NOW IN HER SECOND year running the state’s largest school district, Superintendent Jenn Gillis took the stage at the Rex Theatre last week to provide an update on the “State of the Manchester School District.”
The community forum, which featured a question-and-answer session with attendees, was co-produced by Manchester Proud, the Manchester School District and the Greater Manchester Chamber.
Gillis spoke about the district’s achievements and “upcoming challenges,” which she and staff approach with “deliberate optimism.”
“I am a process person, as my team around me knows … which means, just like in the classroom, the homework matters,” Gillis said. “We set goals and hold ourselves accountable to them. I view our work in three ‘buckets’: students, staff, and families. These are our constituencies and my priority for the decisions the district’s leadership team makes every day.”
Gillis said “what makes me smile every day is connecting with the students.”
Gillis said the district has “plenty of good things happening.” She mentioned Mackenzie Verdiner, a rising senior at Manchester High School West, who was named the 2023 GEAR UP Student of the Year from a national pool of half a million students.
“For those who aren’t familiar, GEAR UP is a program designed to boost the opportunities for under-resourced students in Manchester,” Gillis said. “We rely on partnerships like these to ensure that every one of our students has an opportunity to fulfill their own life’s dreams. It’s that lofty, and yet it’s that simple.”
Gillis said the school district’s strategic plan is divided into three priorities: growing learners, growing educators and growing systems.
“We made strong progress in our efforts to achieve the goals laid out for us last September,” Gillis said. “Of the 17 total goals we targeted, we have fully completed the work on more than a dozen of them and expect to wrap up the final work tasks of the remaining handful this fall.”
Last year’s school work
Last year’s accomplishments include:
• Training staff to align their work with the strategic plan and audit their information flow to ensure there are no gaps in processes;
• Updating technology and information systems;
• Automating and aligning day-to-day management platforms, making communication flow simpler and more efficient;
• Improving information-sharing with the community, including rebuilding the district’s website;
• Updating the course catalog and program studies to reflect changes in what students need to learn;
• Updating graduation requirements to align with the district’s goals and strategic plans;
• Hiring new staff and improving how they work together.
Gillis said the district has a team working on the planning of a dual-language immersion program and is planning to have the first classrooms at the elementary level up and running in fall 2024.
“Our district would be the very first in the state to have dual language programs available for our students,” Gillis said.
A major focus this school year is attendance. The district recently launched a city-wide awareness effort called “SHOW UP.”
“We want to let all our students know that their attendance matters,” Gillis said. “This is one of the single most critical areas to ensure a connection between schooling and life successes.
“We know — especially those of you in this room who have worked so hard and contributed much to the success of your businesses, your nonprofits, and this community — we know that the chances of lifelong achievement and success dramatically decline for those who do not complete high school,” she said.
“That old cliché that 90% of success is showing up — I would say that might be conservative. If students are at least connected to our available programs, whatever path that looks like for each child, then we have a chance to equip them and empower them to lead their best lives.”
Emphasis on attendance
Each school in the city will have an attendance, behavior and course completion plan enacted this fall, Gillis said, to help administrators better focus resources and time on those students “who might otherwise drop through the cracks.”
Gillis mentioned the district’s long-term facilities plan, built on a concept model of three high schools, four middle schools and 12 elementary schools.
Officials plan to close Wilson Street Elementary and build a new elementary school in the city’s center, at a site yet to be determined.
Gillis said the Manchester school district is “at a bit of a crossroads.”
“As one school board member pointed out, we can’t afford not to move forward with this plan,” Gillis said. “We have an opportunity to provide for our students a new environment that matches the technology, the rising expectations, and a changing world with new demands on our graduates.
“We have a unique opportunity — right now — to realize the hopes of so many in our community and to align the goals of our strategic plan with the facilities required to make plans into reality,” she said.
“I hope our city’s leaders and community embrace this opportunity to move forward.”
Gillis ended by saying she likes to tell people the motivation for doing what she does is the students — or as she called them, “12 thousand small humans.”
“They are the bright lights on the horizon for me,” Gillis said. “I love what I do and I am deeply honored to be in this position at this time in the city’s history.
“We face challenges … but we always will. The days can be chaotic … of course I am sure your days can be equally crazed … but within the occasional chaos and the many many moving parts of our district, we have a direction … we have goals … we have focus,” she said.
“There will be tough days ahead, there will be setbacks, there will be unexpected moments, but I am deliberately optimistic about our future … the future for our students, our staff, our families. Let’s keep moving forward together.”
Homeless center to open
The city’s new homeless engagement center is scheduled to open this week.
Located at 39 Beech St., the center is an extension of Manchester’s emergency shelter.
Proponents say the engagement center will help reduce homelessness by providing basic refuge services in a “service-enriched, trauma-informed, and recovery oriented environment” seven days a week.
The engagement center will work with community partners, including Greater Manchester Mental Health and Manchester Housing Authority, to track, measure, and increase the quality of the service to individuals experiencing homelessness, including access to health care, SUD treatment, employment connections, housing navigation and more.
The site will offer basics like showers, bathrooms, meals, and clothing.
Organizers say the center will break down barriers that stand between people and housing, including a lack of vital records, identification, income and histories of housing, credit and crimes.
Aldermen were invited to tour the facility and meet staff late last week The engagement center, which will operate seven days a week and serve an estimated 80-100 people a day, is scheduled to officially open to the public Wednesday.
