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Dunford named new director of county middle schools

Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006

Frederick County Public Schools welcomed back a familiar face last week, hiring former administrator Paul Dunford to serve as instructional director of middle schools.

Dunford began his career in Frederick County in 1985 as an industrial arts⁄technology education teacher at West Frederick High School. In 1989, he was appointed assistant principal at New Market Middle School and served as curriculum supervisor for the department of career and technology education for five years. Dunford was appointed principal of Walkersville Middle School in 1996.

In 2002, he left Frederick County after being named a distinguished principal fellow by the state department of education, with the responsibility of turning around low performance rates at Northeast Middle School in Baltimore.

‘‘It’s good to be home,” Dunford said upon his introduction to the Board of Education on Jan. 11. ‘‘I thank this board and the superintendent for letting me take the fellowship to grow... it was risky to let me go, with the chance of me flying away. There is no place like home and I look forward to coming back.”

Dunford will begin in his new role on March 1, succeeding Bruce Brown who retired in December.

In the meantime, former administrator Hal Mosser will serve as interim instructional director of middle schools. During his 34-year career in Frederick County, Mosser served as principal at Linganore High, Brunswick Middle and Thurmont Middle schools as well as area supervisor of middle schools.

Schools seek leaders

With a lack of qualified leadership candidates coming from outside the county and a desire by current employees seeking more training, the school system is looking at how to develop leaders for the future.

At the Board of Education meeting on Jan. 11, Deputy Superintendent R. Daniel Cunningham presented a report on the topic, including an action plan to address identified area of needs.

Superintendent Linda D. Burgee charged Cunningham with the task last year, noting the large impact of leadership on everything from employee satisfaction to student achievement.

‘‘Leadership can inspire and motivate others... to reach what seem like impossible goals,” she said.

Cunningham’s report, based on findings from within Frederick County and other area school systems, noted deficiencies in current leadership development, such as no formal plan for developing the pool for administrative applicants or for school-based leaders such as team leaders and department chairs. Cunningham said the weakest area of development for the school system is with support staff, such as custodians and cafeteria employees.

‘‘Sometimes we place these people in leadership roles without any training,” he said.

As a remedy, Cunningham proposed several initiatives at all levels. For administrators, he proposed a series of preparatory workshops for internal applicants as well as an ambitious internship program for teachers seeking assistant principal roles. The internships would pay teachers as assistant principals while they serve in that role for a given period of time. School-based and support staff leaders would also receive additional training in leadership and other skills.

The price tag for all of the training, said Cunningham, would be $357,000 over the next four years, or excluding the internships, $97,000 in fiscal 2007 and $20,000 in fiscal 2008.

School administrators have already identified leadership development as a key strategic improvement for next year, and could seek $97,000 for the initiative from county commissioners above and beyond their base budget request later this year.

Early entrance kindergarten policy set

The school board has officially adopted a formal process for parents seeking early entrance to kindergarten instruction for their children.

Under the new policy, parents and guardians can request early entrance for any child who turns 5 between the regular kindergarten cutoff date of Sept. 1 to Oct. 15. After a meeting with a school administrator to discuss this option, an early entrance application must be filled out and, if appropriate, an early childhood profile from the child’s preschool must be submitted in the spring.

That information is reviewed by a series of administrators to decide if it will be assessed any further, with parents and guardians notified of their child’s status for early entrance by early summer.

Other steps in the process include an assessment of the child’s capabilities in a series of areas, a review of this data to see if the child continues through the process, and a committee review of the child’s ability to cope with the kindergarten environment.

There is also an appeal process for parents or guardians who disagree with any of the findings at any point in the process that includes a written letter for disagreement.

For more information on the early entrance policy, contact Shari Ostrow Scher, curriculum specialist for early childhood education, at 301-696-6852.