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Date: 6/22/2022
WESTHAMPTON – Last fall Diana Bonneville, the new superintendent of Hampshire Regional School District (HRSD), presented to the school committees of all five member towns an Entry Plan that detailed the steps she would take to become intimately familiar with the district’s workings. Now, she has ideas and answers packaged in a dense document called Entry Plan: Report of Findings (report) that will shape the district for the next half a decade.
“The district’s strategic plan, it’s based off the findings of this document,” Bonneville said. The report outlines “what goals we’re going to try to accomplish over the next five years. Our school district, what do we want it to look like? What direction will guide us and what vision?”
Bonneville sought to understand the unique needs of a small rural school district, the relationships between towns, the links of the district to town governments and the district’s human capital and hard assets.
Surveys were one method used for harvesting data. The HRSD School Choice In/Out Survey, Superintendent’s Survey, HRSD Values Survey, the Views of Climate and Learning (VOCAL) Survey given by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Strategic Planning Initiative for Families and Youth (SPIFFY) Survey of risky behaviors informed the report. MCAS scores also offered benchmarks on student performance, which indirectly reveals teacher and administrator performance.
A lack of diversity was a notable finding. In the survey of school choice students, those who chose to go elsewhere noted the lack of diversity negatively impacts the school’s culture. The Superintendent’s Survey, filled out by 141 parents and 123 staff members, revealed that 35.7 percent of parents and 29.8 percent of staff think diversity needs to be increased. The Values Survey revealed 45.2 percent of parents want their child to value diversity and different points of view.
“One parent said they really wanted their child to attend our elementary school,” Bonneville recalled, “but didn’t want their child to be the only Latina student in the class. I can appreciate that.”
Methods for attracting an ethnically diverse student body seem to be few. Attracting diverse applicants for staff positions also does not seem easy.
“We have talked about different ways to bring forth staff that are more diverse, but we are not getting those applicants,” Bonneville told school committee members. “We are looking to perhaps advertise in different papers, rather than just our local papers … [and] we’re working with [the University of Massachusetts] and local colleges to see if we can get more diverse people.”
Bonneville relied on qualitative data, narrative and anecdotal, to emphasize some of her points. The superintendent revealed that she had to ask a second grader to explain the pattern of the number’s corner, a favorite exercise. Bonneville amused the committee members by confessing that she too is confused by the newest strategies in math calculations.
“You and I, no offense, could not figure it out,” Bonneville said. “They map it out, chart it. It seems to take longer, but they understand it better, so it helps them as they advance through more difficult math.”
The Bridges program is the only math curriculum shared by all the elementary schools, Bonneville said, and staff is proud too of the grade 7 transitional program. The superintendent also pointed to the special education programs in the school as exemplary, which now cover low income, high needs and English language learners too. The curriculum for those with learning challenges is strong and there is an increase in those students.
“At the high school, Norris and Westhampton, they’re higher than the state average by two to eight points, while Anne T. Dunphy and New Hingham have seen several downward trends and are below the state average. That’s important to know,” Bonneville said.
Bonneville noted that students classified as low income have increased across the board. The superintendent speculated that economic challenges increased due to inflation, COVID-19 and a high unemployment rate. “We’re still below the state average, but it has increased considerably.”
The Hampshire Regional School Districts, according to Bonneville’s report, has many juniors and seniors taking advanced courses. Along with Advanced Placement (AP) classes, other offerings considered advanced include pre-calculus, physics and chemistry courses. The most encouraging finding may be that special education students make up a large share of enrollees in those courses.
“We have a high rate of juniors and seniors in advanced courses,” Bonneville said. “86.2 percent of all our juniors and seniors have had at least one advanced course, and almost half of those are SPED students. I think that’s a very impressive number.”
Another conclusion of the report was to acknowledge the strong commitment of staff and teachers to academic success. Statistics imply those efforts have paid off, with 90 percent of graduates reporting they will be attending a two or four year college in the fall. Testing for AP courses have increased. The science-centric elective courses in consumer chemistry, coding and robotics, and veterinarian science are very popular.
Bonneville is the fourth superintendent in the last five years. The district needs continuity of leadership. Bonneville wrote that she feels comfortable with the administrative team and appreciates the great depth of institutional memory, with many long-term employees who grew up in town and still live nearby.
“Themes have emerged that identify the greatest strengths and areas of greatest need of the district,” Bonneville concluded in her report. “This new strategic plan will govern all that we do, whether related to student achievement, teaching, and learning, finance, school culture or further initiatives.”