The Bridge; Fall 2018 Bridge Fall 2018 Single Pages | Page 2
Superintendent’s
Message to the Community
Dear parents, alumni, and
community members,
As autumn leaves come to rest on the ground in advance
of winter, so too do our students and teachers settle in for
another year of learning and growth. In addition to the grand
reopening of Waterhouse Field (see article), our teachers
and program leaders continue to innovate, compete and
lead. A new challenge for us this year: identifying and edu-
cating 3-to-5 year-olds with special needs.
In the past several years the school
department has been entrepreneurial
in many ventures ranging from stra-
tegic partnerships to revenue-gen-
erating relationships like the one we
have with the Dayton School Depart-
ment. Each year brings us a new
opportunity to expand our program-
ming while maintaining a budget that
is responsible to both the taxpayer
and student. This year, I am proud to
help lead the newly formed Southern
Maine Administrative Collaborative (SMAC).
The SMAC will help provide special education services for
3-to-5-year-olds. It was born of a need for greater efficiency
and a lack of service providers to children with exceptional
needs. These compelled the State to seek an innovative
organization(s) to work hand-in-hand with Child Develop-
ment Services (CDS) on special education programs for 3-
to 5-year olds.
The Biddeford and Dayton School Departments are those
organizations.
The School Departments were recently awarded a $513,000
grant to voluntarily form the SMAC. The Collaborative is a
wholly independent organization with representation from
the school districts in its catchment area. With a focus on
early intervention, the SMAC is providing services and sup-
port to children ages three through five, including in-house
speech therapy and transportation to outside providers.
We believe that we can and should serve all students. We
believe there is value in getting to know students and their
families at a very young age and assist them in developing
and executing individualized education plans and interven-
tions that might carry through elementary grades. We be-
lieve that early intervention can have two seemingly dispa-
rate yet congruous yields: increased student achievement
and increased efficiency.
As we continue to work in concert
with our colleagues in Dayton and
in the Collaborative, we aim to help
assist CDS’s current backlog and
lack of funding--indeed, as a school
department that serves the highest
share of special education students
in York County, many of the pieces of
the “provider puzzle” are already in
place right here. We believe we can
take on this challenge from the State,
ultimately saving the taxpayer money and serving younger
students who will be better prepared for our Kindergarten
and elementary schools.
Whether it’s rebuilding Waterhouse Field or winning a com-
petitive grant worth a half million dollars to start the SMAC
or teaching a third grader her times tables, our dedicated
faculty and staff continue to work hard each and every day to
make Biddeford a community of which we can all be proud.
Biddeford’s blue-collar roots are reflected in the unparalleled
work ethic of the adults that serve our students, and I could
not be more proud to be counted among them.
Yours in Service,
Jeremy Ray