by Marty Green ·
Friday, June 12, 2026
As this school year draws to a close, the School Committee is taking steps to prepare for the new school year that will start next fall. At its June 8 meeting, committee members dealt with matters ranging from a new teacher contract to issues such as vaping and cellphone use in school.
Monday marked the last School Committee meeting for Superintendent Linda Dwight, who is retiring at the end of June, when she will be succeeded by current Assistant Superintendent Dana Labb. It was also the final meeting for School Committee member Amy Morton.
The committee members began by spending more than an hour in executive session to discuss the contract with the Harvard Educators Association and other personnel matters before moving into public session. Then, as its first public item of business, the committee took up a memorandum of agreement on the three-year contract with the HEA. The contract has been under negotiation since last October.
School Committee Chair Abigail Besse said the memorandum represented a “tentative agreement” with the HEA. The terms include a 9% cost-of-living raise spread over the three years of the contract. However, the proposed agreement also sharply reduces the district’s matching contribution to employee retirement accounts. That change, Besse wrote in an email, “will allow for much greater flexibility in our budget.”
Among the other terms of the contract that Besse mentioned were a schedule giving teachers more choice about when they arrive or leave the building before and after school hours. They will also have 10 days of paid parental leave, separate from their sick time. And teachers can choose to have their own children attend Harvard schools; the children would no longer have to apply as Choice students. The School Committee unanimously approved the memorandum of agreement.
The committee also approved new three-year contracts for Director of School Finance and Operations Mandy Ostaszewski and Director of Pupil Services Michelle DellaValle. Those contracts were approved by a vote of four to one, with Liz Joyce abstaining.
Later in the meeting the committee voted unanimously to approve a request for $21,540 from the Shaw Trust to purchase 16 Triton ULTRA vape detectors, one for each bathroom in the Bromfield School. The request memo, from Assistant Superintendent Labb and Bromfield Middle School Principal Dan Hudder, said the detectors would serve as deterrents, with the goal of “discouraging substance use behaviors before they become more serious concerns.”
Labb told the committee the detectors would alert staff members to the presence of nicotine or THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the active compound in marijuana. He noted that all other surveillance options on the detectors—such as alerts triggered by shouting, breaking glass, or loitering—would be turned off.
With regard to cellphones, Labb told the committee the state Legislature is currently considering a law to restrict students’ use of cellphones at school. The Harvard School District has applied for a $20,500 state grant to help cover the costs of secure cellphone storage during the school day, “bell to bell.” By acting now, Labb said, Harvard will be well positioned to meet state expectations. He asked for and received School Committee support for sharing a draft policy on cellphones with the faculty, students, and families. After receiving their input, he said, he will bring the policy proposal back to the School Committee for consideration.