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BOE discusses 2025 initiative

BOE+discusses+2025+initiative
Ben Goldschlager

The BOE convened on Monday, May 20 to discuss the Westport 2025 initiative and the district’s goals for the upcoming year.

The meeting’s primary focus was a presentation by Director of Secondary Education Lisbeth Comm, Director of Human Resources Marge Cion and co-founder of the Teacher’s College of Columbia University’s Studies in Education Innovation program Deb Sawch about the global collaboration element of the 2025 initiative, a district-wide attempt to better equip Westport students for success in the 21st century. The presentation centered on Westport’s planned collaboration with the Hwa Chong Institution in Singapore next year.

“Both Westport and Hwa Chong hope to develop global citizens and global leaders. We have much to learn from each other,” said Comm.

Potential collaborations between the Westport school district and Hwa Chong include student and teacher exchanges and joint curricular efforts. Earlier this school year, 15 Staples students received an email describing the possibility of studying abroad in Singapore.

Additionally, Sawch discussed how elementary school students are benefitting from the 2025 curriculum, which emphasizes persuasive writing at a young age.

“They’re learning collaboration, critical thinking, communication skills—all in the first grade,” said Sawch.
After the presentation on 2025 ended, the BOE spent the rest of the meeting discussing potential projects to explore before the beginning of the next school year.

Board member Michael Gordon suggested taking a look at the school system in Madison, Conn., which is not following the Common Core to protest a new law that ties teacher evaluations to standardized test scores.

The BOE also discussed looking into neighboring Wilton’s approach to school start times. Unlike in Westport, middle and high schools in Wilton have a later start time than elementary schools.

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About the Contributors
Jordan Shenhar, Web Managing Editor
Jordan Shenhar loves hanging out with his friends-as long as he’s arguing with them. No, he doesn’t have anger management issues; he’s just extremely political. Shenhar participates not only in Inklings, but also in the student-run club JSA. (Junior State of America) Shenhar participates the most in this club to gain time doing one of his favorite activities: arguing about politics with kids his age. Or, as Shenhar says, “[I] take part in one of my favorite activities, arguing with liberals.”  Shenhar is a libertarian, a more unusual party that advocates for small governmental interference. Always wanting to discuss politics even more, Shenhar runs the Young Libertarians Club at Staples. However, don’t assume that Shenhar is a driven, cold-hearted politician. He loves visiting his family in Israel, where he never feels stressed. He is in awe of the good weather there, and accounts many of his greatest moments to spending time there. And of course, he loves sports. Shenhar says “And for most of my life I've been enslaved by the Mets and the Redskins, my two favorite teams to which I devote excessive amounts of time in exchange for them crushing my hopes and dreams.”
Ben Goldschlager, Web News Editor

Ben Goldschlager ’14 is an involved member of the Staples and Westport communities. He’s the president of the Model UN and Artists’ Club, the web news editor for Inklings and is involved in Debate Team, Junior States of America and Young Democrats.

Goldschlager has also spent time volunteering at the library working with the new 3D printers. He gets to train people from the ages of 7 to 60 on how to use them, and he can print things for fun and for practical reasons.

“We have a bookcase at my house that uses these little plastic pins to support the shelves,” Goldschlager said, “but we’d lost two, so I designed and printed two replacement pins and they work.”

After writing his favorite piece, “5 Ways to Seem Like You Get Pop Culture” last year, Goldschlager is excited to come back for a second year of reporting for Inklings.

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