Inside
the Superintendent’s Office
Dr.
Angelo Gimondo: District 30
By
Marie Holmes
Superintendent
Gimondo has a unique understanding of the immigrant children who attend the
30 schools under his jurisdiction. At the tender age of 16 he came to New
York from Italy. It was then that he got his first taste of the citys public
schools.
“In
those days, they put all the foreign children in a speech class,” he recalls.
Gimondo quickly adapted to his new environment. “Within six months I was able
to understand what was going on.”
There
was one small advantage–English was his sixth language, after his native dialect,
standard Italian and the French, Ancient Greek and Latin that he had studied
in school. Gimondo has since married a woman from Argentina and added Spanish
to his repertoire. Most impressively, perhaps, he has proven himself fluent
in the vocabulary of teachers.
When
Gimondo took over as Superintendent fifteen years ago, Community School District
30 was overcrowded, with many schools performing poorly. Years of restructuring
and the addition of new spaces have left the district operating at just below
capacity.
The
percentage gain in students meeting math standards was the best in the city
this past year. This remarkable turnaround, he assures, did not take place
overnight. “Things don’t happen that quickly, especially when you have a monumental
system–and even the district alone is very large.” Indeed, Gimondo’s office
oversees the education of some 30,000 children.
One
of his first moves was to reform the decision-making process. He describes
the previous administration as very traditional and top down. Using the collaborative
decision-making processes of the Schools Improvement Project as a model, Gimondo
organized a retreat. All the districts principals developed a mission statement
for the district and agreed that each school would submit an annual improvement
plan.
“Not
everybody bought into that,” says Gimondo, describing some principals as reluctant.
Yet when the state began requiring similar documentation under school-based
management, District 30 was the first to submit theirs.
Gimondo
has placed a Teacher Center, run by its own staff member, in every school
in order to provide the kind of support that he found lacking when he worked
as a foreign language teacher years ago. These centers are run in collaboration
with the UFT with state funds, while Gimondo covers the salaries of the Teachers
Center Specialists. He believes that these centers have been instrumental
in improving the schools performance.
“The
teachers must have someone in the school who goes into the classroom, sits
down with them and works on the lesson plans, classroom setup, management,
etc.. They must feel it’s someone who’s not here to rate me, but to see that
I improve, that I become a better teacher.”
According
to Gimondo, this sense of trust is key. But that doesn’t stop him from marveling
at the results. “It’s easy for me to say to a principal, improve here,” he
explains, “but for them to do it is remarkable. They do it out of professionalism
and respect for the profession, for each other.”
Each
school in the district operates around a theme, with several serving as model
schools that new teachers visit as a part of their training. PS 148, for example,
is a model school for early childhood education. This is one of the most diverse
districts, says Gimondo, with its schools serving children from 120 countries,
who speak some 80 different languages. He estimates that these numbers include
at least 6,000 English Language Learners.
To
meet the needs of this vulnerable population, six years ago the district founded
the Academy for New Americans, where newly arrived middle schoolers can spend
a year before being integrated into the general classroom. There are also
exchange programs with Slovakia, Italy and other countries, in which students
from District 30 along with their parents live with host families, go to school
and learn about the culture. Students from these countries then visit District
30.
Gimondo
is proud of the crisis intervention teams in place and plans to expand them.
After 9/11 members of these teams dealt with issues that were affecting the
children.
Funding for such special endeavors has not always been adequate, and Gimondo relies on a full-time grant writer. District 30 was recently awarded $6 million from the federal government to run a magnet school program. The arts, he asserts, remain a priority. “To provide a well-rounded education is really what its all about,” he says, “which besides the basics includes human values, the arts and multicultural understanding.”#