WVCSD EdTalk & Photo of the Week: August 26, 2026

As Superintendent of Schools, I could not be more excited about the start of the 2026-2027 school year. In just a few days, we will welcome more than 3,600+ students back to our schools, including more than 240 kindergarten students who will be beginning their Warwick Valley journey for the very first time. There is something special about the beginning of every school year, and I have a feeling this is going to be a fantastic one for our students.

Each week throughout the school year, I have the privilege of writing about the great things happening across Warwick in my weekly Ed Talk. Even during the summer months, our schools remain busy educating students, preparing classrooms and buildings, developing programs, and getting ready for another year. For this week’s Ed Talk, I wanted to step back a bit and offer more of a 10,000-foot view of the district. There is a tremendous amount of planning that takes place behind the scenes, and much of that work directly affects our students, teachers, staff members, families, and ultimately the experience our children have in our schools.

By now, our families have received welcome letters from building principals along with the information needed to get the school year started. While each of our four schools has its own personality and traditions, those messages reflect something we share across the district: a commitment to welcoming students into safe, supportive, and engaging learning communities focused on growth, opportunity, strong family partnerships, and preparing every student for success.

I would also like to share some of the significant work that has been taking place across the district as we continue asking an important question: How do we make certain Warwick Valley CSD students are truly prepared for their futures?

A great deal of that work begins with the partnership between home and school, and it comes to life in the classroom.

Over the past several school years, Warwick teachers have focused considerable attention on an important question: What teaching practices give our students the best opportunity to learn, grow, and make progress?

Just as professionals in other fields rely on research to improve their practice, education also has a substantial body of research about the classroom practices proven to improve student learning. We take that research seriously. Our responsibility is to make certain our teachers have access to meaningful professional learning and the opportunity to continually refine their craft so that students are not simply completing assignments, but are genuinely thinking, questioning, understanding, and growing.

One important area of focus last school year was what educators call teacher clarity. The idea itself is fairly straightforward. Students learn more effectively when they understand what they are learning, why they are learning it, what successful work looks like, and how they are progressing.

Throughout last year, our teachers worked on making learning goals clearer for students, helping students understand what quality work looks like, providing frequent opportunities for students to demonstrate what they understand, and ensuring that assessments actually measure what students have been taught and expected to learn. Just as importantly, those opportunities give our teachers valuable feedback about the effectiveness of their own instruction and when they may need to adjust, reteach, or approach the learning differently.

This year, that work will continue with an even stronger emphasis on effective feedback.

Effective feedback is much more than telling a student whether an answer is right or wrong or placing a grade at the top of an assignment. Good feedback helps a student understand where he or she is in the learning process, where the learning needs to go next, and what can be done to improve.

Ultimately, we want students to become increasingly active, reflective, and independent learners. We want them to be able to answer three very important questions:

What am I learning? How am I doing? What should I do next?

Those questions may sound simple, but when students can genuinely answer them, they begin to take greater ownership of their learning.

Throughout this school year, we will continue devoting considerable attention to teaching practices that research tells us have a strong impact on student learning. We want strong instructional practices to be evident throughout our schools and classrooms. Most importantly, we never want to become complacent in our pursuit of intellectually engaging each and every student.

That work also connects directly to another important district effort.

Several years ago, as part of our strategic planning process, we brought together students, families, faculty, staff, and community members to consider a larger question: What should a Warwick graduate know and be able to do after completing the K-12 experience?

Together, we developed what is now known as the Warwick Valley Portrait of a Graduate, identifying seven competencies we believe are essential for our students:

Collaborators, Communicators, Creators and Innovators, Ethical and Global Citizens, Resilient Individuals, Problem Solvers, and Lifelong Learners.

Since that time, our Portrait of a Graduate has served as a North Star for our work. It has helped guide curriculum development, the design of report cards, professional learning, and other important instructional decisions. We have also worked to make these competencies familiar and meaningful to our students because they represent skills and dispositions that matter not only in school, but in college, careers, relationships, citizenship, and life.

