For Trenton Public Schools, the school year began with a new superintendent. Francisco Duran, who joined the school district in July, told NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider that he wants to instill a love of learning and a joy of teaching back into the classroom.
Duran said that one of his main goals is to increase student achievement and, in turn, close what he refers to as the “opportunity gap.” He said, “for me, it’s really about providing opportunities for students who have not been able to have access.”
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Another area of priority he cited related to holding each and every employee of the school district accountable for student success. “I think that sometimes it’s easy to forget why we are here and it is important for us to remember that it is for our children.”
One of the challenges he took on soon after becoming the superintendent was to improve reading rates in Trenton schools. A $2.5 million literacy program that was recently launched targets students in kindergarten through eighth grade. While there are positive trends in the early grades, he said the more challenging area with regard to reading levels is rooted in the middle and high schools. For many students in the district, he said English is a second language and often times, there is a lack of proficiency in the student’s first language.
“Think about a child who doesn’t have a grasp of their own native language and yet we’re trying to teach them a second one, you can just imagine how difficult that would be,” said Duran. “We do have some bilingual programs that we are instituting and are continuing to strengthen to ensure that the primary language is solid.”
Acknowledging nationwide budgetary challenges to improving schools, Duran said his responsibility is to maximize the resources that they have.
“We have to begin with looking at how we currently utilize our resources and making sure they’re all aligned and focused on our goals,” he said. “But I would be remiss to say that … we had financially what we need to get this accomplished.”
Duran will earn $185,000 in the first year of a three-year contract overseeing 21 public schools and nearly 14,000 students. His salary is $10,000 over the superintendent salary cap imposed by Gov. Chris Christie. The contract was made possible by a waiver from the state Department of Education which allows schools with enrollments of more than 10,000 students to apply to pay superintendents more than the maximum. According to Duran, New Jersey public schools are hampered by the cap in attracting qualified individuals because they are competing with other states.
“We have many surrounding states — Pennsylvania and New York — which do not have those caps and unfortunately I do think that given one state doing that in isolation it does hinder that.”
In measuring the success rate of his schools, he said standardized test scores shouldn’t be the only measure of student achievement.
“You’ll see that by an increase in attendance, we’ll see that in decreases in the amount of students suspended. So we’ve got to, for me, get away from once-a-year evaluating whether or not success is based upon a standardized test scores,” Duran said. “It’s walking into classrooms and seeing that love of learning come alive again for many of our students and seeing that creativity and that joy of teaching come alive again for our teachers.”