Commentary by Supt. Beth Niedermeyer
I’ve worked in education all of my adult life – first as a teacher, then as a principal, and most recently in district leadership roles. I can’t help but chuckle when after all these years my mom still asks me, “What do you do at work in the summer without students there?” Honestly, I believe she has asked me this for the past 20 years!
In her defense, most people outside of education don’t really have an understanding of what happens at a school during summer break and how busy school employees actually are. For many of us in education, summer vacation is something of a myth.
Here are some highlights of what has been happening this year in Noblesville Schools since students left for summer break:
- Teachers, principals and district leadership have attended hundreds of hours of professional development training to enhance their skills and to better serve students.
- Annual planning work, including academic data analysis, budget reviews, goal review/setting, performance feedback review/evaluations and staff and school board planning retreats.
- Student class scheduling.
- Recruitment, selection and staff planning for dozens of new staff members.
- Deep cleaning and maintenance of our 25,000 square feet in building space and 674 acres of land.
- Repair and inventory of equipment throughout the district.
- Registration of hundreds of new students moving into the Noblesville area.
- Bus route planning and cleaning/preparing buses for inspections (this is the 31st year in a row that our team has received a perfect 100 percent score from the state on bus inspections! Thanks team!).
- Construction management of our new transportation center scheduled to open in October 2017.
- Maintenance and preparation of more than 8,000 iPads and 4,500 computers throughout the district.
- Back to school logistical planning, including purchasing supplies, preparing classrooms, planning back to school orientations/events/meetings and back-to-school communications.
- Payroll processing and updates.
- Preparation and submission of grants.
Hopefully, this gives you a sense of what keeps us busy during the summer months. And yes, I plan to share this with my mom. I love you, mom!
