GENESEO — Members of the Geneseo community gathered once more in the Geneseo Central School Thomas Preston Media Center Saturday morning for an open forum on strategic planning in the areas of educational and extra-curricular programming. The school held another open forum on finance, facility needs and transportation on Jan. 30.
Board of Education President Stephen Miskell and Superintendent Tim Hayes stated the point of the forum was to help the Board of Education come up with plans to implement and carry over into the next five years.
Hayes showed attendees a slideshow outlining state-mandated and non-mandated educational courses, as well as the school’s current extra-curricular programs. The slideshow will be available at geneseocsd.org under “Board of Education” and “Five Year Strategic Planning.”
Attendees were asked to break into two groups and discuss what they think should be the priorities for curricular and extra-curricular programing in the next five years, as well as any programs they’d like to see at GCS.
In terms of curricular priorities, the groups decided the school should:
• Try to offer classes that help students thrive and become global participants.
• Not encourage too many online classes, but utilize them to teach useful courses student otherwise would have no access to. This could possibly be through real-time video conferencing.
• Share AP classes with districts with few or no AP classes.
• Keep at least two choices for foreign languages.
• Possibly share a French teacher with another school if demand is low.
• Focus on speech and hearing referrals now that SUNY Geneseo no longer offers it.
• Maintain long-term/difficult programs.
• Make sure courses help students compete after school in college, the workforce and the military.
• Make sure students are physically and mentally healthy.
In terms of extra-curricular programming, the groups thought the school should:
• Utilize community resources and possibly try to team up with the YMCA or Boys and Girls Clubs to help fund extra-curriculars.
• Create a foreign language club for kids who want to learn a language not offered.
• Bring back Pageturners or other reading programs to the elementary school.
The groups wanted to see these programs at the school:
• Speech and language.
• Services to at-risk students.
• Targeted summer school.
• Political advocacy programs.
• More options for older elementary kids at recess.
The public is invited to attend a presentation to discuss ideas for sharing and collaborating with neighboring school districts by education consultant Dr. Stephen Uebbing from the Warner School at the U of R on Feb. 13 at 7 at GCS.