LEWISTON — Longley Elementary School Principal Linda St. Andre will be recognized Tuesday during a White House ceremony and panel discussion focusing on people who are making change happen.

St. Andre is one of 12 educators from around the country being recognized this week as a “Champion of Change” by President Barack Obama.

“I could not be more impressed with the work that you are doing in your local communities,” Obama told a group of Champions for Change recognized earlier this month. “Each of you have different issues that you care passionately about and what you have in common is that passion and a belief in working at the grassroots level and getting people engaged and feeling ownership for these issues. I think you understand that change happens from the bottom up.”

St. Andre was nominated by the Maine Department of Education for her work at Longley over the last three years.

St. Andre, formerly the principal at Farwell Elementary, has been Longley’s principal since 2010. She became principal when school officials agreed to change the school’s leadership and half of its staff in order to receive a $2 million federal grant. The grant was aimed at improving some of Maine’s lowest performing schools.

St. Andre has been a key leader and an innovator of new programs that are helping the school improve, according to Lewiston School Superintendent Bill Webster.

Webster said he was “wholeheartedly in favor” of St. Andre’s nomination for the honor, noting several changes she’s made at Longley — the most recent being an expansion of the school’s summer program to the point that nearly 50 percent of the student body are taking part in summer learning. 

“There are a number of things that have been done at Longley, and I can’t say that one is necessarily more important or significant than the other,” Webster said. “But among them is tremendous growth in the summer school.”

Webster said it’s important because school officials knew that unless they did something differently students at Longley would lose a lot of ground over the summer.  

In many cases that learning loss was putting students two months behind where they left off the previous school year, Webster said.

 “By going to summer school we eliminate that learning loss and in some cases actually result in student improvement,” Webster said.

He also noted St. Andre’s push to make field trips more relevant and connected to the educational programing at the school.

St. Andre has also used those adventures outside of school as an incentive to keep kids in school, Webster explained.

This year Longley also experimented with a student-to-student tutor program that took off and will be expanded next year, Webster said. The program features older students working with younger students. Webster said the benefits for both sets of students have really started to show.

“We’ve found this to be very helpful not only for the younger students, but for the older students as well having them being able to articulate and work with others on whether it be grammar rules or vocabulary or whatever it might be, that’s been particularly powerful,” Webster said.

St. Andre said Monday she was looking forward to visiting the White House. She’s been there before, she said, but only as a tourist. 

Tuesday she will be there taking part in a panel discussion where those being recognized will showcase the programs and policy that helped them gain recognition. She said it’s also a learning experience, since those participating will share ideas and information.

“There are a lot of different contributors to change in their schools,” St. Andre said. “They are not all principals; there are teachers, superintendents, teacher union leaders. … “

“I’m really looking forward to an interesting kind of discussion and learning from them as well,” St. Andre said.

sthistle@sunjournal.com

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