Principals outline start-of-year goals on attendance, curriculum and school climate

Ballston Spa Central School District principals presented the district’s opening-year priorities at the school board meeting on Oct. 1, 2025, detailing goals on attendance, social-emotional learning, curriculum alignment and student behavior interventions.

The presentations, delivered during Superintendent Dr. Duca’s report, covered the high school, Milton Terrace Elementary and the middle school. Milton Terrace Principal Dr. Chaucer said the building welcomed back 354 students and emphasized belonging, attendance, curriculum and family engagement as the school’s four focus areas.

"Our building leadership team meets in June to review our work, and to identify areas we'd like to focus on for the next year," Dr. Chaucer said, describing a continuation of a buddy program, service-learning events and enhanced social-emotional learning (SEL) supports, including weekly family newsletters and daily SEL announcements.

Milton Terrace’s goals also include streamlining districtwide attendance procedures so that similar absence thresholds trigger consistent family notifications and supports, and formalizing a welcome process for families who join midyear. "We're going to formalize some of that, particularly new families who join us mid year," Dr. Chaucer said, noting a new school counselor, Vicky Dimontopoulos, will be introduced to families.

Middle School Principal Mr. Rasmussen highlighted academic growth and sharp reductions in suspensions. He said the middle school exceeded its prior 5% growth goal in ELA and math and has set a target of 10% year-over-year growth on common assessments and i-Ready measures. Rasmussen described scheduling and staffing changes to increase daily ELA instructional minutes for sixth graders and said the school will continue common formative assessments to adjust instruction.

Rasmussen reported large decreases in disciplinary removals compared with prior years: "Almost 70% reduction in total suspension, 50% almost 50% reduction in in school, and just under 80% reduction in out of school suspensions," he said, and added the school kept total suspension days "just under that 100 day mark." He credited restorative practices training, mediation programming and increased community-building for the declines and said the school will pilot the Positivity Project as a schoolwide character-education curriculum.

"If we want kids' behavior to change, we have to keep them in the environment wherein we expect to see the right behavior," Rasmussen said, describing early-intervention strategies that kept students in class and relied on counseling, dean reinstruction and teacher-level community-building to prevent escalations.

High School Principal Mr. Robinson summarized goals including addressing chronic absenteeism and aligning career and technical education (CTE) pathways with opportunities for college credit. He said federally required testing under ESSA covers one mathematics, one English and one science assessment, and that transcripts and advanced-course enrollment will remain central to college admissions despite changes in diploma presentation.

On CTE, Robinson said in-house pathways aim to provide a leg up for students pursuing engineering and provide opportunities for college credit: "One of them, we're trying to get CHS credit for some of them, so it would help them to get college credit if they go that way," he said.

Board members and the audience asked follow-up questions about chronic absenteeism, use of real-time attendance systems, correlations with special education/IEP status and how reductions in suspensions were achieved. Mr. Rasmussen acknowledged that while referrals and data systems vary, staff retraining, mediation and positive incentives (including a monthly prize drawing for students "being spotted" meeting core values) all contributed to the trend.

The presentations closed with the board thanking principals for the reports. The superintendent’s report concluded at the meeting’s end; the board then proceeded to routine business and a set of resolutions.

The board’s next regular meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025.