USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Lincoln > Town Report on Lincoln 1960-1962 > Part 23
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SCHOOLS, LIBRARY AND RECREATION
LINCOLN PUBLIC SCHOOL ORGANIZATION
SCHOOL COMMITTEE
Term Expires
Dr. Perry J. Culver, Chairman
1964
(Mrs.) Helen Gilfoy
1963
C. DeWitt Smith
1962
Meetings : Regular : First Monday of each month, 7:30 p.m., Office of the Superintendent. CL 9-9400
Called : Third Monday of each month usually and other meetings as stated. Time and place to be designated. -
All regular meetings open. Items for the agenda must be in the Office of the Superintendent by 3:00 p.m. on the Thursday prior to the Monday meeting.
SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS
John B. Davis, Jr., Lincoln Road, Clearwater 9-9182 Office: Smith School, Clearwater 9-9400
SUPERINTENDENT 'S OFFICE STAFF
Frances R. Gardella, Secretary (Mrs. ) Harriett Parks, Financial Secretary (Mrs.) Mary Bufton, Clerk-Typist
HOURS . .. OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT
8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday Saturdays and evenings by appointment
PRINCIPALS
Harry T. Burke, Smith & Center Schools, Clearwater 9-9402 Robert L. Filbin, Hartwell School, Clearwater 9-9404 Robert A. Leach, Hanscom School, CRestview 4-7720
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PRINCIPALS . OFFICE STAFF
(Mrs.) Sallie Jackson
(Mrs. ) Doris Bardsley
(Mrs. ) Mary Carrigan
(Mrs. ) Sally Banker
(Mrs. ) Nancy Barr
(Mrs. ) Solveig Parsons
Center School
Hartwell School
Hartwell School
Hanscom School
Hanscom School
Smith School
Hartwell School Hanscom School
* Resigned in 1961
HOURS ..... SCHOOL OFFICES
8:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Monday - Friday
SCHOOL NURSES
Lincoln Schools: (Mrs.) Alice E. Garrison, R.N.,C1 9-9401 Hanscom School: * (Mrs. ) Audrey Townsend, R.N., CR 4-7723
* Resigned Dec. 1961
SUPERVISOR OF BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS
John J. Carroll
CUSTODIANS
Center School Hanscom School
Hartwell School
John Biondo James Fox
*Aristotle Kokinos
*Victor Rizzitano
Smith School
Harold Cuttell Daniel O'Leary
Harold Swift
*Michael Ciraso Oscar DeConto
*William Fallon
* Resigned in 1961
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* (Mrs. ) Ruth Moller
* (Mrs. ) Irene Hagenian
SCHOOLS, LIBRARY AND RECREATION
SCHOOL COMMITTEE
Dr. Perry J. Culver, Chairman Helen Gilfoy C. DeWitt Smith
The School Committee in its annual report for the year 1961 would like to record a year of satisfaction with a superior administration and faculty and an excellent curriculum. Obviously, all will continue to strive for still higher goals.
During the summer school session of 1961, there were workshops devoted to improving the curriculum in individ- ual schools and a number of children were given remedial help. This help in the areas of math and reading during a four weeks period improves the child's performance in subsequent years and in many cases allows the child to continue with his age group rather than spending an extra year in the lower elementary school. Additional comments about the details of curriculum will be found in the re- ports of the superintendent and the principals.
A Distinguished Visitor Series was inaugurated in 1961. Dr. Robert Ulich, professor emeritus, Harvard Graduate School of Education, came to Lincoln on January 9 and Mr. William G. Saltonstall, principal, Phillips Exeter Academy, visited on March 6. Both spent the day visiting with students and faculty of all of the elementary schools. This was followed by an evening's talk at an open meeting sponsored by the Lincoln School Association. Mr. Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr., Director, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, was the Distinguished Visitor on May 15 and Dr. Mary I. Bunting, President, Radcliffe College, spent October 24 visiting the schools. These visitors have been both stimulating and inspiring not only to the faculty but to the students as well. This series appears to be of much value to the school system
and is being continued.
