Middletown moves to districtwide curriculum guides, adopts EduPlanet 21 platform

Assistant Superintendent Fontsaker told the Middletown School Committee the district is building its own Middletown curriculum guides and has adopted the EduPlanet 21 platform to host them.

Fontsaker said the goal is consistent, high-quality implementation across English language arts, math, science and social studies. "What's really important now is that we create our own Middletown curriculum guides, in order to ensure that our curriculum ... comes with a consistent and effective implementation across our district," Fontsaker said.

The district has trained lead curriculum teachers and content leads as the initial writers in the platform and is developing units tied to standards, essential questions, learning targets, vocabulary, differentiation guidance and assessments. Fontsaker described a process in which a single content lead maintains a unit as a working document while colleagues contribute and agree upon changes.

Fontsaker said the district purchased a subscription to EduPlanet 21 last year for about $4,200 and expects the contract to run for multiple years. She said the platform currently is used primarily by districts in Connecticut but will allow Middletown to publish a streamlined, public-facing district blueprint that parents can view when it is ready. "The blueprint would be public facing probably by the end of this year," Fontsaker said.

Officials described additional uses beyond teacher guidance: the platform will let leaders run reports tying standards to where they are taught across grades, which Fontsaker said will help identify gaps (for example, a single standard showing up in several places or missing in others).

The committee discussion also noted that moving to new, high-quality materials is creating a surplus of older curriculum books the district plans to surplus and offer to a book company or otherwise dispose of after town approval.

Fontsaker said the new guides will be built over time and emphasized teacher input through professional learning communities. "Once they do have that consensus and come to agreement, they're putting it in there, and then it becomes a working document," she said.

The committee did not vote on the curriculum platform during the meeting; the presentation was part of the superintendent's regular report and described implementation steps and timelines.