Swampscott #40 on magazine’s best schools list

SWAMPSCOTT – Superintendent Lynne Celli credited the community and the entire district staff with the district being named number 40 in Boston Magazine’s ranking of the 2011 Best School Districts in the region.”I’m so psyched,” Celli said. “This was such a team effort, everyone was so committed to the work – and everyone deserves such kudos.”Boston Magazine annually publishes its list of the best public schools based on factors ranging from SAT scores to student-teacher ratios, per-pupil spending and number of sports teams. This year, the magazine evaluated the top public school districts – as opposed to just the public high schools as they have in the past – and included MCAS test scores for fifth-grade students as well as whether districts offered full- or half-day pre-Kindergarten. The rankings are compiled by magazine researchers and George Recck, a statistician at Babson College, according to the magazine’s website. Dover-Sherborn received the top ranking this year, while Lawrence was listed at the final 135 spot.Around the area, Marblehead earned the top spot, ranked 24; Lynnfield ranked 34, Danvers 70, Salem 115, Revere 125, Lynn, 131.Celli said that the district’s exclusion from the 2010 top-50 list – Swampscott High School last year ranked 59 out of 161 high schools in the region – was a major concern last year in the community and the schools.School Committee Chair Jacqueline Kinney agreed.”I think it highlighted that we had gotten away from what we wanted to be as a district and a school and we wanted to get back up on that list,” said Kinney on Friday. “We are all invested in making the schools the best we can be and get people attracted to the community because of the schools.”Celli said that she was particularly pleased to see that the district was ranked above districts such as Seekonk and Auburn with which it is compared by the state. Two other districts – Belmont and Burlington – came in higher than Swampscott, “but not by much,” Celli said.”Do we want to aspire to be them, sure,” she said. “This gives us data – we’re doing good things and it’s telling us – validating that we’re on the right track.”This was particularly pleasing after last year’s announcement that a report by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) sanctioned the high school for not meeting three out of the seven evaluation standards and needed to address 56 recommendations within five years in order to retain its accreditation.”Do they relate? Sure,” Celli said, citing that, for example, NEASC-recommended improvements for the high school’s writing program would improve MCAS writing scores and possibly rankings. But “in terms of the 50 in the list, that’s all comparing apples and apples, because we are being compared with the same variables.”Not that there isn’t room for improvement.Celli said that she would like to continue making progress on MCAS scores and increase AP offerings and results. She was optimistic, however, that progress would continue. She said science and math offerings would be strengthened by the district’s gift of $1.03 million from the Gelfand Family Charitable Trust for a four-year project enhancing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education.For now, however, she was very excited and appreciative.”Want to stress first and foremost – thanking the community for the support of education and thanking the team – we weren’t on the list last year and we are and they did a heck of a lot of work,” Celli said.