Jericho Public School District President Hank Grishman has announced that his 30th year will be his last and he will be retiring at the end of the year.
Grishman, who oversees five schools from preschool through 12th grade, won the 2012 New York State School Superintendent of the Year award, among other awards. In his time at Jericho, the district’s students and faculty have won various academic awards and merit scholarships.
“The role of the superintendent in a pre-K -12 district is to ensure that there’s quality education at every level,” Grishman said. “And that the needs of every kid is different, but that we meet the individual needs of kids.”
He said that during his time he has also seen many changes.
“Education has so significantly changed over the 30 years,” Grishman said.
Learning how to manage these changes requires flexibility, he said.
“We’ve made some changes within the district that I think are pretty positive,” he said.
Grishman said he has implemented changes district-wide in Jericho over the past three decades, which have created smoother transitions between grades. These changes include new curriculum associate positions for each department.
“When we came to the district 30 years ago, we had department chairs,” he said.
Department chairs were responsible for subject curriculum in individual schools. Instead of these positions, Grishman created curriculum associates. This role oversees curriculum in a subject from grades K-12.
“That provided an opportunity for the curriculum expert to really spiral the curriculum and make sure that there were smooth transitions from fifth grade to sixth grade or eighth grade to ninth grade,” he said.
By implementing this role, Grishman said that transitioning between schools is more manageable for students.
The Jericho district now offers open enrollment to courses, another change made by Grishman.
“We became an open enrollment school district,” he said. “Which meant that we no longer tracked kids, and we no longer had kids have to apply to take an AP course.”
As an open enrollment district, any student can take honors and advanced placement courses. This policy has allowed more students to succeed, Grishman said.
“As a result of the open enrollment, we have many, many more kids taking AP courses and many, many more kids scoring 3s, 4s and 5s on the AP exams,” he said.
Before his role at Jericho, Grishman was an elementary and middle school math teacher.
He also served as a principal and superintendent in other districts before starting his role at Jericho. This year, he enters his 47th year as superintendent in the state.
Grisham said he anticipates a busy school year ahead, and looks forward to working with the district throughout the academic year.
“I’m really focused on this school year,” Grishman said.
