Healdsburg heads back to school Aug. 14
The Healdsburg school district has a variety of new initiatives to unroll when students return to school on Aug. 14.
Superintendent of Healdsburg Unified School District Jeff Harding said that the school district wants to ensure that every student is successful, and the district’s new initiatives work towards accomplishing that goal.
“It’s about 21st century education preparing students for the complex world that they’ll enter,” Harding said. “There’s been a tremendous amount of momentum because we’ve had a lot of successes, and we want to carry that momentum into this year.”
The first initiative is accelerating language acquisition for Spanish-speaking students by teaching academic English. Science and technology is another major theme for this year, Harding said. An algebra academy, as well as a coding camp, took place this summer and engineering classes will be offered to high school students for the first time. Real world application is another area of focus. An example of this is the high school’s plan to continue their internship program for high school juniors, which was implemented last school year.
The Healdsburg Junior High is also undergoing a “total modernization,” Harding said. Technology will be improved at the school, with 80-inch monitors in every classroom and robust wireless internet capabilities. The campus will have a “much more open-feel,” as well as two new science labs that are under construction and set to open next year.
The district is also moving towards increasing technology devices for students.
“Last year was the beginning of an iPad implementation, and this year we’re moving towards one-to-one: a machine for every student,” Harding said. “That’s going to take us a little time, but that’s the direction we’re headed.”
Director of Curriculum & Instruction of Healdsburg Unified School District Annie Millar said that a technology device for every student will occur mostly in secondary school.
“There will be a time when devices replace textbooks and it’s more central to the secondary, for the elementary the goal is to get to two-to-one,” Millar said. “We’re just trying out different devices and seeing what works best for different grade levels and different settings.”
Millar said the the school district partners closely with the Healdsburg Education Foundation, and the foundation has been instrumental in helping Healdsburg schools fund innovation, through acquiring technology and supporting new programs.
The high school has also ushered in a new freshman program.
Millar said that ninth-grade teachers are in teams so that the students have a group of teachers who are working closely together. The freshman will have a seven-period day, complete with a freshman seminar.
“We’re constantly trying to develop awareness about career possibilities so that kids do something in ninth-grade, that in 10th-grade they expand on, and in 11th-grade they do their junior internships and we’re looking at developing a culminating senior experience as well that really gives kids lots of vision of what they might want to continue to study, or which particular career they’d like to pursue,” Millar said.
Instead of having school subjects stand alone, the district is encouraging interdisciplinary classes that support each other.
Harding said that everything the district has been updating “goes back to getting every student engaged and prepared when they graduate, and that begins in kindergarten.”
