BUCKFIELD – Two major initiatives and more emphasis on math and reading programs will make for “a very challenging year” for SAD 39, Superintendent William Shuttleworth said.

But he’s confident that both teachers and administrators are up to the challenges when 648 students begin classes Tuesday and Wednesday at Hartford-Sumner Elementary School and Buckfield Junior-Senior High School.

Two new staff members have been added this year. “We’re very lucky to have very little turnover,” he said.

Shuttleworth’s administrative team of Ralph Peterson, high school principal; Kay Slusser, elementary principal; and Lisa Hanson, special education director, were all new to the district last year.

“It was a great year of collaboration, and this year is a time when they all will have a greater comfort level” in their jobs, he said.

There has been “tremendous” change on the 11-member SAD 39 School Board, he noted, with six new board members coming on in the last year. A new chairman will be elected in September.

“Overall the board has been extremely supportive of education in these three towns” of Buckfield, Sumner and Hartford, which comprise SAD 39.

The junior-senior high school has a new roof, finished two weeks ago.

Voters agreed to borrow up to $120,000 for the job when it was learned that the fiberglass shingles on the old roof were failing, causing leaks in the floors below.

“It’s just beautiful, a real quality job,” Shuttleworth said of the new roof, “and it was finished in record time.”

High school teachers will be implementing the second year of a Promising Futures grant, which provided $50,000 a year to the district for three years.

Last year the funds were used to focus on improving the school climate by creating an “adviser-advisee” relationship between teachers and students. Each teacher helped a selected group of students with social education and welfare, Shuttleworth said.

That effort will be continued this year, along with a new focus on accommodating the different learning styles of students, he said.

Traditionally in schools, “if you didn’t sit and listen well, you were cooked,” Shuttleworth said. But educators are now recognizing that some students are visual learners while others learn best by listening, he said.

This focus on “differentiated instruction” will require teachers to adapt lessons to serve different learning styles, he said. During Monday’s teacher workshop day, Dr. Jim Curry, a well-known special education teacher, will show teachers how differentiated learning is done.

The high school staff and administrators will also be gearing up for an evaluation of programs and facilities next March, when a team from New England Accreditation visits to perform a required 10-year review.

At Hartford-Sumner Elementary School, there’ll be special emphasis on improving math instruction for grades six to eight, in response to state recommendations. The grade 3-6 reading program will also get special emphasis with initiatives that will “provide instant support to any student if they fall behind,” Shuttleworth said.

He said the last thing the district wants is to be identified by the state as a priority school in danger of not meeting state guidelines for Maine Learning Results.

But each year, said Shuttleworth, the learning criteria increases, he said.

“That’s why our focus this year is improvement.”

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