Christmas in August: 1st day of school requires months of work behind the scenes for staff

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Vestavia Hills City Schools Director of Public Relations Whit McGhee said he’s heard the first day of school is like “Christmas morning” for teachers and school leaders who work tirelessly over the summer to get to day one. The excitement, he said, is “palpable.”

“This is what they have been building toward,” McGhee said.

While no students roam the halls at Vestavia Hills City Schools until Aug. 8, there is still plenty to be done from the end of one school year to the next in order to welcome new and returning students in the fall.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

While teachers are not required to be at school over the summer, many spend time preparing their classrooms as well as taking part in professional development, the nature of which has changed over the last several years.

The school district offers its own professional development, VHCS Superintendent Todd Freeman said, but teachers are also given the option to do “design-it-yourself” professional development, submitting their requests to the central office. None of the development is mandatory.

“Summer is a really grand time to affirm that teaching is a calling,” Freeman said.

The DIY approach to professional development not only allows teachers to construct what they want to learn and study, but to do so as a group. Brooke Brown, director of curriculum and instruction, said a group of fourth-grade teachers wanted to improve their ability to teach Alabama history, so they reached out to teachers at other local schools and designed a group to grow in that area.

Tonya Rozell, principal of Liberty Park Middle School, said just because the school year ends doesn’t mean teachers no longer dedicate time to continuing education. A “majority” of LPMS faculty is engaged in some form of professional development over the summer, she said.

Lisa Williams, a teacher and cheer coach at LPMS, said she’s spent time organizing her room, doing some self-study and getting organized for the first few months of school.

“It’s nice to be able to take a step back … [and] plan from a distance,” Williams said.

Tyler Burgess, principal of Vestavia Hills High School, said with all of the maintenance work that goes on at schools over the summer, professional development also has to work in conjunction with the cleaning schedule, with those participating only able to access certain parts of the building.

MAINTENANCE

Maintenance takes center stage over the summer, as custodians and other building staff work hard to clean the school and prepare it for another year.

In May, Rozell said school leaders work to develop a list of facility needs and upgrades, with work beginning as soon as students leave for the summer. Floors are redone and are rewaxed, which necessitates the moving of furniture all over the school. Air filters are replaced, which, at LPMS, takes three days because of how many filters are at the school, including some that aren’t at ground level, Rozell said.

The school also receives a “facelift” from pressure washing, Rozell said. Safety inspections are performed, making sure the school is up to date and meeting code on things like fire alarms and lighting, Rozell said.

Burgess said workers at the high school maintain the school’s air conditioning, which has to run all year. The staff also has to coordinate cleaning and maintenance work with construction projects, like when a wheelchair ramp was built on the visitor-side bleachers at the football stadium earlier this summer.

At the high school, maintenance work also has to be done in conjunction with community events often held in the building, such as I Love America Night on June 27, which was held at VHHS this year due to the ongoing construction at Wald Park.

NEW PERSONNEL

While much of the hiring is done early in the summer, in order to allow new hires to get comfortable in their new school, there’s still training that occurs over the few months before students come back.

Four days of new teacher training are held in July, with a half-day of mentor training, Brown said. Mentors help train and encourage new teachers, she said.

Freeman said work is also done over the summer to make sure teachers who must renew their certification do so before the deadline on July 30. 

Burgess said at the high school, administrators meet together to discuss duties and goals for the upcoming school year. This summer, the staff welcomed Amy Banaszek, who replaces Charles Bruce as an assistant principal, after Bruce retired at the end of last school year.

OPERATIONS, CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

Rozell said she meets with teachers to discuss curriculum, state mandates and scheduling over the summer. The staff also makes sure they have enough resources to take care of and educate each student with special needs.

In July, new student enrollment also picks up, Rozell said. Burgess said this summer, the staff at VHHS has registered four to five new students per week.

Scheduling at the high school is a “beast,” Burgess said, as there are so many courses available for students. Administrators and support staff help build those courses to allow students to take what they want while ensuring they’re on the right track to graduate, he said. Burgess said those creating the schedules must make sure teachers are teaching in their certified subject areas.

The staff that works on that at the high school is small, made up of administrators and support staff, he said.

“We all get to know each other pretty well,” Burgess said.

Vestavia Hills Elementary East Principal Mark Richardson said the atmosphere over the summer is more akin to a typical office job than it is during the school year, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.

With all of the moves taking place across the district this summer, Richardson said it’s been a little more “crazy” this summer. 

Nineteen teachers have made internal moves within East, while 15 teachers have moved from East to the new campus at Dolly Ridge. Ten teachers have moved to East from Vestavia Hills Elementary Central, which closed its doors in May.

At the central office, Brown said she spends time over the summer meeting with school leaders to get information about what curriculum and materials need to be ordered. Textbook committees work throughout the year to determine which textbooks are needed. Brown spends time talking to publishers and representatives to get quotes and order materials.

Freeman works with CSFO Courtney Brown to develop a budget, meeting state deadlines and bringing it to the board in August. That’s complicated by the fact that school budgets stretch over two fiscal years, meaning Freeman and other administrators must not only create a budget based on present needs and resources, but on anticipated costs and resources in the future, McGhee said.

The central office also works to enact policies and procedures necessitated by any legislative changes, such as the Literacy Act passed this year. The act requires third-grade students to have a certain mastery level in reading. In order to follow the new law, administrators had to determine what needed to change at elementary schools to implement the measure, Freeman said.

DAY 1

On day one, when new and returning students once again fill the halls of the city’s schools, there’s a way, Freeman said, to determine whether or not the summer was a success.

If there is, as Freeman said, a “level of calm,” a feeling of having been there for several weeks already, at the schools, then it helps school leaders to know that all of their hard work leading up to the first day of school was successful.

“I typically can judge a summer’s success by getting into a school on the first day,” Freeman said.