Dr. Alexis McGloin may be only a little over a month into her tenure with Upper Perkiomen School District, but she isn't wasting any time.

        She has already achieved about half of the ambitious goals in her 100-day entry plan.  Those goals, outlined on the district website, include meeting with a variety of community members, each school board member and building-level administrators.  She has also read all the district's documents, policies, past budgets and achievement data as well as employee and student handbooks, much of which was done before her first official day.

        The superintendent has also spent time at each of the district's schools, walking the hallways and talking with students and staff.

        It's all a part of her philosophy of "listen, learn and lead."

        And what has she garnered so far from her time here? 

        "There is a great community base in this district and you just know that people are very passionate about the community and support it," she said.  "That support is tremendous for the school district.

        "The first few weeks, every district and every building has its own culture, even from Hereford to Marlborough, the high school to the middle school, they are all very different.  But I feel like everybody's been so welcoming to me.  So I'm happy with my move."

        McGloin, who was unanimously voted in to succeed interim superintendent Dr. Timothy Kirby,   came to Upper Perkiomen from Penn Delco School District in Delaware County.  She began her career student teaching at the middle school level and later served as a chemistry teacher at a vocational high school in the Scranton Area. 

        She then served as an elementary principal at John Marshall in Scranton School District and Ashton in Penn Delco before assuming the assistant superintendent role at Penn Delco for close to a decade.

        "That K-12 experience was really valuable when I moved into central administration," McGloin noted.  "It comes in handy a lot." 

        McGloin, a self-described "family person" (wife to Sean and mother of Quinn, 7, and Payton, 10), has her sights set on completing the remainder of her plan in the coming months.  Her goals include assessing the district's curriculum and instruction, current finances, building a collaborative relationship with the school board, creating a working relationship with staff, establishing a positive presence in the community and increasing communication efforts.

        She said her next step is to gather small groups of teachers, support staff and students together to interview and look for themes.

        "I want to see what they believe the goals of the district are, what we should keep and what we should change…what goals we need to set and how do we move forward."

        She will also be sending out notices to district parents asking them to take a brief online survey on those topics.

One of the first hurdles she will face is addressing Upper Perkiomen's technology needs, which she knew was at the forefront coming in.

        "There's a lot of things that aren't industry standard," she said.  "Students are always my number one focus but we are a business as much as we are an educational entity.   And we can't forget the business part of it.  If we aren't operating efficiently then our students are going to feel the effects of it as well.

        "I want to be really thoughtful and fiscally responsible.  Technology costs a lot of money and we need to be doing it the right way and that we put the correct infrastructure in place to and then we have a plan to move forward so that we don't get ourselves in a predicament where we have to spend a substantial amount of money every five to seven years.  It should really be more systematic than that."

        And while she realizes it will be a significant investment, she said it is a vital one, which everyone can see at use in their everyday lives, whether at home or at work.

        "Technology isn't going away.  It's something that we know we really need to make sure our students understand and are able to effectively use," she said.  "I think it's a disservice if we're not preparing students, when they walk out those doors, to be able to function in their jobs or at college."

        She called the district's current pilot programs, utilizing Google Chromebooks and iPads in the middle school language arts and high school science classrooms, bright spots.  McGloin's previous district was a 1:1 district, where each student had a technology device integrated into learning.

        "There are tremendous things going on.  We have blended learning, flipping (where students study material at their own pace before receiving classroom instruction) and using learning management systems.  Teachers are on board and really effective."

        She said she will ultimately be looking to increase academic expectations across the board. 

        "I'm excited about where we're going to be able to head in this district and what we'll be able to accomplish.  There are great foundational pieces in place to be able to take it to a tremendous level."