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Date: 9/21/2022
HAMPDEN/WILBRAHAM – With a round of applause at the Sept. 15 Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District (HWRSD) School Committee meeting, the body approved the strategic plan, the document that will guide the district through the next five years.
The Strategic Plan Steering Committee included 33 parents, teachers, alumni, students, administration, school staff and elected officials from both communities. The committee worked over 16 months to complete the planning process. This included gathering input from the communities, developing mission and vision statements as well as an understanding of core values – students first; integrity and ethics; excellence; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and accountability – and identifying themes and goals and writing a plan that satisfies them.
The goals that the steering committee identified fell under five separate themes. Under the theme of curriculum, the district will address horizontal and vertical alignment, expanded preschool access, professional development, develop educational technology, review the efficacy of block scheduling, expand vocational and career programs and implement elementary foreign language education. Other goals in this area include a review of middle school math programs, providing life skills education and using evidence-based, rigorous curricula.
Climate and Culture was another theme that came out of the data collected from the community. Goals under this umbrella focus on addressing bullying through consistent supervision and discipline, implementing effective social-emotional learning, involving staff in decision making and exploring parent partnerships. In the realm of DEI, the district will ensure all students are treated respectfully, provide translation services and culturally improved practices, and create access and dignity for students regardless of race, creed, religion or sexual orientation.
The third theme is Student Support and Student Success. This theme includes providing support, explicit study skills opportunities for student enrichment and differentiated instruction. In terms of special education, the plan requires the district improve intervention services, adequate special education resources and a review of special education programming and compliance.
There are four goals under the Communication umbrella. These are providing communication between school committee, staff, administration and the community; making the district’s website, parent portal and presentations more effective; creating a communication plan to build trust and improving the relationships between the towns and between the district and the community.
Leadership is the last theme that was identified by the steering committee. These goals allow the district’s administration to work on itself. Here the plan requires the district to provide consistency in leadership positions, create leadership opportunities for staff, build collegial relationships and trust, diversify teaching staff and provide sufficient staff and equitable resources across all schools. There is also instruction to review the middle school structure.
There are more than 100 concrete steps identified to bring these goals to fruition over the next five years. Superintendent John Provost added an implementation timeline to create urgency and ensure aspects of the work do not slip through the cracks. The implementation plan has been broken down into five teams, each responsible for a separate theme and the action steps that the goals under that theme require.
During the public comment section of the meeting, a couple of people spoke in favor of the strategic plan’s adoption. A Wilbraham resident and member of the steering committee said that while “nobody gets everything they want,” the plan provided “a really good foundation. It really does represent both towns and the whole district.”
Brett Tascalano, who was also on the steering committee, said that as a Hampden parent, he has often felt like he had “no voice.” The plan was built by community members, elect officials, parents and members of the schools, and is “focused on the children,” he said. He spoke in favor of “abolishing decisions made based on the town line.”
Mac Reid of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC), which had assisted the district with the strategic plan, praised the amount of community participation that went into the process. As many 75 people came to the community forums, more than 300 people attended the various SWOT meetings, which explored strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and there were 813 responses to the survey that was put out to the community. “It is almost unheard of to have a couple of communities that size to have that many people participate,” Reid said.
Reid commended the work done by Gina Kahn, the liaison between the district and the MASC, and said no other liaison he has worked with has “done even 2 percent of what Gina did.” Provost described Kahn as an “amazing advocate.”
School Committee Secretary Sean Kennedy praised the work that had been done by the steering committee toward unifying the towns through the plan but had a reservation.
“The big thing I’m not seeing is the cost,” Kennedy said. He asked if there were estimates, “so that when the bill comes due in year two, year three, year four, year five, it’s not a surprise.”
Provost responded that strategic plans do not usually identify costs. He said it was as much “an advocacy document” as a planning one. “This is a set of priorities that were identified through the outreach to those 800-plus individuals.” He said the district will shape the budget to fulfill the goals of the strategic plan.
School Committee member Patrick Kiernan asked about the middle school math and block scheduling reviews not being included in the action steps. Reid said those would be tackled at the end of year one.
Kiernan also said fiscal year 2027 is “far too late” to implement some of the security goals. Provost assured him that there was flexibility to adjust the timeline of the goals based on needs and circumstances.
Overall, Provost said, it was a “night for celebration.”