Instructional Leadership Directors to Lead New Educational Direction

introduced three Instructional Leadership Directors to the School Committee Tuesday, June 14. These are new positions which, in effect, will replace the two assistant superintendent posts.

Pope named Gabrielle Abrams, Ronit Carter and Maureen Greulich
as the new instructional leadership directors. Each will spend two-thirds of
their time overseeing district-wide learning and support for students and
teachers and one-third supervising core curriculum development in their
respective areas.

Greulich, currently assistant principal for grades 9 and 11 at the high school, will work one-third on high school matters.

Abrams, who will be at the , held positions as a
humanities and theater arts teacher, a director of instructional services and
for the last three years served as a middle school principal in Blackstone, Mass.

Carter will handle the elementary and early childhood programs. She has served as a curriculum specialist and director of math, science and technology in the Hopkinton school district.

Because this new administrative model calls for teachers to be closer to teachers and students, each leadership director will have their office within their respective school buildings.

Pope said Marlborough is likely the only public school district in the state that will have this model in place.

Current assistant superintendent of teaching and learning Sandra Delaney plans to retire and assistant superintendent of schools James Jolicoeur recently accepted a position as superintendent of the Leominster School District.

Pope thanked Delaney for her great knowledge and commitment to the Marlborough schools over the years. "She understands teaching and learning tremendously," he added.

Last month Pope also publicly thanked Jolicoeur for his work as assistant superintendent for six years in Marlborough.

Other jobs that are open due to the district reorganization plan include:

- a communications liaison;

- systems administrator, which will analyze data and make
information available to administrators and teachers in an instant;

- data manager, which will support the systems administrator;

- director of finance, an appointed position by the school committee;

- English Language Learning director; and

- director of special education, which will also be appointed by the school committee.

All new positions will not be part of the Marlborough teachers' bargaining unit, Pope said.

The school committee also learned that fifth and sixth graders from the Whitcomb School who participated in their first VEX Robotic Competitions at Quinsigamond Community in Worcester on May 26 and June 2.

Jeffrey Gay, a technology teacher and advisor to the students, said the girls' team received the Judges Award for having the best engineering notebooks and most innovative robotic design (featuring a "wrist" that could flex 360 degrees when retrieving an object). The girls came in fifth in the overall competition on May 26; the boys took second place in the June 2 competition of teams that were re-invited.

During the past six months, the boys and girls built two separate robots and learned a lot about how to work on a project as part of a team, Gay said.

At its the next meeting on Tuesday, June 28, the school committee will release its findings of its own self-evaluation on how it performed its duties as a policy-making body for the school district.

Then, the school committee will evaluate Pope's performance at the conclusion of his first year as superintendent of schools.

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