Pleasant Valley School District has approved a motion to hire Paul Riccomini to provide professional development services at the intermediate level.

The school board members approved the services at a cost of $36,000 for the 2015-2016 school year.The money for the program is coming from a State Need to Learn grant.Riccomini is an associate professor of education at Penn State and Clemson Universities and has written a number of books on the subject of improvements in math instruction as well as numerous papers, studies and lectures.Pleasant Valley is bringing in Riccomini specifically to work with the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade math teachers.In addition, the special education teachers and some paraprofessionals as well, will be included in the instruction."We will be concentrating on the fifth-grade mainly, but will be including the other grades as well," explained Joshua Krebs, mathematics supervisor. "There will be 32 total teachers and several paraprofessionals in the program."Several math teachers who have had the opportunity to meet with Riccomini were in attendance and were quick to support to program. Two of the teachers have been with the district 20 years and both stated that during their time with the district they have never had any professional development training and that they welcomed the opportunity to learn new methods to reach their students.Board member Steve Borger wanted to make sure that the program will help identify and support exceptional students as well as being geared to help with those who are struggling."I know we originally were looking at quite a bit more, something like $71,000 for this program," board member Susan Kresge pointed out. "Are we doing the right thing scaling it back?""Can we see this taking place in the classroom?" asked board member Linda Micklos. "I know that we as nonteachers would have a better understanding seeing it, otherwise how will we know the kids are benefiting from the money being spent?"Krebs assured the board that the program would be designed to meet Pleasant Valley's specific needs. Krebs also said that if, at any time, the district was unhappy with the program they could cancel it at no additional charge.