Good morning. It’s great to be here with all of you on what is now my 7th opening day. I welcome those who may be celebrating their 1st and those who may be celebrating their 31st.

There’s an ancient African proverb that I know to be true: It takes a whole village to raise a child.

Here in Putnam Valley we have a saying that I know to be true: It takes an entire community to educate a child.

Just recently, in fact last week, the Board held our annual retreat at BOCES with Marc and his entire administrative team. The purpose was to review the status of our goals from last year and collaborate on our objectives for the coming year.

The day began with Jamie Edelman leading a discussion about the district’s vision and mission which, I learned, was created eight years ago with participation from various stakeholders including many of you in this room. We revisited the vision and mission statement and talked about what we believe in for our students. I’m sure you’ve seen the vision and mission statement on the school calendar or posted in our buildings but let me take a moment to remind you.

Our vision statement reads “The Child First & Foremost. Building a Foundation for the Future. The mission statement reads “The Putnam Valley Central School District, in partnership with our families and community, is committed to ensuring a student-focused, safe and challenging environment in which students understand and assume their responsibility for life long learning, work to achieve their personal best, and become productive citizens in a diverse global society.”

In the end, we unanimously agreed that we fundamentally liked what we have. This is what we’re all about and it serves as an important framework for all of our actions and interactions both within the school district as well as with families and the community. We thought it would be worthwhile to revisit it with the various stakeholders to remember what we’re all about and refresh it if needed. I’m happy to say that Jamie Edelman volunteered to lead this effort.

In addition we talked about our accomplishments and objectives for the coming year in 4 goal categories. Let me highlight just a few items.

Instruction & Curriculum – one of our objectives is to strive to increase academic rigor. There was very little debate as to whether we should continue this goal and much discussion about what constitutes academic rigor and how you actually measure raising expectations! Under Dr. Fuch’s leadership, we have successfully articulated the curriculum and focused on an inquiry-based approach to instruction. We will extend our focus to now look at student work to further inform changes to our curriculum and instruction. Consistent with our mission to produce a responsible citizen, we have implemented a requirement of 40 hours of community service beginning with the class of 2012.

Finance – It’s very important to my colleagues as well as everyone here that the Board adopts a budget that will be supported by the community. This year 60 % of the voters approved the budget. Much of the effort that went into developing a budget that was fiscally and educationally sound can be attributed to the commitment of the members of the Budget Advisory Committee. We will further address their recommendations and focus on reducing expenses through consolidation of services.

Communication – We strive to ensure that the community is informed about District matters. I hope all of you have noticed the improvement in our district website. We’re now turning our focus on creating strategies for people to use the webpage and to eventually go paperless with district communication.

Environment – We must ensure that we can provide a healthy and safe learning environment for our students. The Elementary School expansion is now complete. The plan for the bus maintenance garage was done and must be implemented. We are also beginning discussions on a connector between the Middle School & High School.

The Board will likely adopt the District goals for 2009-2010 at our September business meeting and then we’ll post them on the website, so check there for more details.

In summary, I want to tell you that I’m so proud of how far the district has come over the past 6 years and that I am really excited about what the next three years will bring. I look forward to working with Marc on Building a Foundation for our Future and there’s no better team than you that will enable us to achieve our mission.

Have a great year!