RICKI BUTLER at CEE & HR Services

A former middle school counselor with both school and private sector administrative experience, Fredericka (Ricki) Butler has joined PNW BOCES as Coordinator for the Center for Educational Leadership and HR Services.

The combined department has the goal of providing workshops, educational resources and services for school districts and school district leaders throughout the Hudson Valley region and beyond.

CEL is especially focused now on helping school district leaders understand and successfully implement the variety of new

requirements and initiatives from the New York State Education Department, including performance evaluation, Common Core Standards and the tax cap. Workshops and training sessions employ acknowledged experts as well as successful practitioners to share their experience.

The HR Services component of Ricki's job provides shared, cost-effective personnel services for school districts. They include recruitment, such as OLAS, the online job application system; the Employee Assistance Program (EAP); fingerprinting services; private investigation; and the Web-based substitute teacher finder service (SubFinder).

A Yorktown resident, Ricki was a school counselor for 12 years, including the last seven with the Bedford Central School District. While at Bedford, she served one season as principal of the high school/middle school summer school. She is a part-time adjunct professor at LIU Hudson, where she teaches in the Counseling, Psychology and Therapy department.

Ricki is a graduate of LIU Post with a BA degree in psychology; Lehman College with an MSEd in school counseling, and Mercy College with advanced certificates in school-building leadership and school-district leadership. She begins her doctoral studies in educational leadership this fall at Manhattanville College.

Ricki lives in Yorktown with her husband, Ray, and three children, Ray Jr., Olivia and Tracie.

CIA FACILITATOR Fred Santoli at Fox Meadow

The CIA, Curriculum Instruction

Assessment initiative at PNW BOCES, has been functioning

effectively for more than a year now, in part due to the welcome

efforts of two administrative interns.

One, Fred Santoli, works in administration and teaches at Fox Meadow High School. The other, Karen Marconi, is now employed by the State Education Department.

Under the direction of BOCES Assistant Superintendent Lynn Allen, an originator of the BOCES' CIA, Fred and Karen worked throughout last year with CIA Network, Program and Building Inquiry teams to facilitate discussion and introduce topics to help clarify the district's approach to dealing with recent state mandates, such as Common Core, APPR, the annual professional performance review and other elements in the Race To The Top initiative.

Karen, who first came to BOCES as a special education teacher at The Learning Center at Walden and was a substitute at Pines Bridge before earning her administrative degree at Mercy College, developed the CIA newsletter and managed the wikispace that contains the Network Committee minutes, newsletters, resource guides and other material having to do with the CIA effort. Visiting that wikispace (http://pnwbocescianetworkcommittee.wikispaces.com/) is like going into a CIA store, where everything you wanted to find is on the shelf.

Fred, who is in his 11th year at BOCES, was previously a high school level Social Studies and English teacher, and is an adjunct history professor at Westchester Community College.

The questions for the CIA, Fred said, are: "What do these mandates look like on the front lines, to the people having to deal with them, having to adopt them and implement them? And how do we, at BOCES, adapt and still retain the uniqueness of our programs. Every program at BOCES has a distinct culture and mission and vision for its students. We can be isolated in our work, so the question is how do we get out of our silos, learn from the best practices and unique perspective of each program, and experience the true nature of our organization?"

CIA tours of the various programs will broaden staff members understanding of the whole, he said. Curriculum maps, instruction through technology and monthly meetings are important. "CIA has great potential if we stay focused on what these changes mean for teachers, how we can help teachers to grow professionally and become resources for each other."