Spotlight on Achievement
Please welcome Sally Loughlin,
Director of Curriculum, Assessment, Instruction, and
Professional Development
Sally brings 20+ years in the education field as a Teacher, Director of Educational Planning and most recently, Assistant Superintendent of MSAD #75.
Dr. Robert Hasson, MSAD 51 Superintendent of Schools, asks the staff, students and community to join him in welcoming Sally Loughlin as the new Director of Curriculum, Assessment, Instruction, and Professional Development. In this role, Ms. Loughlin will provide leadership to the district in the system-wide alignment, delivery, and evaluation of curriculum for all students K-12. She will also be responsible for the integration of student assessment data to support instructional practices and to ensure compliance with all state and federal educational mandates. Additionally, she will oversee professional staff development and be the facilitator of communication between the district and community stakeholders concerning curriculum, assessment, and instruction initiatives.
Ms. Loughlin was most currently employed as the Assistant Superintendent for MSAD #75, (Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Harpswell, and Topsham). Prior to that she served 6 years in a variety of educational planning roles for the Portland School District, her last three as Director of Educational Planning. "I am very excited about the hiring of Sally Loughlin. Her background and experience in curriculum assessment, development, and evaluation coupled with her proven ability to provide leadership and work collaboratively with all stakeholder groups from students through community interests will be a real benefit for our district." states Dr. Hasson. "Additionally, Sally's curiosity keeps her engaged in understanding the most current best practices and research."
Sally lives in Freeport, ME and began her work in the district on August 23, 2010.
Welcome from the Superintendent
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the homepage for Maine School Administrative District #51, Cumberland / North Yarmouth, Maine. Our mission is to educate all students to meet or exceed the district's defined academic standards. MSAD #51 has embarked on a journey of transformation through a systems approach of organization development. We encourage you to visit our district and share with us any of your thoughts or ideas.
Robert G. Hasson, Jr., Ed.D.
MSAD #51 Superintendent of Schools
Letter from the School Board Chair
August 31, 2010
MSAD 51 School Board Plans a Dynamic Year
On August 16, the MSAD 51 School Board held its annual retreat where we assessed our
Board’s performance over the past year and planned our goals for the upcoming school year.
While we made improvements last year in communications and our budget deliberations, we felt
that our Board did not have enough board discussion and focus around our educational mission.
So, while we recognize the continuing demand of managing very challenging finances, we want
to turn more of our focus this year to our curriculum and improving our contractual relationship
with the Teachers’ Association so that we can retain, attract and support our high performing
teachers.
We identified four primary goals at our retreat:
1. Strategic Planning: We want to develop a three year strategic plan that addresses key
issues such as student enrollment/demographics, funding, use of facilities (Drowne
Road), teacher contracts, administrative team leadership, renovation or closing of the
North Yarmouth Memorial School, and consolidation opportunities with other
districts and/or governmental bodies. Last year, the Sustainability Committee did an
excellent job of assessing our facilities, transitions between grades, and areas of
potential savings, which resulted in the School Board’s decision to move students
from Drowne Road School to Mabel Wilson. Now, we want to broaden our strategic
thinking to establish whether we are going to accept as inevitable the current
demographic and state funding trends and work to manage the challenges of a student
population that is projected to shrink from a high of approximately 2,300 to 1,800.
Or, are we going to develop strategies to attract students and new revenues, including
consideration of innovations like changing MSAD 51 to an academy model to attract
significant tuition paying students, creating a broader arts and extracurricular
program, and marketing our Greely education and International Baccalaureate
program to both domestic and international students. Our goal is to develop a 3 year
planning document that we update each fall.
2. Teacher Contract: This year, we negotiate a new 3 year contract with the Teachers’
Association. During the spring and summer, we have been in regular contact with the
leadership in the Association to discuss new, creative approaches to this next contract.
Our Board wants to work with the Teachers Association to develop an effective and
fair teacher evaluation program and to make changes in the seniority system that will
allow job performance to be considered when jobs are impacted. We would also like
to develop a performance based compensation program that would be designed by a
joint task force of teachers, administrators, school board members and community
members.
3. Curriculum: We want to ensure that our curriculum is meeting all of our students’
needs and is aligned with the demands of a high quality, 21st Century education.
During the last budget cycle, we heard many concerns about scheduling at the high
school. As we work to restrain costs and improve teaching through IB and other
innovative approaches, we want to ensure that our curriculum at all levels K-12 best
meets our students’ educational needs, utilizes our available resources most
effectively, and addresses issues such as fair access and scheduling across the student
spectrum. So, we are planning a series of workshops and reports from the
administrative and teacher team (and particularly the input of our new Curriculum
Director Sally Loughlin!) over the school year.
4. Robust Meetings: When we transact our School Board business, we often get
consumed with budget matters and the daily demands of overseeing a school district.
This year, we want to work on making School Board meetings more robust and
informative. We want to revisit our committee structure to see if we can reduce the
number of committees and raise the effectiveness of our work at the committee level.
With our public meetings, we want to plan more workshops that are designed to build
community understanding and involvement of the challenges facing our schools and
to drive improvement in our schools. While in the past we had a policy of not
responding immediately to public comments at our board meetings, we want to be
more responsive and interactive as we interact with the public at our board meetings.
As we start this new school year, our Board extends our welcome to Helena McMonagle,
who will be our student board member representing the Junior Class and Bill Dunnett who is
our new Cumberland representative.
We appreciate all the hard work that has gone into summer planning by the Administrative
team and the teachers. We send our special thanks to Bob Hasson, who made great efforts
this summer on long term planning and hiring for key positions like the Director of
Curriculum, Assessment, Instruction and Professional Development, and to Scott Poulin who
oversaw extensive work in buildings and grounds and finance. We also want to recognize
the commitment and service of Dan McKeone and Mar-E Trebilcock who will serve,
respectively, as our interim high school principal and interim vice principal during this
upcoming year.
At our next board meeting, we will finalize leadership positions and committee assignments
for our board. These changes will include a new chair and vice chair (which is our first step
in ensuring more dynamic board meetings!).
Let’s have a great school year!!
Dave Perkins, Out-Going School Board Chair
(To print the letter, please select the link below)
| 
