BOE Addresses Common Core Standards

The Board of Education addressed Common Core Standards during a public meeting at Monday.

The highly-discussed agenda item requires standards in subjects, such as English and Math, be built into nationwide school districts’ curriculum for students to achieve.

“It requires a great deal of development and action," said Superintendent Dr. Joseph Laria. "It's a massive undertaking to redesign the curriculum and determine what is to be taught and how it is to be taught."

Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Dr. Shari Camhi explained how these new standards came about: "one of the reasons New York received $700 million for Race to the Top funding, was that it had to adopt Common Core Standards, or else it wouldn't be considered."

Board Trustee Joel Sunshine expressed concern over the district's ability to pass minimum standards.

"We have one of the best education systems in the country, we spend way more money per child than other districts in the state and country," he said. "This is written for all 50 states. We're Nassau County, and if our scores are really bad, you can't argue we're doing a good job. This is who's passing a minimum level test. We should far exceed these minimum standards, that should be the tone."

Principal of Dr. Michael Israel offered his observations of the district's scores.

"We have struggling kids. Our teachers work very hard, but the reality is we have to help struggling students, especially our English-limited kids,” he said. “One way may be to bolster our Academic Intervention services. I think you'll see glen Cove move up. We have great teachers here." 

The BOE is currently facing the development of the Common Core Standard into the Glen Cove School District’s curriculum.

"The question is how do we re-train our staff in this massive undertaking beyond the classroom, and we don't have the answer to that yet," said Laria. "I'm not advocating this, but some states are moving toward a four-day school week for the kids, and on the fifth day of every week is massive staff development for the children. However, staff development is a challenge. We don't know the answer to this yet." 

Board member Joel Sunshine received support from meeting attendees following a “simplistic solution” he offered to the board.

"We talk about our taxes being so high, and why they're so high, because there's so many repetitive government levels," he said. “It boggles my mind how we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on curriculum, instead of doing something that might be over-simplistic. We're not where we want to be. Why not find a school district that we want to be like, and find out what their curriculum is, and copy it?"