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Date: 7/13/2021
NORTHAMPTON – At the Northampton School Committee’s July 8 meeting the committee received an updated District Improvement Plan that highlighted some of the plan’s metrics after there were questions about measuring the plan’s goals at the previous meeting.
One way Superintendent Dr. John Provost said the district would work on embracing anti-bias and anti-racist goals to increase student engagement is by providing students in fifth grade with literature they more closely identify with.
“I say it would look like having more evident culturally responsive practice in our district. Here I think I am choosing two metrics that look at that, one looking at it from the student perspective through those fifth graders, but then also looking at it from classroom observation,” he said.
He added that the goal specifically focused on fifth graders because that is the age level where there is the biggest discrepancy between students identifying with the literature they are reading.
“The reason I proposed fifth grade is because that is the only grade level where students in Northampton endorse this at lower rates than the state. At all the other levels the students in Northampton say they see themselves in the curriculum to a much greater extent than students statewide, but not fifth grade,” Provost said.
One concern committee member Lonnie Kaufman said he had was a focus on the four-year graduation rate.
“It seems like a lot of the work we have done is to try to minimize the four-year graduation rate and focus more on the three year or five-year graduation rate to give kids who might excel or need further time to explore. I think we embrace the idea of kids meeting graduation as the ultimate goal and we have students that graduate in three or five years and I do not want to discourage that by putting a pinpoint on four-year graduations,” he said.
Committee member Emily Serafy-Cox said she was concerned the disparity between Northampton’s elementary schools was not present in the plan.
“I wonder about the disparities between our elementary schools, because there are disparities between the four elementary schools. I would very much like to see that it is something that I have heard from constituents and we have talked about as School Committee members, but I have not actually seen it as a part of your presentations or goal making,” she said.
Committee member Susan Voss said she was in favor of creating loftier goals for the district.
“I feel the goals are not very lofty, we are trying to be average in a lot of things. Personally, I do not care if we do not meet a specific goal but I think we should strive for what we think we can do and some of them we will meet, if we try for harder things, we will improve things,” she said.
Ultimately, the committee voted to postpone the vote on the plan until its next meeting.
During the personnel report, Business Administrator Nick Bernier said that there were two new hires and 23 separations in June and Provost explained those separations were because of three different factors.
"The number is typical, and it is a combination of things, some of those are retirements but they are not all retirements. Another driver of separations at the end of the year is the collective bargaining which requires anyone who is hired after the first day of the school year to be laid off at the end of the year,” he said. “We had a third dynamic this year, which is there were a number of temporary positions created because of COVID, which are not continuing into the next year,” he said.
The committee also voted to continue to meet remotely until Sept. 9.
The School Committee next meets on Aug. 12.