Nanuet School Board Looks Into IB Program For High School

The mandated Common Core standards pushes student performance. At the Nanuet Schools, they’re updating their district’s goals and priorities to stay one step ahead.

The goals and priorities are reviewed at the first board of education meeting of the school year and approved at the second meeting.

One of the additions was the IB program.

“We’re going to investigate the International Baccalaureate (IB) program for the high school level,” said Superintendent Mark McNeill. “From the investigation that (Steve Schlanger, Assistant Superintendent) and I have done so far, it really does reflect our mission.”

He added that there’s a critical thinking component, a service component and research projects that separate it from the Advanced Placement (AP) program but is equally rigorous.

“We think we would think an IB program would engage more kids than just those who have the proclivity to take AP,” said McNeill. He added that based off of the Nanuet HS’ statistics from last year, “54 percent of the juniors and 90 percent of the seniors were in an AP course or a credit-bearing course through RCC or STAC or Syracuse University.”

A handout from the IB program’s website was handed out. That handout and the draft of the priorities and goals for the district are attached to this article as PDFs.

Another example McNeill gave for how the school plans to meet its goal of ‘career and college readiness’ is additional hands-on curriculum.

“A new project next year will be through Syracuse University and it’s under the area of environmental studies … Geo-spatial visual math. This is a mission-driven priority. We want as many kids as possible, by the time they leave high school, to have had experiences working together, thinking creatively, incorporating technology into their projects and hopefully they can find passion and interest that they can carry with them into college.”