Nick Brossoit, the new superintendent of the Edmonds School District, spoke with interested parents, staff, students and community members June 1 and 2 during a town hall meeting to answer questions and learn more about the issues important to citizens.
Brossoit greeted everyone in attendance, approximately 40 people, as they came and left throughout each gathering. He discussed some of his initial thoughts about the district, but he left most of the time open for questions.
“There’s a lot of positive things already happening in the schools and community,” Brossoit said. He added that he plans on maintaining these effective programs.
He said there are other aspects of the district that should be discussed and improved upon. Brossoit said Lynnwood High School’s facility is in need of improvement, and he would like to start moving on that quickly.
He also wanted people to know that he is open to completely new ideas and enjoys thinking outside the box.
“You have to have a balance of stability and innovation at the same time,” Brossoit said.
Brossoit brought up several new ideas that he will implement. There will be a monthly superintendent roundtable, similar to the June 1 and 2 town hall meetings, to discuss issues important to parents and community members.
He will also change the monthly school administration meetings to weekly, and he plans on visiting each school every year to meet with parent groups.
One issue that arose in the June 2 meeting was the academic calendar for the year. Community members asked questions pertaining to mid-winter break and year-round schools.
One mother said she did not think young children need a mid-winter break, because it makes getting back into the swing of thing things difficult. Kelsey Petersen, a senior at Edmonds-Woodway High School, said that she always appreciated mid-winter break as a time to recuperate from finals.
In the Tumwater School District, where Brossoit has been superintendent for 10 years, the schools shifted to a long-weekend break, where students have Friday through Tuesday off, he said.
Petersen also asked Brossoit how he felt about different schools using different semester lengths. At Mountlake Terrace High School, they operate on three 60-day trimesters, which do not align with the semesters at Edmonds-Woodway.
Petersen said there was an elective at another high school she would have been interested in taking, but because the times did not line up and therefore conflicted with required courses, she was not able to pursue those interests.
Brossoit said he was not fully up-to-speed with this issue and would have to learn more about it. He stressed that this was one of his goals in creating the town hall meeting — learning more about what mattered to community members.
Edmonds School Board Vice President Patrick Shields, Edmonds Mayor Gary Haakenson, Lynnwood Mayor Mike McKinnon and Lynnwood City Council President Lisa Utter also attended the session June 2.
Shields, Haakenson and McKinnon each welcomed Brossoit to the district and said they were looking forward to working with him.
“The doors are open,” Shields said. “We’re looking forward to good, productive years.”
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