New Lyndonville school superintendent thanks district for ‘red carpet’ welcome

Dr. Heather Lyon meets with school staff and stakeholders to identify strengths and challenges

Photos by Tom Rivers: Dr. Heather Lyon goes over Lyndonville students’ results on the recent state tests in grades 3-8 for ELA, math and science. Lyon said she will do a monthly focus on student performance for the Board of Education.

Dr. Heather Lyon attended her first Board of Education meeting as Lyndonville superintendent last week.

LYNDONVILLE – The school district’s new superintendent thanked the staff and community for a warm welcome.

Dr. Heather Lyon started on Aug. 1 as the new district leader, following the retirement of Sharon Smith.

“I couldn’t feel more welcomed to Lyndonville,” Lyon told the Board of Education last week. “Everyone has been so kind and I feel like the red carpet was rolled out. This makes me even more excited for students and teachers to return.”

Lyon has classroom teacher, staff developer, principal and school district leader. She most recently was coordinator of Assessment and Data at Gates Chili Central School District.

She said she looks forward to working with the board, administration and staff on building on student successes and also improving on challenges.

She said she will present data each month to the board on student performance and participation. This month she focused on the state assessment tests for grades 3 to 8. She said next month will likely be a close look at results of the Regents tests.

Lyon went over the state testing results which generally shows Lyndonville about on par with the state-wide scores.

To be considered proficient, students need to score at levels 3 or 4.

Charts from Lyndonville Central School: Lyndonville is very close to the state-wide proficiency rates for ELA, math and science.

State-wide assessments for students in grades 3-8 show:

• ELA – 53 percent of students statewide are proficient, up by 7 percent
• Math – 55 percent are proficient went, up by 3 percent
• Science – 44 percent are proficient (up by 9 percent)

Lyndonville results:

• ELA – 51 percent are proficient, down from 54 percent in 2024. The district had 13 percent of students at the lowest level of 1 (down from 17 percent in 2024). There were 36 percent at level 2, up from 30 percent, with 35 at level 3 (compared to 41 percent in 2024) and 16 percent at level 4 (compared to 13 percent in 2024).
• Math – 56 proficient in 2025, up 7 percent from the 49 percent in 2024. Lyndonville had 17 percent ent at level 1 (down from 20 percent), 28 percent at level 2 (down from 31 percent), 45 percent at level 3 (up from 38 percent) and 11 percent at level 4 in both 2024 and 2025.
• Science – 43 percent proficient in 2025 (up from 29 percent in 2024). Lyndonville reports that 8 percent were at the lowest level of 1 in 2025 (up from 18 percent in 2024), 51 percent at level 2 (40 percent in 2024), 38 percent at level 3 (20 percent a year earlier) and 5 percent at level 4 (down from 9 percent).

Lyon presented this summary of findings which show a drop in proficiency in ELA and math as students move into middle school years.

Lyon said she and district staff are analyzing cohort data, and other factors in the results, which became available on Aug. 11.

Lyndonville administrators and teachers will be looking at students “on the bubble” of being considered proficient and try to get them to move from level 2 to 3, she said.

The superintendent looked back at Lyndonville’s ELA results over several years and noted the district has better scores now than before the Covid pandemic in 2020. “Not many school districts can say that,” she said.

The science scores only reflected students in grades 5 and 8. Dr. Aaron Slack, the junior-senior high school principal, said many of the top students in eighth grade don’t take the science or math assessment tests because they are already taking advanced courses. The state doesn’t “double test” students in eighth grade.