River Valleys district moving ahead

 DOVER- At the River Valleys Union School District Board’s meeting Monday, May 21, the board completed the work it needed to do before its administrators give recommendations for how to run the district. Those recommendations may come as early as next month.
In other news, the board reviewed viewer statistics for videos of their meetings and deemed the videos a success. 
At the board’s two previous meetings, the members shared their wishes and guidelines for educational standards and operating functions for the new district with Windham Central Supervisory Union Superintendent Bill Anton. Anton is in the process of using that information to formulate his recommendations for how the board approaches major issues in the new district such as the physical use of buildings in the district; the curriculum; programming such as music, arts, and foreign language; pre-K; transportation; and defining what choice parents will have in terms of which district school their children attend. 
At the board’s last meeting, they worked to define how to measure achievement for their goals of proficiency and growth; fiscal responsibility; parent and community outreach; and creating personal learning plans for each student. 
At the May 21 meeting they reviewed, and approved, measurement tools in each category, including student evaluations, personalized learning plan implementation, and ways to gauge community interest and parent involvement. 
With that approval, chair Rich Werner said the board had completed all the work it had to do before hearing Anton’s recommendations. Those recommendations, said Werner, will start to come as soon as next month.
“This is really exciting,” said Werner. “It’s the reason I got on this board. To see a school be designed.” 
In other matters, the board reviewed viewership numbers from BCTV, which records and streams each of the board’s meetings at a cost of $100 per meeting. Viewership ranged from 120 to 681, with an anomaly for the board’s November 6 meeting, which garnered 3,900 views. 
Werner said BCTV’s Rich Melanson said that could be a fluke. “A school in California has the same name,” said Werner. “Maybe they had a big thing that night.” 
Nevertheless, Werner said he saw an average of 300 or so views per meeting a success. 
“The hundred dollars is well worth it,” said Werner. “We’re getting really good turnout. If we had 305 people come to a meeting, we’d be looking at each other and wondering what we did wrong.” 
For those who plan to attend the board’s next meeting in person, it will be held June 25 at 6:30 pm at the Dover School.