SRHS Summer 2012 Report To the Community




Sanborn Regional High School had a very successful 2011-2012 school year in which it was recognized at local, state, and national levels for its work in school redesign for the twenty-first century. As an expansion to the district’s “top ten percent” goal, the school strives to become one of the premiere high schools in the State of New Hampshire and beyond. To achieve this, the school has developed a master plan for redesign that is based on three pillars for success.





Pillar #1 - Learning Communities: Our learning communities work interdependently to achieve successful student performance for which we are collectively responsible and mutually accountable.

The term “learning community” describes a collegial group of administrators and/or school staff who are united in their commitment to student learning. They share a vision, work and learn collaboratively, visit and review other classrooms, and participate in decision-making. At our school, all staff belong to one or more learning communities that are based on a shared content and/or grade-level.

In the 2011-2012 year, the first of what will be several highly functioning learning communities was implemented school-wide with the establishment of the Freshman Learning Community (FLC). The vision of the FLC is to prepare freshman for academic and personal success through encouragement, support, & self-advocacy. After just one year of implementation, the program is showing signs that it is having tremendous success in addressing the needs of all learners. Both discipline referrals and course failures for freshman were reduced by 50% from the 2010-2011 year. NWEA scores have increased at all levels. In April of 2012, this program was recognized nationally by the National School Board Association. It received a first place Magna Award for innovation and has been publicized to school leaders around the country as a prime example of how to redesign a school for the twenty first century.

For the 2012-2013 school year, the school plans to implement other highly functioning learning communities including a sophomore team model that will be focused on a project-based learning experience that connects the subjects of Biology, Civics, and Language Arts with a community organization and/or business and a college or university. One of the projects currently in the design phase may involve a year-long study of the watershed in the Kingston community and would partner our students and teachers with the Kingston Conservation Commission and the University of New Hampshire for outreach work.



Pillar #2 - Student Engagement: Our students are engaged in learning tasks and performance assessments that measure mastery of competency.

Sanborn Regional High School is a statewide leader in a movement from traditional to competency-based grading for all courses. A “competency” is the ability of a student to apply content knowledge and skills in and/or across the content area(s). At SRHS, all courses use a competency-based grading system. By this, it is meant that assignments are linked back to the competencies that they are designed to assess and student performance is reported in a way that tracks student mastery of the competencies that have been identified for each course. This shift in focus allows the school to use report cards and transcripts to more accurately report what it is a student knows and is able to do.

Throughout the 2011-2012 school year teams of administrators, teachers, and students shared the school’s vision for competency work in presentations and workshops all over New Hampshire as well as nationally at a conference in Chicago, two “think tanks” in Washington DC, and in a video conference with the Department of Education for the State of Iowa. A new book by local author Rose Colby and NH State Board of Education representative Fred Bramante entitled Off the Clock: Moving Education From Time to Competency references and highlights the work of Sanborn Regional High School in several different places and is now circulating around the country, generating interest nationwide for a shift to a competency-based model for all schools.



Pillar #3 - Climate & Culture: We foster a school culture for all stakeholders that promotes respect, responsibility, ambition, and pride.

In the 2011-2012 school year, the school community engaged in a culture survey to identify the ways in which it could better address the climate and culture “pillar”. All staff and students took the survey and the results were analyzed by sub committees composed of students, parents, and staff. An executive summary was prepared by these groups in May of 2012 with the following recommendations for the administration to be addressed as early as the 2012-2013 year:

·        The administration should work with teachers to increase the types and frequency of communication with students, parents, and community members about various school issues. With regards to the work on redesign, the administration should increase communication on the purpose and expectations for various stakeholders on these initiatives by making use of a variety of strategies.

·        A committee of adults and students should be formed to address student behavior. The committee should review current School Board policies that are related to student discipline, review and revise the language in the student handbook regarding discipline so that it is clear and easy-to-follow for all stakeholders, develop school-wide strategies to promote awareness of and celebrate examples of positive student behavior, and recommend potential alternative strategies that could be implemented to address student misbehavior.

·        The administration should work with all stakeholders to personalize instruction in the following ways: develop a schedule that allows for personalized instruction to address the needs of all learners and one that devotes more time to training staff in the professional learning community (PLC) model as well as create more time for PLC’s to meet in order to address student learning, retool the advisory program so that it could be used as a vehicle to promote the personalization of instruction, and develop and/or refine the grading policies and interventions to allow for the personalization of learning based on student needs and faculty input

·        Efforts should be made to give students opportunities to learn and connect with the community. Also, efforts should be made to allow for the community to be able to support instruction based on career interests or to allow parents and community members to be involved in the school day-to-day activities.


