By George C. McKinnis, President, Bronxville Rotary Club

Nov. 1, 2017:  Dr. Roy R. Montesano, EdD, superintendent of the Bronxville schools, addressed the Bronxville Rotary Club during an evening meeting with guests on Monday, October 30, 2017. 

Dr. Montesano gave his impressions of Bronxville and The Bronxville School:  a community that is highly supportive and proud of The Bronxville School coupled with high student success in getting into quality colleges. Fifty-four percent of the members of the senior class are admitted to the most competitive colleges, 27% are admitted to highly competitive colleges, and 17% are admitted to very competitive colleges.      

He cited the challenges and trends in education as understanding how the changing modern world of innovation and job opportunities in the new electronic economy have impacted education with more requirements unconnected with traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic. He said that our country's schools were designed for an economy in which 75% of our population was employed in agricultural and traditional manufacturing jobs, whereas now 75% of our workforce is employed in creative and service jobs. Dr. Montesano said that the challenge is preparing students for the new economy. 

To accentuate this new requirement, Dr. Montesano said that the top ten skills in today's economy are complex problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordinating with others, emotional intelligence, judgment and decision-making, service orientation, negotiation, and cognitive flexibility.

He further said that education is becoming more personal, with new pathways to follow one's passion, online courses, independent study, and collaborative research. With these things in mind, Dr. Montesano advised that parents should tell their children that in order to stay ahead, they need to focus on their ability to continuously adapt, engage with others in that activity, and, most important, retain their core sense of identity and values in an ever-changing environment.

Dr. Montesano said that The Bronxville School and the school parents need to equip their students with the knowledge and skills to create value and be successful in the global economic system. 

He expressed interest in the findings of the Stanford University Challenge Success Project, which in 2007 developed research-based strategies for improving students' lives academically and socially. 

Bronxville students in grades 6 to 12 took the survey circulated by Stanford in the spring of 2017. The findings from that survey were that 70% of our high school students go to bed after 11:00 pm and they spend an average of 1.8 to 3.82 hours of homework at night. Also, stress from schoolwork on a scale of 1 to 5 for Bronxville students averages between 3.69 and 4.45.

In addition, middle school students used the words "fun," "interesting," and "stressful," and high school students used the words "competitive," "stressful," and "challenging" to most frequently describe their Bronxville School experience.

In response to these findings, Dr. Montesano said that he would work closely with faculty and students to improve the Bronxville School experience and closely examine the school's homework requirements and to organize a parent program that addresses the Stanford Project's findings, beginning with a speaker who was one of the people responsible for running the Stanford Project. 

In addition, Dr. Montesano said that there would be a new bond that would be submitted for a vote by Bronxville Village residents to cover repairs to the school's infrastructure, improve the school's programs to meet the new economy's requirements, and to add additional water pumps to complete the water removal project that is designed to prevent future flooding of the school. 

His Rotary audience was very pleased to hear that the bond would be tax neutral, which is to say that it would not generate new taxes, as some older bonds will terminate at about the same time.  

Pictured here:  George McKinnis (L) and Dr. Roy Montesano at the Bronxville Rotary Club meeting.

Photo by A. Warner