District-Level Accreditation Lands in Falmouth
School Administrator, August 2020

Geoff Bruno PHOTO COURTESY OF FALMOUTH. MAINE, PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The coastal Maine community of Falmouth runs a school system considered well above average on state standards, and Forbes magazine once named it a “Top City to Live and Learn.”

But to superintendent Geoff Bruno, the three schools in the Falmouth district often acted as separate entities, despite their location at the same address. He recognized the lost opportunity for synergy to make the learning experiences even better for the 2,200 students.

To commence that process, Bruno turned to the external reviewing agency that had accredited Falmouth High School since 1955: the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. But that had carried its own frustrations.

“The challenge for us is that when the high school would go through its own two-year self-study, it was like they dropped off the face of the earth,” Bruno says. “All three schools are on one campus, and I started to consider going through accreditation as a whole school community.”

A Unified Study

That led the superintendent to contract with the New England accrediting body to undertake a districtwide accreditation process, making Falmouth the first district-level review in the six-state NEASC region. The process, beginning in spring 2018, applied one set of standards across Falmouth’s elementary, middle and high schools.

Falmouth engaged in a unified study of self-reflection and assessment with a committee composed of students, teachers, parents, administrators, school board members and other community members. Asked to consider the “vision of a graduate,” they examined the schools’ pursuit of such goals as college and career readiness and social and emotional well-being, according to George Edwards, who directs the accreditation agency’s Commission on Public Schools.

“It’s not just teachers in grades 9 through 12 collaborating on accreditation,” says Bruno, superintendent since 2014 in the suburb north of Portland. “It’s also your elementary and middle school staffs, and that’s really powerful.”

After Falmouth completed its self-study, NEASC staff and trained peer reviewers assembled as the six-member collaborative conference visiting team. Over two days in February 2019, the examiners watched classroom instruction and met with students, parents, teachers and school leadership to share observations and evidence before they summarized findings and recommendations in a report to the Falmouth school board in May 2019.

NEASC issued full accreditation standing to the district.

Connective Strategies

Falmouth uses the accreditation report to guide professional development and continuous growth. Teachers and principals address the newly adopted New England agency’s standards for learning culture, student learning, professional practices, learning support and learning resources.

This systemic perspective, from elementary through high school “unifies your approach,” Bruno says. “It gave us a framework for fleshing out real priorities that play out differently in each school, yet pointed out also those things we need to keep coming back to as a district.”

Although some states and regional agencies confer accreditation on the district itself, NEASC’s approach is to “accredit every school in the process, so it’s districtwide in that respect,” says Cameron Staples, NEASC’s chief executive. “The real key for us is connecting [school improvement] strategies from one school to another. Starting with smaller districts, we’re looking at ways to apply that to larger ones.”