BUCKLAND — After meetings with school parents who said their advanced-level students weren’t being challenged in the school’s new heterogeneous math classes, Mohawk Trail Regional School District Superintendent Michael Buoniconti has hired an additional teacher to work with students and teachers in the seventh- and eighth-grade math classrooms. He has also hired an instructional coach to help the ninth- and 10th-grade math teachers in the transition to this educational approach.
“Heterogeneous” teaching involves teaching students with different learning abilities and skill levels all in one classroom, instead of separating them into advanced placement, intermediate or remedial classes. The goal is to challenge all students to rise beyond the level they started at.
The parents who met with Buoniconti and Mohawk School Committee members were concerned that their children, who had been prepared to take advanced math this year, were not being taught at a level that matches their abilities.
The cost of these additional teachers “will add further pressure to the already significant challenge we face staying within the approved (fiscal year 2017) budget, but I believe that it is the right thing to do to support our entire school community,” Buoniconti told the school board. “I anticipate continuing our partial budget freeze for the balance of the fiscal year, to make sure that we finish somewhere in the black.”