Awareness of the Lincoln Elementary School system is becoming nationwide. Visitors have been referred to our school system by many including the Massachusetts Depart- ment of Education, the Educational Facilities Laboratories of the Ford Foundation, the U. S. Office of Education and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Principals, specialists in various areas of the curriculum, school architects and development directors from all parts of the country and from overseas have been our guests. The in-
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creased interest in our school is flattering and the con- tacts and the interchange of ideas stimulating.
Further recognition of the Lincoln Schools was given by the choice of the Laurence G. Hanscom Elementary School, designed by The Architects Collaborative, for exhibit at the annual meeting of the American Association of School Administrators' Convention in Philadelphia, March, 1961. This year the Hartwell School Addition, designed by Hoover & Hill Associates, has been selected for exhibit at the annual meeting of this same association to be held February 1962 at Atlantic City. These exhibits are selected on the basis of architectural merit, utility and attractiveness.
The Lincoln Schools are showing a growth in numbers of pupils along with educational growth. In order to plan for future school building, considerable time has been spent in reviewing past growth figures of school popula- tion and various projections of numbers of pupils to be in school in the years ahead. It is guessed that the growth rate under the present circumstances will continue at about 7% per year which is a conservative estimate. At this rate of growth, we can anticipate somewhere around 1200 or more pupils in the Lincoln School System by 1965. During this study, one interesting growth pattern has appeared over the last four years. There was an increase of 218 pupils in the school system and, of these, 99 represented the net increase due to a change in occupancy of already existing housing. It is impossible to say whether this same type of pattern will continue. This fact, when coupled with the question of how many new houses will be built in any one year, introduces an element of unpredicta- bility in any effort to guess at future school population. It is obvious that we will have to have additional school buildings by the fall of 1963 because of the need for im- proved facilities at the upper school and because of the present large number of children in the non-graded primary. Consequently, the School Committee requested at the Town Meeting in March, 1961, an appropriation of $5,000 and the appointment of a School Building Committee which is now working diligently to determine the amount of building necessary and its proper location.
In working out a long-range plan for future school building needs, the School Committee felt the need for professional guidance and assistance and employed Dr. E. Gil Boyer, Associate Commissioner of Education for the State of Rhode Island, to make an objective study of our physical plant in relation to curriculum. His report
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which has been of considerable aid to both the School Com- mittee and the building committee confirmed and enlarged the earlier recommendations of the Long-Range Planning Committee -- recommendations as published in the Town Re- port of 1960.
The School Committee in its planning for future educa- tional needs has been acutely conscious of the cost of education to the community. It is dedicated to provide the best possible education for the children of Lincoln but also is determined to get every dollar's worth possi- ble from expenditures. The breakdown of the school bud- get by per pupil cost has enabled us to discover the fol- lowing pattern over the last four years. The per pupil cost for all of the school budget, except for instructional salaries, has remained at a constant level as the total amount allocated to these non-instructional salary items has increased directly with the increase in school popula- tion.
Budget (Less Instructional Salaries)
Year
Per Pupil Cost - Based on Previous October 1 Enrollment
1959
$205.75
1960
211.60
1961
204.14
1962
212.73
School Committee policy is designed to award merit raises where unusual and superior performance is demon- strated and to continually upgrade the quality of our faculty. It is anticipated that there will be a fairly continual increase in the cost of teachers' salaries as our faculty matures and we have more teachers with longer experience in the Lincoln Elementary School System. Wise and provident administration has made it possible to hold the line of per pupil cost on the non-instructional salary items in spite of a steady increase caused by inflation.
During the year we have had a series of most enjoyable and productive meetings with members of the Sudbury and the Lincoln-Sudbury School Committees. The opportunity to discuss matters of common concern has been most valuable and the meetings have been scheduled into the next year.
