Vashon Island School District Super-intendent Terry Lindquist wants the district’s three schools to create a seamless curriculum from kindergarten to grade 12, even though such an approach is “not the Vashon way,” he said.

His intent is to revamp the system so that what’s taught at each grade level clearly leads to the next until graduation.

To that end, Lindquist said at a school board meeting two weeks ago he was creating a district-wide “Instructional Services Council” (ISC) composed of staff, parents and administrators.

The ISC, under Lindquist’s mandate, would take on the massive five-to-six- year job of revising how each subject — such as math, English or social studies — would be taught in a comprehensive sequence.

While the district has made attempts at this in the past, it has yet to be successful, Lindquist said. To critics, curriculum alignment, as it’s often called, would curtail teachers’ freedom and impose a more rigid academic program on them.

Lindquist, however, sees it as an attempt to make the district’s academic program more coherent, so that a student’s grade-by-grade development will be predictable.

Curriculum alignment is “more organized,” he said. “It’s not ad hoc.”

Currently, the district makes what he called “unconnected curriculum adoptions” — Chautauqua Elementary, for instance, had a math program that did not feed into McMurray’s.

“We have to make all adoptions make sense district-wide. That doesn’t happen now,” he said, adding, “I don’t know if all of the staff will go for this.”

Vashon High School (VHS) social studies and history teacher Martha Woodard, who supports Lindquist’s approach, agreed that there had been some starts at developing an aligned curriculum.

She said she had been involved in an attempt to create curriculum alignment for social studies starting in 1998, an effort that was derailed in 2000 when a mold infestation was discovered at the high school, and the cost of fixing it caused a severe financial crisis.

“We decided on a whole new set of texts, and all three schools worked on it. But then the mold crisis happened, and it was dumped,” she said.

Evan Justin, science teacher at McMurray Middle School, also was involved with attempts at curriculum alignment in 1992 and 1997 that never came to fruition.

“We took a snapshot of what we were doing, and it resulted in a four-inch binder,” he said.

“We tried to talk about what we wanted to do. But there was no coordinated effort from that point or thereafter to make it happen. It became an artifact.”

Justin added that he has done some coordination on science curriculum alignment with the high school but did so informally and on his own. He said he’s not fearful, as some teachers may be, that curriculum alignment would interfere with his teaching.

Board member Dan Chasan raised just that issue at the board meeting and spoke about it in more detail in an interview, adding that there were some teachers who shared his opinions but won’t speak publicly about the issue.

Chasan said he sees a larger trend toward a more systematic approach. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s not the Vashon way,” he said.

“There should be space for flexibility,” he added. “Curriculum alignment is necessary. Meeting standards is not unreasonable. But the system needs to concentrate on the big things and leave some flexibility.”

Chasan said that there are some big things that need to be taught in each subject area. He said the ability to read to a certain grade level is not an unreasonable expectation. But Chasan was concerned that if there are too many curricular expectations, nothing can be studied in depth.

Recognizing that one of the major elements of Lindquist’s approach could be the purchase of new textbooks, Chasan added that if the curriculum is too tied to textbooks, there’s no room for teachers and students to pursue another worthy subject in depth.

“When I was a kid in New York, we had the Regents’ Exam” (similar to the WASLs), he added. “Kids would get interested in something, and then the teacher had to say, ‘We can’t take time for that because it’s not on the Regents.’”

Chasan also was worried about the cost of the project, which will be funded for the first year with $25,000 from the PTSA.

Lindquist said he hoped the PTSA would fund a second year, after which the cost would come out of the general operating budget for the next three or four years. Chasan said he doubted the general operating funds could be found.

Nonetheless, Lindquist told the board at its meeting, “I want you to approve of this, but I am not really asking permission.”

No formal vote was taken, but several board members endorsed the approach, giving Lindquist the tacit support he was looking for, Board chair Bob Hennessey said after the meeting.

The council will meet for the first time in mid-May. It’s composed of Chautauqua staff Janis McElroy, Mary Heath and Jennifer Granum; McMurray staff Justin, Colleen Sweeney and Kim Davis; VHS staff John Rees, Woodard and Amber Mozeleski; Family-Student Link’s Judi DeVere; special education staff Siobhan Aviolo-Toly and parents Susan Lofland, Fran Brooks and Trish Howard, along with Lindquist and another district staff member.