New OWSU Super
Backs Small Schools
By Sandy Vondrasek Cooch

The new superintendent of the Orange Windsor Supervisory Union believes in small schools, and their unique opportunities and values. Good thing, because David Bickford has landed in a district of small schools, including two K-12 public schools in Chelsea and Royalton.

Supt. Bickford was hired by the OWSU board this spring to fill the position vacated by Stephen Metcalf, who accepted a post as Montpelier’s superintendent of schools. Bickford most recently was superintendent at Washington South Supervisory Union, another district of small schools in Northfield and Roxbury.

After a summer of working with administrators, school board members, and central office staff, Bickford was ready this week to welcome teachers and students back to schools in the five-town district of Chelsea, Royalton, Sharon, Strafford, and Tunbridge.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, just before addressing teachers at an in-service session, Bickford said he has been impressed by board members in the five towns.

In OWSU towns, he said, board members are focused on "maintaining high quality programs," while dealing with the very real fiscal and logistical challenges that small schools face today.

From board members, administrators, and the teachers he had met to date, Bickford said, "I hear a commitment to maintaining the arts, as well as a strong academic core foundation. We’re talking about ways to infuse world language and world cultures into the curriculum. That portends well for preparing kids to have meaningful lives in the world at large."

"The one issue that we all face," he continued, "is how do we maintain high quality education in that small school setting in a political climate that is questioning the value of small schools. Somehow, the message in Montpelier is ‘If we get bigger we get better.’"

Bickford said his two children, now both in college, were well served by the small Vermont public schools they attended.

In addition to receiving a good education and "a disposition towards learning," his children benefited from "the opportunity to be known in the school, and have people looking out for them and caring for them," Bickford said.

Bickford noted that boards in the five OWSU towns are in the process of reviewing their goals from the previous year, and assessing how well those goals were addressed.

As board members conduct that review, Bickford said, he will work with them to "help them define the quality of education they want for their students."

"We have accomplished a lot," he said. "I think we have, in public education, a real opportunity to combine both academic rigor and a sense of creativity and imagination."

Bickford, who lives in Morrisville with his wife Judy, a special educator at U-32 High School, has been commuting daily to work. As winer nears, he said, he will likely find an apartment here, to limit driving in bad weather.