The School Committee wishes to recognize the splendid cooperation of the Air Force personnel at the Laurence G.
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Hanscom Field during the past year. Our common effort in providing an educational program for the children housed on the Base has been for Lincoln both stimulating and rewarding. We also would like to express our thanks to the many citizens, officials and Boards of the Town of Lincoln who have greatly aided us in our work.
SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS John B. Davis, Jr.
I shall confine my report this year to three broad areas of our school system: 1) administrative organiza- tion ; 2) the junior high school years; 3) the building program. If we are to maintain ourselves as an outstand- ing elementary school system they need discussion and un- derstanding.
To begin with, we have an organizational pattern which is necessary for a system of our size but which is unusual when compared with other communities. Lincoln has three unique educational jurisdictions. Hanscom School, since 1959 an integral part of the Lincoln educational effort, has a clientele of Base-housed children, transients in the line of military service, bringing with them a wealth of personal experience from the far corners of the earth but frequently bringing also erratic educational backgrounds requiring a special educational program. The Hartwell School, which by successive steps over the past three years and building upon a rich history, has developed a character of its own which is most easily but inadequately described by the statement, "a non-graded school organized for instruction on the basis of faculty teams". The
Smith School, embracing grades five through eight, which is just feeling the impact of grades totalling more than one hundred children, is responding internally to care- fully and well-conceived programs for change - change in patterns of instruction; change in the organization of curriculum content.
In these three schools, the persons central to the task of creating an image and a character for the educa- tional programs are the principals. Each school is evolving in accordance with a tempo that suggests an ap- propriate rate of change. Each principal is contending with quite different sets of problems, opportunities and motivations. Each is working within the very reasonable
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pattern of a ratio of approximately one to twenty-five staff members; each has direct and frequent contact with the Superintendent of Schools; each has been of assistance, one to the other. While authority and local school autonomy has been vested in each principal and accepted by him, each through the superintendent operates within the well-drawn policy of an alert school committee. This pat- tern is undergirded by a cooperative spirit which moves back and forth across the school system through teachers, staff, department chairmen, team leaders and directors. It is easy to see that the notion of a superintendent being able to mandate change, no matter how insignificant, at any level of the school system, is as outmoded as that which describes the principal as being no more than the custodian of the schedule, the chief disciplinarian or the ringer of bells.
Of particular interest to the school committee, ad- ministrators and teachers in the year which we are enter- ing, is the question of how we shall shape the educational experiences of our boys and girls in what has been called "the junior high school", including grades five through eight.
Traditionally, and in Lincoln, these grades have been viewed as the time for the introduction of more formalized subject matter, where teaching has been more specialized than general. Whether it is easier to move from a gener- alized instructional program to one which calls for more specialization in teaching, an experience we are witness- ing in the lower elementary school, or whether it is easier to generalize the subject matter specialists of the "upper school", is a moot question. A serious "upper school" consideration resides in the fact that these grades connect the lower elementary and the high school. It would be an exaggeration to describe this condition as one of "squeeze", but it is a relationship that must be reckoned with and at a time when the junior high school or "upper elementary" is under the spotlight of national examination. It will be apparent also to those with children in this age group that the child from the age of ten is quite a different creature from his younger cohorts or those who have preceded him to high school. Suffice it to say, he or she is beginning to exercise the indepen- dence and personality traits which predict their future. The objective observer of these phenomena will acknowledge also that inherent capacities and limitations become in- creasingly apparent.
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In this connection, the following questions have come to mind and are being wrestled with: Are there ways by which subject matter may be re-arranged for age and ability groups rather than for the present grade levels? Is it possible to view children in grades five and six, or four, five, and six or, perhaps, any other combination, as a
group rather than as discrete grades? Can we in this process discover subject matter which seems particularly suitable for ability groups rather than grade groups? How can and should the schedules of subject matter specialists be arranged? Should the time allocations presently assigned to subject matter areas be continued as is? What are the central and most important experiences which children should have? Is it possible, indeed logical, to assume that these middle years of public education should develop a framework and a technique and a unique context when concerned with that which youngsters have experienced and that which they anticipate?
