For the last two years, Bonny Gifford served as superintendent of Falmouth school district. Not only did she manage seven schools, she did so while living on a boat.

Gifford’s seafaring apartment has since been docked in Padanaram as she assumed the role of superintendent for Dartmouth Public Schools on July 1, replacing interim Superintendent Mike Shea. She said she learned a lot from her time in Falmouth and hopes to do an even better job in Dartmouth.

Gifford started her career by opening a restaurant before switching gears to education. She worked her way up to become the superintendent in Falmouth, where's she worked for the last two years. Rather than commuting from her home in Westport, she would spend the work week on a 42-foot Grand Banks docked in the waters of Bourne.

“For the week, we lived on the boat — even through the winter, even through the storms. All year,” said Gifford. “We would just come home on the weekends. We did the opposite of the tourists.”

She described the lifestyle as an adventure, though sometimes chilly, requiring heated blankets and a good sweatshirt.

Now with merely a 15-minute drive from Westport to her office, she can focus on launching into her summer agenda: developing a strategic plan for the school district. She describes the plan as a road map that is both usable and can be referred to when leaders are developing initiatives and looking at the budget. The plan would help plot the course for the next three to five years.

And it all begins with talking to the community.

“My first days on the job here will be what I call listening tours,” said Gifford.

She wants to set up meetings with various groups in Dartmouth — ranging from students to teachers to parents to the police department — to get a sense of what they think about the school system and discuss problems that need addressing or points of pride.

“I’ll be using information I gather to create an entry plan report. All that data gets gathered together, and we’ll be using that throughout the next school year to develop our plan,” she said.

The data she’s looking for includes qualitative data found through focus groups and gaining a sense of the community’s perception of the district as well as more quantitative data like attendance and graduation rates, test scores and the status of the budget.

“When you create a good [strategic plan], and it focuses on teaching and learning, it can be the driver that you need to ensure appropriate resource allocation, real efficiencies and a focus on kids,” said Gifford. “Having done it once in Falmouth, I’m excited to do it even better. I learned things along the way that I can bring here.”

While she was developing a similar strategy in Falmouth, she found there was a need to improve the consistency across all the elementary schools in the system. This included creating protocols to help reduce gaps in learning, initiatives to enhance literacy and reviewing curriculums.

“If I can do anything in my leadership, it would be to enhance the other pieces of the leadership’s ability to focus in even more on student learning,” said Gifford.

She wants the public to know that she’s approachable and invested in providing the best support she can for the school’s leaders. Gifford understands that not everyone will agree with every decision she makes, but she hopes that her strategic plan will enable her to make sound choices.

“I want to communicate effectively enough so that people understand why we’re doing what we’re doing,” she said.