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Date: 12/22/2021
HAMPDEN/WILBRAHAM –Hampden Wilbraham Regional School District (HWRSD) Director of Finance and Operations Aaron Osborne shared the 10-year capital plan with the School Committee at its Dec. 16 meeting. He focused on the projects that are prioritized for Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23).
The proposed scheduled improvements at Green Meadows School included tile replacement, parking lot repairs and door replacements. Play structures also had to be brought up to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
School Committee member Patrick Kiernan recommended seeking community preservation funding for the play structures project. Osborne agreed and said conversations around funding would come later.
Mile Tree Elementary School will require blinds to be replaced because the existing window treatments pose a safety hazard, Osborne said. The school also needs to be added to the municipal sewer system and taken off an existing septic system.
School Committee member Sherrill Caruana asked if something could be done to address the congestion during afternoon dismissal at Mile Tree and called it a “nightmare.” Cenedella told her the problem is due to the width of the property. The idea of obtaining land from neighboring Merrick Farm for an access road was floated, but not explored in detail.
At Stony Hill School, the emergency generator must be replaced. “Our outages seem to be getting more frequent and longer,” Director of Facilities and Maintenance Ed Cenedella said. The new generators will supply enough power to keep the lights and heat on as well as “teach and feed every student.”
Stony Hill also needs a fire panel replacement, new window blinds and a VIOP phone update to tie the school in with the district. Osborne explained that each of the schools would need to be tied into the district eventually. Currently, the schools cannot communicate with each other or the central offices.
At Soule Road School, new windows are needed, as well as a boiler exhaust stack and an emergency generator.
Wilbraham Middle School (WMS) needs new doors and windows, and Osbourne said the auditorium curtains are ragged and have to be replaced.
Caruana said vehicles are using the WMS campus to access the recreation fields behind it. Ganem said the issue is being discussed with neighbors. He was adamant that people using the recreation area are not to be on school property during school hours, particularly arrival and dismissal times.
Kiernan questioned waiting to address the school’s parking lot until FY25. Osbourne told him that it could be moved up to FY24, if needed. Ganem questioned which parking lot was most in need of repairs between WMS and Soule Road School. Cenedella said they are in equally bad shape.
Minnechaug Regional High School (MRHS) had the most expensive capital needs for FY23, including the replacement of choral risers, which came from the original Minnechaug High School, computers for CAD classrooms and completely new stadium seating. The seating in its current state is a safety issue.
“It is a liability. I’m surprised we haven’t had an incident yet,” Kiernan said of the seating.
The price tag for the replacement will be roughly $1 million. Osborne said repairing the seating was not an option because it would no longer be ADA compliant.
Cenedella told the committee the seating had already been refurbished three times. Unlike the play structures, it is ineligible for community preservation funding.
It was noted that the Boosters, an group that has fundraised for the high school sports programs, could help with the stadium seating expense. Kiernan suggested that the schools look at shifting to a user funded model, which would increase fees to play.
Preschool Challenges
Director of Student Services Gina Roy spoke about some of the challenges of preschool in the HWRSD. She said there are five preschool classes spread out over three buildings – Mile Tree, Green Meadows School and MRHS, which is referred to as the Mile Tree Extension. Having preschool spread out leads to “inequitable placements,” Roy said.
School Committee member Bill Bontempi suggested restructuring Mile Tree to make it an Early Childhood Center, which Roy said would be beneficial.
Roy also noted that there was an unexpected influx of children into preschool who require special education. She suggested the reason for this was that Early Intervention had paused taking new students due to COVID-19 and those students were now coming into the school system with educational and behavioral issues.
The district is hiring a counselor to work with preschool, kindergarten and first-grade classes on social skills. The person will work in a “proactive” role, aiding the entire classroom, rather than individual students. They will be at Mile Tree for three days of the week and at Green Meadows twice a week.
Ganem remarked, “We’re seeing there’s a need for social-emotional support for all our kids.”
Sub-separate Classrooms
Turning to special education, Roy broke down the number of “sub-separate” special education classrooms in each school and what is taught in each. Each of the schools has at least one sub-separate room, except Soule Road School. They range from teaching life skills to “structured learning classrooms” (SLC), which lean heavily on routines and structure to teach learning activities, behavior, communication and social skills and intensive resource rooms (IRRs) for students who need the most intensive instruction.
Roy said there was a high turnover of paraprofessionals in the IRRs, as well as sub-separate teachers, because intensive needs programs have a higher burnout rate. Kiernan asked if three paraprofessionals leaving the district in one year was higher than average. She struggled to quantify an average at first, but then said three in a year was higher than usual.
Ganem said people will sometimes leave if they find a better rate of compensation or a new job is closer to home.
Caruana added, “It’s a difficult job, but I think our structure makes it more difficult.” She said the way paras are moved between buildings makes it hard to develop professional relationships. Roy said the two-grade bands that paraprofessionals work under make it harder to fit students with available paras.
Kiernan said he wanted to understand how the district can keep the paraprofessionals and teachers they have and Ganem told him he would get the data on paraprofessional turnover.
Strategic Plan
On the topic of the strategic plan, resident Patricia Gordon spoke during the public comment period to question whether the Massachusetts Association of Regional School District (MARS), “is leading us to a pre-determined outcome?” MARS is helping the strategic plan committee gather the data for the plan. She asked, “What is an equity audit and how will it be universally applied?” She referenced “politics,” MARS and the attorney general’s office as possibly leading the district on the strategic plan.
The strategic plan meetings are now being run under the rules of the open meeting law after consultation with the district’s lawyer and the attorney general’s office, Ganem stated.
He said the next step in the process is the anonymous survey. The Strategic Plan Committee wants as many people as possible within the two communities to take the survey. There is an online survey as well as hard copies that will be distributed to district offices and the libraries in both towns.
Ganem acknowledged that it was a long set of questions but urged residents, “Please, people in the community, take the survey.”
School Committee Vice Chair Maura Ryan and Bontempi expressed concern that people from outside the communities might take the survey since it is anonymous and not attached to email addresses. One person could theoretically fill out multiple surveys and skew the data, they said. Ganem responded that he’s hoping people take the surveys with “seriousness” and “fidelity.”