“It’s been a very busy first year, but a very successful first year,” said Verona Superintendent Rui Dionisio as he reflected back on the first ten months of his tenure in Verona.

Most of his work has stemmed from his first hundred days here. His goals for this time were outlined in his Entry Plan, which largely included developing good relationships with the board of education, administrators, and stakeholders in town. He spent a lot of time doing that this year by visiting different groups, attending committee meetings with board members, going on school house visits at every school, and meeting with students, student government officers, stakeholders, and parent organizations.

He did this all with the purpose of gaining perspective. “When you’re new, you want to just develop those relationships with people right out of the gate and just start asking them for their insight… because they have the institutional knowledge. They’ve been here longer than I have and have a different perspective.”

Some of Mr. Dionisio’s biggest projects this year have been bettering the reading intervention program, implementing the Google Teacher Academy, and introducing the house model to HBW in the 2015-2016 school year. These projects largely came out of learning about the district, and understanding the needs of students and parents.

The district has begun training teachers in the Orton Gillingham program, which is a multisensory approach to reading intervention. It helps teachers to detect students who are reading below grade level. Through the program, the district partners with Fairleigh Dickinson University, which provides training through graduate school credits for ten staff members– eight teachers and two administrators. The program is designed to give teachers substantial hands-on experience.

The Google Teacher Academy is designed to help expand the use of technology in the district. 30 staff members, 16 of them teachers, across all Verona schools and all disciplines, will be training in the summer in order to have access to Chromebooks in their classrooms all day coming this fall. Teachers had to apply to the program and explain why they wanted to partake. Then they participated in professional development and met monthly with the Google team here in district.

Everything in their classrooms with be done on Google Docs, through online learning, etc. Every grade level will have access to the program. Next year, the program will involve another 16 teachers, then the following year will again add 16 teachers. After three years, Mr. Dionisio hopes to see 80 to 100 staff members involved.

Accessibility to and expansion of the technology program here at VHS is also one of Mr. Dionisio’s focuses. A wireless network was created this past year, and the staff is currently working to bolster the size of wireless network to accommodate more students. It will be updated and expanded this summer to have more students on the network next year.

One of Mr. Dionisio’s major initiatives is implementing the house model in the middle school. He, along with Ms. McNeal, the principal at HBW, has been working to put the program into effect for the 2015-2016 school year. The model effectively breaks the school up into two smaller schools–houses– within the school itself. Each house has an administrator, guidance counselor, and administrative assistant, as well as teams of teachers.

Mr. Dionisio cites one of his biggest accomplishments and ongoing projects as expanding the AP and dual enrollment program at VHS. In the 2015-2016 school year, VHS will see two new AP classes, human geography and world history.

When examining data involving APs, Mr. Dionisio said he looks at three things: enrollment, the grades in the classroom, and the scores on the exam. Then, he does cross analysis, looking at the scores on the exams versus the letter grades.

The school has removed many honors classes with the growth of the AP program. “I don’t [see this as a problem]… because what we’re trying to do is remove the barriers to get into AP. Verona High School has done an excellent job of that.” Other high schools make it difficult to get into AP classes. “Our philosophy is more [along the lines of] give kids the opportunity and they’ll rise to the challenge,” Mr. Dionisio said.

He says his general philosophy is to better what he can, and not make changes where things are working. “The needs should drive what the solutions will be, and the solutions aren’t made in a vacuum,” he said.

However, Mr. Dionisio was very hands on his first year and took a lot of action. “Why wait another year if we can help benefit kids for next year?”

The advent of PARCC rocked the district this year. The district saw a 15 percent opt out for the total student population, which Mr. Dionisio did not see as a problem. He was recently informed by the commissioner of education for New Jersey that state funding will not be pulled from the district.

“I think testing is good within reason,” Mr. Dionisio said when asked about PARCC. “The heavy hand went way too far with the extreme; it was way too much testing for kids…Anytime you’re testing too much, it’s a bad thing.”

However, he does see the benefit of testing in the data analysis involved. “This is why testing is important: If you have a good test– and I don’t know if PARCC is a good test yet, because I haven’t seen the results — but when the results come back, if it’s good data, then we want to be able to use that data to [better] educate kids.”

Mr. Dionisio was also tasked with replacing Mr. Cesa, who will be moving to a district position this year. He said that the new principal will be revealed before the end of the year, as soon as it has board approval. Mr. Dionisio read 100 applications and held 20 interviews. Six applicants were put before a committee, and it has been narrowed down to three finalists.

Mr. Dionisio’s plans for the upcoming year largely depend on the feedback he gets from this year. A climate survey is being sent to various members of the district, and the answers to the survey will drive action for next year. “This summer is a great opportunity for me to reflect back on the whole year, realize the things that have gone well, the things we can do even better, across the board.”

Is there anything Mr. Dionisio would change about his first year? “Maybe sleep a little bit more, drink a little less coffee,” he said, laughing. “I’m happy to be here. It’s a great place, there are great people here. The kids are awesome. It’s just a great community. It’s a good place, and like anything, we could always be better. But that’s what make Verona special. Verona realizes that we always have goals to work for but we should be happy about where we are.”