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ATTLEBORO -- School Superintendent Pia Durkin and Mayor Kevin Dumas Tuesday urged more than 700 city teachers and education staff to work closely together and tap their innermost gifts to help build excellence in the public schools.
The mayor and superintendent addressed a convocation of school staff at the high school's Robert Bray Auditorium in a demonstration of cooperation between the two branches of city government prior to today's official school opening.
Dumas led the introductions of staffs from each of the city's 10 schools and said teachers from his earliest days continue to touch his life. He cited two of his kindergarten teachers who he noted continue to work for the city school department.
"Each of you here today bring specific gifts with you,'' he said. "You all touch each of our students in different ways. So I ask that you focus in on these special gifts this school year because you never know when you'll be instructing the next mayor or the next president.''
Durkin, beginning her first year as the head of the city's public schools, cited the connections and mutual responsibility between educators at all levels and asked teachers and staff members to search for ways to improve and inspire.
"We are members of a large and varied community,'' Durkin told the assembled staff members.
"We differ in the schools and age levels where we work, we vary in roles and functions, but we are joined and connected to each other by one unifying focus: the teaching and learning of Attleboro students.''
Durkin said she will focus and build on connections between educators not just within schools, but between schools at all levels to improve students' experiences.
"We will grow not simply as 10 schools in a district -- a system of schools -- but as a school system with responsibility and accountability that is reciprocal first to the children and families we serve, and then to each other.''
Durkin acknowledged that results of the high school's Scholastic Aptitude Tests have declined this year, along with many schools throughout the region, but said teachers and parents need not accept the status quo.
"We have a choice,'' she said. "We can complacently accept these findings and go about our business the way we have done before, we can blame the tests and the test makers, we can blame the kids and blame each other, or we can galvanize the power, brilliance and commitment in this auditorium today to redirect our efforts and begin a journey toward excellence.''
Classes formally begin today for students in grades 1-8, Thursday for grades 10-12 and Friday for kindergarten and pre-kincergarten.
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