Currently we are dealing with these matters, Progress will be detected not in a sudden and dramatic change, but in a slow, cautious, evolutionary way.
One of the major limitations in the forward move toward constructive change in our present "upper school" program is our buildings and the spaces within them. We have, at every level of the school system, experienced the disadvantage which accrues when any segment of the school population is in isolation. The Center School this year presents that problem to the fifth grade; last year, it was the fourth or Team "O" which contended with the prob- lem of disruption and inadequate facilities.
Our experience at the Hartwell non-graded school has proved conclusively that we can use most effectively flexi- ble multi-purpose space. The concept of large and small group instruction is educationally sound. It is, as a technique, capably being worked. Neither Smith nor Center School has any appropriate space for assembling any group of youngsters other than. that number which currently typi- fies a regular class group. In the first place, it is hard to bring creative teachers into working relationship for the purpose of sharing their competencies with large groups of children through multi-group lectures if the appropriate spaces are not available. It is even more difficult to do so when the effort necessary to adapt a space for temporary large class instruction calls for emer- gency measures far beyond the reasonable call of duty. This disadvantage is added to that of lack of areas within
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Smith or Center School which can rightfully be called teacher offices or teacher conference areas.
Another aspect of the building problem relates to the inadequacy of specialized spaces at Smith. After 1963 the curriculum offerings in the areas of art, music, science, home economics and shop will be seriously cur- tailed if immediate steps are not taken to improve and enlarge these facilities. When any of these facilities
is improved and, from a policy point of view, they should be replaced rather than rebuilt, each space formerly dele- gated in Smith as a specialized area becomes a regular teaching space which we shall also badly need by 1963. The fastest solution to the problem, and perhaps the most economical of time and money, would be to build now a new flexible junior high school at a point adjacent to the campus but with access planned from Sandy Pond Road. The immediate creation of space appropriate to an "upper school" curriculum, grades seven, eight or six, seven, and eight, would mean the liberation of Smith School to immed - iately house grades four, five or four, five, and six. Town projections suggest a future school population of eighteen hundred to two thousand. Current enrollment is 920 and growth has averaged approximately 7% per year. Eclectic and erratic building programs have the effect of keeping parents, teachers and children in a constant state
of flux. There is an unsettledness, there is disruption, there is the requirement of re-assigning people to spaces and to buildings and, creative as we may be, we are basic- ally creatures of habit and in little ways resentment to these disorders finds its expression.
The progress of the Lincoln School System in recent years has been significant. Every effort must be made to insure that the building program deemed necessary to house the kind of curriculum which generative and creative teach- ers and administrators are planning with the help and sup- port of an alert public will materialize. The opportun - ity for action in this regard will come almost simultan- eously with the publication of this, the third report of the incumbent superintendent. It is to be hoped that citizen response to the physical needs of the school will be as thoughtful as the support and interest which they have given the areas of curriculum and instruction.
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PRINCIPAL, SMITH-CENTER SCHOOLS
Harry T. Burke
The Charles Sumner Smith School began the new term in September with an enrollment of three hundred fifty-four students and twenty-six staff members. Grades five, six, seven and eight are included within the jurisdiction of this school.
Because of expanding enrollment, it was necessary to move the fifth grade from the campus to Center School. This move released two rooms at Smith and two at Hartwell but the isolation of teachers and children from the Smith and Hartwell Schools has limited us in the case of special centralized facilities such as the library and gymnasium.
In September, the superintendent's office was moved to the Center building. This released the old shop room which was being used as a principal's office, for multiple uses . Here now, are held Student Council meetings, two remedial reading classes, and small group instruction. addition, it serves as a teacher's work room and office space for some of the special teachers.
