Next Tuesday morning, buses will be dropping off students for the first day of the 2010-11 school year.

While Superintendent Matthew McGarrity is looking forward to his initial first day of school in Orchard Park, he is already thinking about how to make the district better long-term.

One of the main goals for the upcoming school year is to develop a Comprehensive District Education Plan.

“There’s a committee we’re looking to compile right now,” said McGarrity.

The idea of discussing the plan is to find ways to improve in a number of key areas, including student achievement and collection of data, said McGarrity.

However, he noted that getting the committee in place is important for other reasons.

“It also has budget implications,” he said.

According to McGarrity, the committee will meet for the first time in October. At that time, members will begin to discuss goals and a time frame for when they want to see a plan implemented.

“We ’re going to be talking about that at the first meeting,” said Mc- Garrity.

When he took the reigns as superintendent in July, McGarrity said developing a CDEP was among the first ideas the board talked about.

“It came to the top pretty quickly,” he said.

McGarrity would like to see board and district goals discussed with the committee to help compile a smaller list of goals as part of the CDEP.

He believes it is important that the district focus on a few specific areas rather than several broader ones.

“We want to pinpoint a handful of areas,” said McGarrity.

While he and the committee work on the educational goals, McGarrity said he is also still in the process of getting to know various people in the district.

Later this week, teachers will be returning to start the process of preparing their classrooms for the return of students. McGarrity will be talking to them.

“I’ll be addressing the staff as an introduction,” said McGarrity.

In the coming weeks, he will continue to get acquainted with staff, students and parent teacher organizations.

“There will be a number of meetings coming up with a number of organizations,” he said.

Amidst the transition, McGarrity said with uncertainty over the future of the state, budget discussion will start earlier this year.

“We start the budget process earlier and earlier,” said McGarrity.

One initiative he believes will be of continued importance which could help in that process deals with energy costs.

“These are the ‘green’ initiatives in the buildings,” said McGarrity.

He thinks it is important that staff, students and members of the community are on board with a continued emphasis on finding ways to save on energy costs.

“Any kind of energy savings will be a big help in the big picture,” said McGarrity.

The superintendent said he wants to see the green committee, which is already in place, meet sooner than later.

Although students have been home enjoying summer vacation, McGarrity said during that time, there is a lot of work that goes on with the business, transportation and buildings and grounds departments.

“Summer is always a very busy time,” said McGarrity. “Schools aren’t quiet.”

He said he has really enjoyed getting to know people in the community in the last couple of months and is looking forward to the start of the school year.

In part, because he is excited that his children will be attending the district as well.

e-mail: cgordon@beenews.com