SAUGUS — Under new Superintendent Erin McMahon, the school committee has set some high goals for the district.
At Thursday’s school committee meeting, McMahon unveiled that — thanks to public feedback along with feedback from the committee — Saugus schools will aim to be in the top 10 percent of the state high schools in MCAS scoring for the 10th grade by 2027.
McMahon and the committee hope to achieve this by achieving one year’s growth for every student in math and reading, year over year, starting in 2022. The Veterans Early Learning Center and Belmonte STEAM Academy hope to help achieve this goal and prepare students by teaching students to learn at the age of eight.
The new superintendent noted that while MCAS scores aren’t always an accurate barometer of success, being able to read by the age of eight is quite the achievement.
“That’s, as we know, in third grade, when you shift from learning to read to reading to learn and just the level of complexity that student’s get at 9,10,11 is significant,” McMahon said. “For anyone who has a student going into middle school who’s a little nervous about entering the complex, there’s a lot of reasons that you’re nervous entering sixth grade and one is the level of complexity increase. So our goal is to make sure that the work we do in the Belmonte and the Veterans Early Learning Center prepares students to be able to read and write by age eight.”
Vice-Chairmen Ryan Fisher said that he agreed with McMahon’s goal of shooting for the moon, saying that he is happy that’s the direction the school district is heading toward.
Committee member Arthur Grabowski also agreed with the goals, but he doesn’t want to forget about programs such as the arts.
“I agree that we need to laser focus on those areas that we’ve pointed out, but the arts, that’s what STEAM is,” said Grabowski. “Science, technology, engineering, arts and math. It used to be STEM and then they changed it to STEAM, recognizing that the arts are just as important, so I don’t ever want to lose sight of that.”
The school committee has a retreat planned for Sept. 25, where they will look at student data to determine the appropriate benchmark.
