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