We're very excited to have Bonnie step into this position. On top of her special educational experience, what she brings is a familiarity with the Burlington schools that will ease the transition for everybody.

The job takes a lot of patience, a working knowledge of special education law, which is highly complicated, and an ability to have a vision for meeting the needs of students whose needs are not usually met in a school setting.

Clearly, if we don't ... make a difference, if we don't expose kids to a number of opportunities are we creating a situation that won't change? And are we losing any of these kids who may go into the prison system or may tax society in other ways?

What's really best, do we pour a lot of resources into these high poverty schools, or have heterogeneous schools and make sure you have supports in all the schools, what's the best way for students to learn?

This is a wonderful moment for all of us to experience.

For many of us it's been four years since we trained for (this mission) and its been a wonderful experience.