BOWDOINHAM

Bowdoinham Community School is conducting a forum Monday night to solicit feedback and ideas as part of a process the school is undergoing to develop a vision.

The meeting will start at 7 p.m. at the school, located at 23 Cemetery Road.

Principal Chris Lajoie said all of the schools within School Administrative District 75 are doing some level of shared vision work through its work with Reinventing Schools Coalition.

“As a district, we have partnered with the Reinventing Schools Coalition this year,” said Daniel Chuhta, assistant superintendent of schools for SAD 75. “They are providing our schools’ proficiencybased leadership teams with coaching and professional development around a framework that will help us develop a district-wide proficiencybased learning system for our students.”

He said coaches from Reinventing Schools worked with the entire faculty during the district’s January professional development day focusing on classroom and school culture and at the March professional development, will focus on curriculum and assessment.

Another one of the elements of the framework is the development of a shared vision, which many of our schools identified as a priority this year. Though the awarding of diplomas based on meeting standards is often the most publicized component of the new approach, we are endeavoring to make this a seamless K-12 system, and thus, Bowdoinham Community School’s upcoming forum on visioning.

According to its website, RISC is a “national educational foundation that supports schools and districts in their transition from a time-based to a performance-based system which results in them realizing their highest learning potential.”

Bowdoinham Community School has already solicited feedback from students, staff and parents. Back in November and December these groups were given prompts asking them to describe a time they loved learning. Lajoie’s leadership team gathered responses and culled some common themes they found.

There are now two draft vision statements and the community forum Monday is an opportunity for community members who don’t have children in the school system to weigh in on the process for determining a vision for the school, and to have a conversation about that.

Lajoie said folks just have to come to the forum. A portion of the meeting will be school officials presenting the two draft vision statements, and Lajoie will be polling attendees to see which they like most. The drafts will be put back out to stakeholders as well as to community members.

Bowdoinham Community School, Lajoie said, is very tightly connected to its community and relies on it for support such as for fundraising to allow for field trips. This is an opportunity for that community to feel like they understand what is going on in the school, he said, so they can support it.

The school wants to establish a more consistent line of communication between the school and community and is thinking about ways the public can be in touch with Lajoie and teachers so people feel they have a more active role in what happens there.

Lajoie has worked as an administrator within SAD 75 for a number of years and is now in his first year as principal at Bowdoinham Community School. Following the previous school year, Diane Stahl retired after serving as principal at the school for 13 years.

Tackling this visioning work now, “It’s really great timing actually,” Lajoie said. It is a good opportunity “for the community and I to go through this process together and sort of redefine who we’re going to be as a school.”

Lajoie invited community members to contact him with suggestions or ideas by emailing him at lajoiec@link75.org.

dmoore@timesrecord.com