School Committee Meeting Update

By Erica Plunkett, School Committee Vice-Chair and Communications Liaison

It was a relatively brief meeting Thursday night. The first presentation of the evening was by Tim Cornely on the newly adopted Common Core Standards. As many of you may know, in July the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to adopt the Common Core Standards in ELA and Mathematics. Over the next two years, the DESE plans to revise and align Curriculum Frameworks to reflect the changes that these new standards require and eventually replace MCAS with a new assessment by the 2012-2013 school year.

Assistant Superintendent Cornely’s presentation on the Common Core Standards was a brief overview and the anticipated impact for Holliston’s schools. These standards are meant to provide a consistent and clear understanding of what students are expected to learn. They are designed to be competitive and relevant to the real world, and focus on the knowledge and skills that young people will need for success in the college or in the professional world. This will enable our students to be successful in a global economy by driving high quality instruction in the nation’s classrooms.

In particular:

Massachusetts educators were integral in drafting these standards
Content includes ELA and Literacy in History, Social Studies, the Sciences, and Technical subjects. This will include a greater emphasis on non-fiction and informational texts and additional focus on persuasive, narrative, and explanatory writing.
In Mathematics, there is less change from the current state standards, with the goal being to prepare students for Algebra 1 by 9^th grade. The new standards focus on few topics at the elementary level in order to develop deeper understandings before moving to more complicated concepts.
The standards will take into consideration emerging literacies (such as digital and print sources) for research and communication, with focus on speaking, listening and vocabulary.
These standards will hopefully present an opportunity to improve upon our already high ones and enable Massachusetts to maintain our leadership position in performance.
Massaschusetts will continue to help establish the direction for the nation’s future education reforms.
Massachusetts will be leading a group of state to develop a new assessment (to replace MCAS) based on the new Common Core Standards, which will include online exams and evaluation through extensive writing assigments.
Once fully adopted, the new frameworks will be posted on the DESE website and widely publicized.
Regional Professional Development will be offered over the next year, through the District and School Assistance Centers, Readiness Centers, and other venues
ALL Districts will be expected to align their curricula to the new standards by the start of the 2012-2013 academic year.

There was some general discussion after the presentation about how all the work Holliston has been doing on curriculum reviews is impacted by the new standards and what incremental work still needs to be done. Mr. Cornely believes that, while we will need to re-open some completed curriculum reviews, the work we’ve done previously will not be in vain, and will in fact, get us to integrating the new standards into our subject areas even more quickly. And, the beginning curriculum review in Math is coming at a good time. There was acknowledgement by the Committee and the Superintendent that the work required by the Common Core Standards will move much less quickly without the four Professional Development days this year, as well as an admission that the bottom line is that we still have little idea of what all this exactly means for Holliston and for the State. (Editorial note: there is an article from the Boston Globe that illustrates some discrepant information, information which is changing very quickly, and, illustrates further, that the communication from the state to local education officials needs improvement. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/mcas/articles/2010/09/03/mass_will_lead_effort_to_develop_new_tests/)

The next presentation was also by Mr. Cornely and was a fast overview of the New Teacher Induction Manual which is available to all our teachers online. This handbook is one of the ways in which Holliston hopes to retain the highest quality teachers, by giving them the support and information they need to make a successful transition to the faculty. We hope it will assist in lowering the percentage (40%) of individuals that will will leave the teaching profession within 3-5 years because of a lack of support. Information ranges from Mentoring, and the New Teacher Institute, to our Professional Learning Communities, School Processes and Procedures (including forms), and DESE Regulations and Policies around Recertification and Licensure.

Superintendent Jackson then gave a brief report on the Opening Day of School. Logistically and procedurally, it was a smooth opening. There was a strong police presence in school parking lots, enabling drop-off and pickup to occur without incident. Buses ran fairly well and on time, even given the incomplete construction on Highland Street. The biggest challenge was clearly the heat. Temperatures in some of our second-floor class rooms reached over 100 and teachers and students needed to stay hydrated. Two staff had to be medically treated for heat exhaustion and the week, at times, has bordered on dangerous. Dr. Jackson and the School Committee thank the faculty for their forebearance and professionalism in the face of such challenging teaching conditions and look forward to cooler temperatures next week. We thank the students for their patience, as well.

The next item of business was an initial presentation on a Capital Request for the upcoming Fall Town Meeting. Business Manager Keith Buday presented the first pass at a multi-year plan, with this year focusing primarily on Technology. Specifically noted, computers and the technology infrastructure at all four schools, including servers and switches, wireless access and classroom technology. Also included for this year is the telephone system at Placentino and Miller, which is almost 12 years old and playground equipment at Miller. Looking down the next two years, at 2012/2013 and beyond, capital needs include keeping our classroom technology footprint current and on a predicatable replacement schedule, as well as some vehicle needs and building infrastructure needs, such as lighting efficiecy updgrades, portable bleachers, re-surfacing the track, replacing the field house floor, fixing the water problem in the HS auditorium and dealing with the Flagg building. Many of these needs focus on the parts of the schools that are open to the community at-large, and are heavily used (like the track and the field house). The schools are the communities biggest financial asset and at some point, it will become a case of pay now, or pay more later.

The next meeting will be Thursday, September 16th. On the agenda: voting in a delegate for the MASC Conference; more detail on the Fall Capital request; and a discussion around a possible significant curriculum change (moving the unit on puberty from grade 6 to grade 5). As always, School Committee meetings are open to the public and also re-broadcast on HCAT Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday evenings. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact any member of the School Committee or Central Administration. On behalf of the entire School Committee, we hope everyone has a great, hurricane-free Labor Day weekend.

Erica Plunkett

School Committee Vice-Chair and Communications Liaison

DID YOU KNOW?... That Boston Magazine has just come out with the ranking of the state’s high schools and that Holliston has moved up from #26 to #21. “Our goal in compiling this year’s list of the area’s best public high school was not to identify only those schools that are performing well, but also those doing so while operating efficiently, too.” Holliston’s per pupil spending at the high school is $10,856. Per pupil spending by the top 20 range from $11,540-$24,467, or an average of $14,401. On average, Holliston spends more than $3000 LESS per student than the top 20 schools. Holliston is an academically competitive school system which educates it’s students efficiently. (http://www.bostonmagazine.com/best_high_school_chart/index.html)