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Schools

Board of Education Member Cavaliere Steps Down

District asks for feedback on new website functionality.

The Madison announced the resignation of one of its members during its Tuesday night meeting at the .

President Lisa Ellis explained to attendees that Sam Cavaliere, who has been a member since 2010, had submitted his resignation due to a family move to San Diego.

Although he did not get into the reason for the move during the meeting, Cavaliere said he and his family have spent a lot of time talking to community members about how much they are going to miss Madison.

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“If you’re going to live somewhere [around here], this is pretty much the place to be,” said Cavaliere, who is also a borough . “You have access to everything, for the most part, that you need. All of the costs are relatively maintained, and the reality is that it is a community.”

He said one of the first steps of making the move to San Diego has been registering his two daughters for a school district out there that he described as being “twice as large as the population of Madison.”

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“That was a very entertaining process,” Cavaliere joked. “I can’t wait to report back to you during budget season on how good we actually have it over here in Madison.”

He said that although there are more students per classroom in California, “on the flip side, they don’t have hallways and they just walk outside.”

Ellis said, with the work he has done on the board, it is difficult for her to believe Cavaliere has only served on the board for 18 months.

“It seems so much longer because, right from the beginning, you got in and hit the ground running,” Ellis said. “It’s just been a joy to serve on this board with you.”

Ellis said a replacement for Cavaliere, whose term does not expire until 2013, will most likely be appointed during the board’s Nov. 29 meeting.

District to Observe Other Elementary Spanish Programs

Superintendent Michael Rossi said that, since the district does not have a teacher at the elementary level specifically for the instruction of Spanish, it will begin observing elementary Spanish programs in other districts to see how they are implemented.

Lee Nittel, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, and a few elementary-level teachers will visit Randolph on Thursday to see how its district’s world language program works.

Rossi said the district is aiming to frame the program in terms of the two areas of the core curriculum content standards for foreign languages:  learning about the culture and learning to speak in the target language.

“To do that, we need to equip our faculty who are not trained in a foreign language or who are not fluent in how to best expose students to those two components,” Rossi said.

Rossi said he hopes to have a decision on what to do with the program by November, after observing Randolph’s programs, as well as those of a few other districts.

Website Feedback Requested

To assist in the revamp of the district’s website, Rossi said a survey will be circulated by the end of the week to help gauge the feedback of parents, teachers and students regarding the district’s current page.

“We want your feedback, which I will give to the board, on what you’d like to see in the website and what functionalities you think are working well,” Rossi said.

Rossi said a few templates have already been constructed, and that the new site will most likely have a “somewhat similar look but different functions.”

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