The School Committee last fall listed 18 goals to work on during the year, and at its May 27 meeting members took a look at how far the board has come in meeting those goals. Overall, the results were mixed; while the board made good progress on some, on others, it made little headway, or even lost ground.
For example, there were four goals relating to educational excellence. Board member Willie Wickman noted that next year’s school budget does not reflect the priorities set by two of the goals, to ‘provide expanded elective offerings for students at The Bromfield School’ and to ‘support the further development of a comprehensive three-tier intervention model to help meet the needs of all learners.’ Next year’s school budget eliminates funding for the Virtual High School program, which allows Bromfield students to take various courses on the Internet. There will also be less money for elementary school math tutors and the writing lab at Bromfield.
“The budget for next year doesn’t support this,” Wickman complained. “We should have used this during budget development to say we won’t cut these.”
School Superintendent Tom Jefferson pointed out that the schools have made some gains in setting up the three-tier intervention model, which allows for a middle level of help for struggling students, between informal work with a teacher, and giving the student special education services. He said the schools have ‘fine-tuned’ their math intervention efforts, beefed up their software for tutoring students, and worked on teacher training in this area.
“As a district, we have made gains,” Jefferson told the board.
Another goal in this area, to ‘examine the guidance program in light of current best practice’ was delegated to the school councils, which will be reporting back to the committee, board Chairman Stu Sklar noted.
The final goal relating to educational excellence was to ‘review the role of vocational education within the Harvard community.’ Jefferson said he had hoped to schedule one of the school board meetings as a tour of the Montachusetts Regional Vocational Technical School, but that did not occur. Wickman, who has visited the school, told her fellow members that such a tour is very impressive, and should be scheduled for when the school is in session next fall. She also noted that the selectmen have to appoint a new community representative to the school. Sklar suggested that this goal should be held over to next year.
The school board did feel better about meeting its goals in the area of budget and finance, where it put in much time and effort, meeting alone and with the tri-boards to come up with next year’s budget. Sklar said the board has met its goal to ‘develop a transparent budget process for 2008–2009 which will provide supportive detail to all accounts for town boards and citizens.’
“According to Glenn Koocher, [a consultant from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees] our budget is the most transparent in the state. I’m very proud of it,” Sklar said.
Wickman added that if the public wants even more detail on school spending, people could come to their budget workshops, where the members have an entire page of backup data supporting each line item in the budget.
Sklar did complain that the board’s meeting room is not well designed for showing PowerPoint presentations, making it harder to communicate budget priorities and details to the public, which was another of the board’s goals. Member Virginia Justicz noted the board has encouraged residents to come to meetings and budget forums, but the turnout is light, and wondered if there is insufficient advertising for them.
Another goal relating to finance was to ‘provide monthly updates to the Finance Committee regarding the budget status’ for the current year.
“You’re fine on that,” FinCom member Steve Colwell piped up from the audience.
The final goal in the area, to ‘update a long-term capital plan and long-term maintenance plan,’ has not been accomplished, however. Jefferson suggested that this goal also be pushed out to next year, as the schools now have a new maintenance director, who can provide help for the board in doing the plans.
There were three goals that fell into the category of long-range planning, which were partially met. The first goal, to ‘execute [a] strategic planning initiative,’ has resulted in a plan that is in the process of being implemented, Justicz told the board.
The second goal was to ‘develop recommendations regarding special education programming to provide optimal service and cost containment in consideration of recommendations from special education task force, independent audit, and [the state] comprehensive program review.’
“We need to charge the [new] special education director to look for cost containment, such as [hiring] the new middle school special education teacher,” Wickman said. She noted that next year’s budget does support the aim of the goal.
Cheveralls asked Sklar what the status was of the independent special education audit. The consultants chosen by the board said that they couldn’t conduct the audit until fall, and no contract has been signed.
“I handed it off to Stu Sklar and [selectman] Leo Blair,” Cheveralls said. Sklar told the board he hasn’t yet discussed the matter with Blair.
Cheveralls strongly urged the board to keep up its work on this topic, by setting as one of its new goals for next year to incorporate the recommendations of the special education task force throughout the schools.
The last planning goal was to ‘continue to examine facility needs as related to enrollment projections, projected life span of current facilities, and Devens education scenarios.’ Jefferson said the schools have submitted paperwork to the state, so that if some need to expand the schools did suddenly arise, the schools “are in the queue” for submitting a proposal for state funding.
The last two categories for goals, communication and policy review, are ongoing efforts, the board members agreed. Sklar pointed out that the efforts to update the school policy handbook had been headed up by former member Mark Hardy, and those efforts fell behind schedule when he resigned. The board did review the user fee policy during budget deliberations, and “they aren’t going away,” Sklar noted wryly. Another goal, to ‘review school starting time in light of current research and community input,’ is in full swing, with a community survey now underway, Sklar said.
Finally, its goals to strengthen communications with residents and other town boards and to participate in state groups and initiatives to boost school funding have been at least partially met, members decided. Jefferson said he believed this year’s communications with the other town boards was the best of the three years he’s been involved in such meetings.
One audience member suggested the board send out its mailings to the town by e-mail, which would allow it to be done cheaper. Sklar explained that there is no database containing e-mail addresses for everyone in town. Jefferson noted that communicating through the P.T.O. and the newspapers seems the most cost-effective way to him.