Guidance and Graduation News:

For the 2011-2012 year, the Guidance Department expanded its post-secondary planning tools and resources for students and families by adding additional college and financial aid information nights and implementing an online resource (Naviance) for use by all students and their families in college planning labs that were held during the school day.

For the 2012-2013 year, the following post-secondary planning activities are planned for students and their families:

September 10, 2012: Senior College Night, 7pm in the library
September 11, 2012: College Fair (during the school day)
March 11, 2013: Junior College Night, 7pm in the library
April 15, 2013: Freshman & Sophomore College Night, 7pm in the library

On June 8, 2012, Sanborn Regional High School graduated 180 seniors with one of the highest graduation rates in the school’s history. Of those graduates, 47% plan to attend a 4-year school, 31% plan to attend a 2-year school, and 5% plan to enter the military or armed forces.

Sanborn Regional High School salutes the following seniors for their commitment to serve our country:
Robert Allore – United States Air Force, Zachary Gottlich – United States Marine Corps, Steve Jongsma – United States Air Force, Casey Nolan – United States Air National Guard, Tyler Pfister – United States Marine Corps, Patrick Royer – United States Air Force, and Alton Veroneau – United States Army National Guard.

The school also salutes the following seniors who held special titles at graduation: Alexander Adams and Kristina Lundquist, Valedictorian; Stephen Arata and Jennifer McGeoch, Salutatorian; Celina Micale, Class Essayist; and Abigale Sprackland, Class President.

Sanborn Regional High School’s Class of 2012 seniors were accepted at the following academic institutions:

Arcadia University
Assumption College
Bates College
Bay State College
Becker College
Boston University
Bridgewater State University
Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University, Idaho
Chester College of New England
Colby College
Colby-Sawyer College
Curry College
Daniel Webster College
Dean College
Duke University
Eastern Nazarene College
Embry-Riddle Aero. University
Emerson College
Emmanuel College
Endicott College
Fitchburg State University
Florida Atlantic University
Florida Gulf Coast University
Franklin Pierce University
Gordon College
Great Bay Community College
Green Mountain College
Hesser College
High Point University
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Hofstra University
Husson University
Johnson & Wales University
Johnson State College
Keene State College
Lasell College
Lesley University
Lipscomb University
Maine College of Art
Maine Maritime Academy
Manchester Community College
Mass College of Art and Design
Mass College of Pharmacy
Mercyhurst College
Merrimack College
Montana State University, Bozeman
Muskingum University
Nashua Community College
New England College
New England School of Communications
New Hampshire Technical Institute
NHTI - Concord Community College
Nichols College
Northeastern University
Northern Essex Community College
Northern Michigan University
Plymouth State University
Quinnipiac University
Rivier College
Roger Williams University
Saint Anselm College
Saint Joseph's College-ME
Saint Michael's College
Salem State University
Salve Regina University
School of the Museum of Fine Arts
Seton Hall University
Seton Hill University
Siena College
Simmons College
Skidmore College
Smith College
So. Maine Community College
So. New Hampshire University
Springfield College
St. Lawrence University
Stevenson University
Stonehill College
Suffolk University
University of Northwestern Ohio
University of Bridgeport
University of Colorado at Boulder
University of Hawaii at Hilo
University of Kentucky
University of Maine
University of Maine at Farmington
University of Mass, Amherst
University of Mass, Boston
University of Mass, Dartmouth
University of Massachusetts, Lowell
University of New England
University of New Hampshire
University of NH at Manchester
University of New Haven
University of Rhode Island
University of Southern Maine
University of Vermont
University of Vermont
Utica College
Valley Forge Christian College
Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Virginia State University
Wells College
Wentworth Institute of Technology
West Chester University of PA
Western New England University
Wheaton College MA
Worcester Polytechnic Institute


Sanborn Regional High School is committed to learning for all, whatever it takes.

Respectfully Submitted By: Brian M. Stack, Principal; Michael Turmelle, Assistant Principal / Curriculum; Ann Hadwen, Assistant Principal / Freshman Learning Community; Michelle Catena, Guidance Director; and Vicki Parady-Guay, Athletic Director

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