Administrator: District 'Listening Very Carefully' to Gifted Program Ideas

While the Three Village school administration went into Thursday's gifted program meeting with a proposal it planned to explain to the community, at least one school official said the administration left the meeting with some homework to do, too.

Kevin Scanlon, assistant superintendent for educational services, told Patch on Friday that administrators "took copious notes on many of the opinions shared by the parents" during Thursday's meeting and will look again at what the district is going to propose.

"The district administration is listening very carefully to what the district is saying," he said. "We are open to recommendations from parents. ... We’re still in the very early stages of trying to decide which way to move forward with this."

The district's original proposal would move students in the Intellectually Gifted program back to their home elementary schools. IG students in grades 5 and 6 would be brought together into one classroom, along with Pi students who had initially been invited into the IG program but who had instead chosen to stay in their home schools. Criteria for selection would be developed and made transparent at a later date. Current Pi students – another enrichment program – who would not transition into the IG classroom would be clustered together in a classroom to be served by a teacher trained on the IG level and hand-picked by the building principal. IG students in grade 4 would be clustered together in one classroom, with the potential for future creation of a grade 3/4 blended IG classroom, and the Pi program would eventually be eliminated.

Currently, enrollment in the Pi program is 253 and in the IG program is 78. The district's original proposal would cut three full-time equivalent positions for the 2013-14 school year and would also see a $105,000 reduction in busing costs, yielding a total savings of approximately $375,000. However, Scanlon said, the cost benefit is not the primary motivation for the move – rather, he said, it is based on a study of the IG and Pi programs conducted several years ago.

Dr. Tanya Adams, co-president of the group 3VSAGE, said several creative suggestions came from parents who were in attendance at the meeting.

"I do think that the administration and the [school] board are very supportive of gifted education. They are very open-minded and I think they’ll be taking it very seriously," she said. "I think this is policy in the making."

What suggestions would you have for the Three Village school district as it decides how to proceed with its two enriched educational programs, Pi and IG? Log in to share your thoughts with the Patch community by posting a comment below.