Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

This past Thursday, we had a unique opportunity to host a session of the NH Supreme Court. The day was part of an annual trip that the court makes to a local high school for "Court on the Road." Sanborn was lucky enough to play host for this important event thanks to Deb DeBay, fourth grade teacher from Memorial Elementary School in Newton, who asked the court to consider our location last year. Ten local high schools sent student representatives to watch the two actual court cases. Sanborn had 150 students from Mr. Hurley's AP US History classes, Ms. Karcz's and Mrs. Jules's block 6 Democracy class, and Mr. Hatem's and Mr. Welch's block 2 Democracy class. Sanborn ran a live video feed to the UNH Granite State Distance Learning Network - this allowed high schools form the North Country to participate in the event as well (and this technology was a first for the court!) It was a busy week. Sanborn students were paid a visit last Tuesday by Attorney General

I had a difficult time writing the five-year textbook replacement plan this year for the high school. I found this to be a little ironic though, considering where Sanborn was just a few years ago - My first week on the job as assistant principal in 2006, I was attacked by a swarm of teachers begging me to order them some much-needed textbooks. The math department wanted to stop the practice of having just one set of classroom textbooks for each teacher (meaning no one could bring a book home). The science department was still using a biology book with a copyright date of 1984. The Social Studies department had ten different sets of US History books that they had accumulated over the years and none of them talked about the "War on Terrorism," the biggest news of the last decade. The problem was, by 2006 the textbook budget was grossly inadequate for the needs of the school and by the time books were actually purchased for a course or department, the information in them became

Last week, I had an opportunity to sit down with an admissions officer from Boston University. We had a great discussion about some of our Sanborn students who have expressed interest in the school, but more importantly, we talked about what BU is looking for these days in college applications. I'd like to share some of what I learned in that meeting with all of you. First, I asked her if there were any specific courses (above and beyond the obvious 4 years of English, 4 years of math, 4 years of science, and 4 years of Social Studies) that BU likes to see on the high school transcripts of applicants. She indicated that precalculus and physics were very helpful because they were one way to show a student challenged themselves. For the same reason, she said BU also likes to see at least one or two courses at the AP (Advanced Placement) or PRS (Project Running Start) level in high school. When I asked her about foreign languages, she indicated that 2-4 years in the same language was