Math Department Chairwoman Leaving Melrose Schools

The Melrose Public Schools math department chairwoman for Grades 6-12 is leaving after one year in the district.

Ro Gine is taking a position teaching mathematics at UMass Lowell this fall, Superintendent Joe Casey said.

An ad for math department chairperson was posted online this month and re-posted on Monday, May 23.

Gine told Melrose Patch in an email this week, "My beliefs about how students learn do not seem to match the central beliefs of the schools (middle and high). Also, the leadership structure, particularly in the middle school, feels very hierarchical. I would be a better fit in a school district where leadership is shared or distributed."

Leadership models came up recently in the , which led Principal Joe Dillon and his team to develop a new definition of a leadership team, with an eye on shifting the team—consisting of administrators and department heads—from its current a managerial role to more of a leadership role.

Gine impressed Melrose School Committee members with her candor at a meeting in March, when she spoke about the challenges within the math department. At the middle school, Gine had started a pilot of various math curricula that implement a more constructivist, activity-based and exploratory approach to teaching math.

Likewise, at the high school Gine said that traditional approaches to instructional strategies were still the norm and that other approaches to teaching math needed to be explored. From a Grade 6-12 level, Gine wrote a 6-12 math sequence when she first arrived in Melrose, based on Common Core standards, that outlined the important and essential mathematics concepts students should be exposed to at each grade level. The high school has proposed some .

Superintendent Casey said that while Gine is leaving the district, the initiatives she has started, including the pilot middle school math programs—which are still in the evaluation process—will continue.

"(Gine) has said that when we we find a replacement, she’ll be happy to work with that individual to bring them up to speed," he said. "We’ll still move forward and continue to make progress; we just have to finds someone else to work with us in that regard."