After serving the Exeter-Milligan school district as interim Superintendent, Paul Sheffield has been offered a full two year contract by the school board and has accepted.
The new contract will go into effect on July 1, 2009 for the next two years. According to Sheffield, the interim contract "had no guarantee. It was a trial period for each of us."
The school district under Sheffield's guidance is currently projecting itself into the future. Two new programs the district will be implementing are designed to assist students with skills and technology.
The new federally mandated reading requirements require a RT1 model. The reading mastery program will be implemented this fall for K- 6. "It has interventions built in. It will have everybody on the same page," according to Sheffield.
The second up and coming new thing will be the one to one laptop initiative. The school will be leasing Apple laptops for seventh through 12th graders starting in the 2010-2011 school year. This fall the teachers will all get an Apple laptop and spend a year training and adapting their curriculum to the laptop.
"There is a cost but I've found some funding to cover them. Our costs will go up but the receipts will go up as well. The laptops will go a long way in preparing kids for skills for the 21st century and college or the workforce. We want to prepare them and get our kids ahead," explained Sheffield.
As far as stimulus funding, Sheffield announced that the school will get part of two different packages. One is funds marked for the Title I program and will be $20,000 over the next few years. Unfortunately that amount cannot be used to helped the current budget but must be spent above what is currently budgeted.
The second part of the package will be for IDEA. "This $62,000 will help pay for the laptop initiative and a reading coach to help with the transition into the reading mastery program," explained Sheffield.
Sheffield reflected on the past year, "This year went amazingly fast. I enjoyed it very much. It is still different for me with no principal duties."
The Sheffield family will be moving to Exeter this summer with daughter Haylee entering the fifth grade at Exeter-Milligan this fall and son Devin in eighth grade.
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