By Heather Pilkington, Register Staff Writer
Gainesville Daily Register
Gainesville —
The 2011-12 school year is set to begin Monday and students will find changes as they begin school at Gainesville High School.
GHS’s new principal David Glancy has been working to prepare the facility and the faculty.
Glancy has his staff fired up about the great things going on at GHS.
“Our school is great and I intend to prove it,” Glancy said.
He is working to do just that by implementing some changes. Many of the changes the high school has undergone during the summer break include new faculty, staff meetings, implementing the new math curriculum distributed by the district and finding ways for other teachers to implement the concepts of math in all subjects.
The high school has added new staff to the campus including a math interventionist, Adrian Giona. Giona was at Gainesville Middle School, last year. He is not assigned to teach any classes, but will serve as supplemental support to focus on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills with students who are in need of additional support before and after school.
Giona’s job will align with the school’s implementation of a new format that includes the addition of math remediation classes.
“Some students will have two math classes and be involved in the peer tutoring that is set up so that students are helping students,” Glancy said.
All week, the faculty has been involved in staff meetings to prepare for the arrival of students Monday.
“They have been preparing for students, getting assessments ready, putting their lesson plans in order and participating in the district-level trainings,” Glancy said.
All of this preparation is to boost the students test score on the new State of Texas Academic Assessment Readiness (STAAR) tests.
According to Glancy, this test will be broken up in to End of Course (EOC) exams that the students must take. This change in testing will begin with the entering freshman class. The sophomore and junior classes will still round out their education by taking the TAKS tests.
The freshmen will take the EOC test in the following areas: English 1, algebra, biology and world geography.
The math teachers have also been busy preparing their classes for the district’s implementation of the CSCOPE curriculum.
“This program will align the mathematics classes to insure that the information is structurally taught to the rigger and depth district wide,” Glancy said.
According to Glancy, this curriculum will still benefit the sophomores and juniors who are preparing for the TAKS test this year.
Since math is a problem area for the district, Glancy has asked his faculty to keep an eye out on how to make math relevant to the students by emphasizing the math used in other areas of the school such as in auto tech class, the sciences and family consumer science.
Glancy says he and his staff are working hard to get the word out on all the positive things going on at GHS.
“We are staying consistent, and not staying stagnant and we are going to keep pushing forward, to get the word out about the great things going on at GHS,” he said.
