents can use to print one for home. It includes all school activities for the year. Later on, it will also have Google Classroom linked to individual teachers so they can communicate directly with students and share materials and assignments.

Consolidation Study

Throughout the school year, a committee of school employees and community members will be working with a consultant firm to see if it makes sense to close a building. State grant money is paying for it.

The 17-person committee will meet once per month in the building that respective meeting will examine. They will be open to the public and announced in advance, Brady has said at Board of Education meeting.

The consultants will issue final recommendations at the end of the school year, which could recommend a range of options from closing a building or buildings, to doing nothing at all.

“This study is going to have a major impact on our next capital project,” Brady said.

Maintenance Projects

There has been some asbestos maintenance done over the summer, with some just wrapping up, but that shouldn’t affect school, the superintendent said.

Some asbestos was removed over the summer from J.W. Leary Junior High and they are setting up to remove asbestos from crawlspaces at Madison and Nightengale schools.

“That will not impact the opening of school because it will be done in the crawlspace away from staff and students … and in a controlled environment under the auspices of the Department of Labor,” Brady said.

Later in the year, there will be a $100,000 project at the central administration offices to deal with its electrical load, replace doors and other work.

Some returning students will notice the high school has been painted for the first time in years.

“It really was an excellent project. I’ve heard a lot of great feedback from people that the buildings look great,” Brady said. “There were many rooms, particularly at the high school level that had not been painted in many years and they really started to show their wear.”

He said there was painting done at the junior high and elementaries, and he hopes to see more done next year.