Elementary School Pi Program To Be Phased Out

While the Three Village school district's Intellectually Gifted program will remain as is for the 2013-14 academic year, school administrators on Tuesday announced plans to gradually phase out the Pi enrichment program.

A committee focused on reviewing the district's gifted education offerings has recommended replacing the Pi program in grades 4, 5 and 6 with a "school-wide enrichment model" (SEM) by the end of the 2014-15 school year. 

Kevin Scanlon, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said the focus committee considered ideas including fluidity, clustering, diversity, socialization and consistency of criteria when developing the SEM. He delivered a breakdown of how the new approach to enriched education would work. 

Whereas Pi students currently get "pulled out" of their general classes for two hours per week, the SEM would involve a "push in" approach in which an enrichment teacher would come in to the classroom to deliver specialized instruction. Instead of five teachers doing pull-outs, two dedicated teachers would be doing the push-in approach.

"It would be team teaching for that period of time," Scanlon said. "This is going to formalize [the curriculum] across the board."

The district developed a statement of its gifted and talented program philosophy:
"The Three Village Central School District recognizes that there are students who are intellectually gifted and possess unique needs. Therefore, it is incumbent that we provide training for our staff to identify and support these students early in their formal education based upon multiple criteria in order to provide a leve of instruction commensurate with their ability."

The present IG program was established in the early 1980s and has been housed within one elementary school since then. The Pi program was developed in 2007 and was initially intended to replace IG with a program based in the students' home schools.

Some parents applauded the district's decision to keep IG and restructure the Pi program as SEM.

"I'm really glad they're going to keep IG for the next year," said Janet Leatherwood. "I think it would have been a disaster if they tried to change it for next year. I'm also glad they're increasing enrichment in the regular classes."

Shari Fontana, who has a child in the IG program, said the district made the right move.

"I think realistically they are looking at the needs of the students," she said. "I think it's a positive thing. ... They made a real educated decision."

However, another parent, Lely Schwartz, said while the Pi program could have benefited from a more consistent curriculum, she didn't think it needed to be phased out.

"I thought the program as it is was great," she said. "I didn't mind the pull-out for two hours a week. I think it made [the students] a little more independent and organized."

According to Jeff Carlson, assistant superintendent for business services, the district spent about $1,200 on an expert consultant to help guide the committee.

Scanlon said the focus committee will meet again in the future to continue responding to the needs of the gifted students.

"We would like to continue our work in reviewing and analyzing the program based upon future recommendations," he said, adding the district is interested in "eventually maybe doing this even further into the earlier grade levels."