Good evening. I'm so happy to have the opportunity to talk to you tonight about the work we've been doing in curriculum and instruction," Assistant Superintendent Amy Dimiola told the Sayville Union Free School District Board of Education at a workshop presentation that focused on curriculum frameworks, assessment changes and professional development plans.

Dimiola said the district has adopted a curriculum framework based on backward design and aligned work to New York State's Portrait of a Graduate, with an emphasis on cultural responsiveness and performance-based assessments that go beyond traditional tests and quizzes.

The presentation outlined how building-level roadmaps and department curriculum maps are intended to produce coherent learning progressions from pre-K through grade 12. Dimiola said teachers are cataloging dozens of curriculum maps districtwide and expanding the use of performance tasks as authentic evidence of student learning.

Dimiola described literacy as a priority and said the district has been studying the science of reading and reviewing curricular tools to determine which materials to pilot. "We are, now in the process of determining the curricular tools that will best support that instruction," she said, and the literacy committee will reconvene this fall; the district is considering a potential pilot for 2026 if piloting logistics align with instructional goals.

On high-school testing logistics, Dimiola said the district plans to move the junior-year ELA Regents to January instead of June so juniors will have "one less demand" during the spring testing season filled with APs, SATs and Regents exams.

Department highlights shared during the presentation included:
- Arts and music: expanded civic and service-learning opportunities and an 85% participation rate in the new fourth-grade instrumental program.
- Math: K'5 teams use Into Math; secondary teams use eMath and are adopting Desmos on district Chromebooks; teachers are using a "thinking classrooms" model emphasizing collaborative problem solving.
- Science and social studies: phased rollout of new New York State science standards and a plan to launch new Earth Science and Biology Regents in 2026 and physics/chemistry in 2027; an expert consultant, Paul Anderson, will work with staff and parents (Anderson will present to parents Oct. 22 at the middle school).
- STEAM/TechEd and World Languages: continued K'12 expansion of interdisciplinary STEAM and a K world language program currently in place.

On evaluation and professional development, Dimiola said the district is developing a standards-based educator evaluation and professional support plan ("STEPS") that focuses on growth rather than ratings and that a district PD plan will be presented for board approval in June.

Board members asked questions and offered feedback: one board member cautioned against piloting a new literacy program in the spring because it can produce misleading results if students have already covered the same material earlier in the year; Dimiola said the literacy committee will weigh timing and "only do it if we can do a good job." A student observer, Anthony, praised the changes in math instruction, saying the group-work model and Desmos made math "so much easier than the calculator."

No formal board action was taken on curriculum items at the workshop; presenters said several items (the PD plan and STEPS evaluation) will return to the board as formal proposals for approval.

The presentation and subsequent discussion left several items flagged for follow up: the literacy committee's decision on pilot timing (school year 2026 was cited as a possible start), scheduling of the Paul Anderson parent session on Oct. 22, and the later formal presentation of the PD/evaluation plan for board approval.

Dimiola and the district team emphasized alignment with New York State priorities and incremental implementation in classrooms across grade levels to support consistent, standards-aligned instruction.