Contributed photo / Christopher BernierThe Hamilton County Board of Education this week interviewed the first of three superintendent finalists, Christopher Bernier, chief of staff of the Clark County school district in Las Vegas, Nevada.
When asked to share some of his past experiences and actions to close achievement gaps, he described his success in taking over a low-performing school where exceptional education students were taught in portable classrooms while other students were taught inside the school building with no interaction.
“That is not an acceptable educational model for me,” he said Tuesday. “When you looked at data from the school building … the students were achieving fairly well, but unless we address the need of our students with special needs, we were never going to meet the state grading criteria.”
Bernier said he worked with faculty on inclusion models, developed a plan for moving forward and set expectations for the following fall.
“The real critical component to it … is about teachers having real data in real time,” he said, adding that his belief in inclusion models is supported by his awareness that instructional methodologies used to approach students with learning gaps work for all children.