“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.” Fred Rogers Every June, I come back to the same subtle truth. A school year doesn’t really end. It…
Honoring the Year, Shaping the Next
“What we call the beginning is often the end … and to make an end is to make a beginning.” T.S. Eliot A few weeks ago, I wrote to you about measurement, about what a number can…
Champions of Character: A Spring Season Worth Celebrating
“Sports do not build character. They reveal it.” – Heywood Hale Broun As another school year draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on what our Fair Lawn High School student-athletes accomplished this spring,…
The Measure of a Year
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” William Bruce Cameron This is the season when a school year becomes legible. The State releases its performance reports. Proficiency rates…
The People Inside Our Buildings
“Our schools are not just buildings made out of brick and steel. They are made up of the people who are inside of them.” Last week at the Board of Education meeting, three of our…
What It Means to Be Known
April 24, 2026 “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children.” John Dewey Cultivating Belonging and Community is one of our district goals….
Transforming Tomorrow, Together
“Progress isn’t a straight line upward. But a pattern — sustained, across every grade and every test — that’s not luck. That’s a system doing what it was designed to do.” This report exists for…
The Score We Never Assigned Part Two: Seeing Every Child Whole — Building the Instruments Our Students Deserve
The Score We Never Assigned Part Two: Seeing Every Child Whole — Building the Instruments Our Students Deserve “We are all more capable than we think we are.” Liz Murray, who went from homeless…
The Score We Never Assigned — Part One: The Gap Between Performance and Potential
[PHOTOGRAPH: My grandfather, circa 1945] My grandfather, circa 1945. The system had no instrument for what he carried. The Score We Never Assigned Part One: The Gap Between Performance and Potential “We…
When Students Rise: On Excellence, Empathy, and Everything That Matters
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” Ralph Waldo Emerson…