More recently, New York State adopted its own Portrait of a Graduate that closely aligns with work Warwick began several years ago. We are encouraged by the direction the state is taking, particularly as the New York State Education Department begins to think more broadly about how students demonstrate readiness for graduation and life beyond high school.

At the same time, Warwick Valley CSD is not waiting for the state to tell us what comes next.

Our Portrait of a Graduate cannot simply be a poster hanging on a classroom wall, a graphic on our website, or a strategic plan sitting in a binder on someone’s desk. If these competencies truly matter, we need to define what they look like as students grow from kindergarten through graduation.

That is why this year our faculty will continue developing K-12 proficiency scales connected to our Portrait of a Graduate. Simply put, these scales will help teachers and students develop a shared understanding of what skills such as communication, collaboration, problem solving, resilience, and creativity look like at different stages of a student’s education and how students can demonstrate growth in those areas over time.

Of course, preparing for a new school year also means preparing the places where all of this learning occurs.

Our transportation, buildings and grounds, custodial, clerical, and maintenance staff, along with other employees, have been exceptionally busy throughout the summer. While classrooms may appear quiet during July and August, the work behind the scenes certainly is not.

Summer projects included paving at the high school and our transportation facility in Pine Island; refinishing gym floors at the high school, Sanfordville, Kings, and Pine Island; refinishing stages at Sanfordville and Park Avenue; completing electrical work for timers at Sanfordville and for a new scoreboard at Park Avenue; painting throughout several buildings; and completely renovating the high school sewing room with new flooring, ceilings, lighting, sinks, paint, and furniture.

Our larger capital improvement work has also progressed substantially.

At the high school, approximately 75 percent of the 100,000-square-foot roof replacement has been completed, with the remaining work scheduled to continue this fall. The storage shed has been replaced, window replacement near the loading dock continues, the air conditioning installation in the gym is nearing completion, and new bleachers have been installed in both gymnasiums.

At Sanfordville Elementary School, the major project to replace the building’s heating and cooling piping is nearly complete, with insulation work continuing into the fall. District staff also replaced the ceiling tiles affected by that work.

At Park Avenue Elementary School, the roof project is substantially complete. Plumbing in the basement has been replaced, including new piping, a new meter, and new shutoff valves. Significant masonry work has also been completed at the front entrance and along the older portion of the building, with some additional work scheduled for this fall.

At the middle school, new bleachers have also been installed.

We have also completed several major projects from previous phases of our capital work, including the Park Avenue window replacement, the district office roof, high school HVAC controls, the Kings Elementary roof, and the Pine Island roof.

Much of this work takes place when students are not in our buildings, so it can easily go unnoticed. Yet maintaining our facilities is an enormous responsibility. Safe, comfortable, functional, climate-controlled buildings matter. They protect the community’s investment in its schools, help prevent interruptions to instruction, and provide the environment our students and employees deserve each day.

Whether we are refining classroom instruction, defining what future-ready skills look like for our students, investing in professional learning for our teachers, or maintaining the buildings where learning takes place, the goal is ultimately the same: to make certain the Warwick Valley Central School District continues to provide every student with an educational experience worthy of his or her potential and responsive to the world our students will inherit.

And now, after months of planning, preparation, construction, professional learning, scheduling, hiring, cleaning, organizing, and getting ready, comes the best part.

Our students return.

On behalf of our faculty, staff, administrators, and Board of Education, I want our families to know just how excited we are to welcome your children back to school. I am enormously proud of the people who work in this district and equally proud of the students we have the privilege to serve.

There will be plenty to talk about in the weeks and months ahead, and as those who regularly read Ed Talk already know, I am never particularly shy about bragging about Warwick students and their accomplishments.

I look forward to doing plenty of that again this year.

Welcome back, Warwick Valley. Here’s to a terrific 2026-2027 school year!

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Photo of the Week

Rain showers didn't stop counselors and campers from rotating through stations on the first day of Warwick Girls Soccer Camp at Sanfordville Elementary School on Aug. 3.