In
Circumstances, rapidly developing on the world scene, are forcing the public to give great attention to its edu- cational program. The junior high, as well as all other levels, must be prepared to meet the demands of the times. It must assume the responsibility of providing a transi- tional program for the changing adolescent, whose educa- tional, emotional, and maturational problems are different from those of any other age.
During the summer, junior high school committees met for the purpose of re-examining the present trends and developing plans for the future in the areas of grouping, team teaching, curriculum and facilities.
One of the important results was the study of the existing fifth grade curriculum and its renovation to enable it to meet the transitional demands placed upon it by the non-graded primary program and the departmentalized junior high school curriculum.
A modified team teaching approach was adopted whereby different teachers were made responsible for the grouping and curriculum changes has enabled a free movement of students from group to group and teacher to teacher in such
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a way as to provide for the needs of the individual child.
In spite of its isolation, the Fifth Grade has been able to maintain a limited usage of the school library and gymnasium by means of bus trips twice a week to Smith School.
Another result of the summer workshop study was the beginning of an experiment in the history department to determine the effectiveness of large-small group in- struction and team teaching. This program was designed to permit the individual to benefit by association with all of the students in his class, as well as to profit from the varied talents and experiences of more than one teacher.
All seventy-seven members of the Eighth Grade now meet together for a double period on Tuesday, during which time alternating members of the staff, or guest speakers, present the materials and lesson for the week's considera- tion. The remainder of the week is devoted to smaller group consideration of the previously presented materials and its application.
The summer also saw the further development of a much needed geography curriculum with special emphasis on the Seventh Grade level.
Because a command of English is essential to success in any field, and because junior high school English in- cludes so many sub-divisions, seven class periods a week are allocated to English at Smith School.
The English department continues the emphasis upon language skills begun in the elementary grades. Reading forms an important part of the program. Drill in devel - opmental reading skills is provided through SRA Reading Kits which enable each student to work at his own level, progressing to higher levels at his own speed. Remedial materials, such as the Scott Foresman workbooks, are used in addition to several grade level basic readers to main- tain a well rounded program.
The Spalding phonetic approach forms the basis for our spelling program.
Our remedial program has been greatly expanded with the added services of Mrs. Torrey and Mrs. Grush, whereby
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students in small groups are given concentrated attention in areas of definite weaknesses. In addition, students not taking French are included in study skills sections and small remedial classes in subjects where extra help may be needed.
The present science curriculum has developed from classroom experiences of the past few years. The program is not now, nor will it ever be, completely fixed. Each year some study material is discarded and replaced by apparently better material.
Science education in Smith School is, above all, in- dividual activity. Science is taught here to train stu- dents in finding the answers to problems by personal scientific experimentation, to learn scientific facts, and to prepare them for the courses they will take in high school.
This program has been .enhanced by the conversion of a regular classroom into an additional science laboratory and lecture room.
The Mathematics program of Smith School represents a continuous effort to integrate the best of the "tradition- al" and "modern" mathematics. By the end of the eighth grade, all groups will have studied the important basic topics in arithmetic, but there will be a difference in the depth to which they have been studied, and the order and presentation. Some rapidly moving groups will study some algebra and geometry; and these and other areas of higher mathematics will be taught, in many cases, as a natural outgrowth or requisite of a good understanding of arithmetic.
The Smith faculty has called upon many sources in this mathematical evolutionary development. Rather than confining ourselves to one system, we have used The Yale School Mathematics Study Group program, The Cleveland Re- search materials, the Madison Plan of Syracuse University, as well as standardized materials in developing a program suited to the unique needs of Lincoln.
French holds an important place in our curriculum. We believe that languages should be taught as human phen- omena worthy of attention separately and in themselves. We should study the forms of a language in relation to each other, not in comparison with our own tongue. We feel that a new language is most comprehensible and most
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SCHOOLS, LIBRARY AND RECREATION
workable if we teach its basic structure, and new words in the way they are used. Grammar is, then, saved for later stages where it becomes a description of the way a lan- guage works, and can be made to work.
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