SAUGUS — The town’s public schools are moving forward with a new district-improvement plan for the 2023-24 school year, which was drafted by Acting Superintendent Michael Hashem and other district leaders.
The plan was formally approved by the School Committee last week and comprises three primary focus areas and standards selected from the broader, five-year strategic plan drafted under Superintendent Erin McMahon. Based on Hashem’s remarks, it appears as though McMahon, who has been on paid administrative leave since January but technically remains the district’s top official, had no input on the district-improvement plan for the coming year.
School Committee members have not publicly acknowledged McMahon’s leave since it was announced on Jan. 19. Messages sent to McMahon’s attorney seeking an update on her status were not answered.
The plan also includes a vision statement and mission statement for the district, which continues to try and climb out of the hole it found itself in in 2019, when students’ MCAS scores were in the bottom 10% of the state.
The vision statement says the schools will put students first by building and supporting a “thriving, committed, well-trained” team of educators, leaders, and staff dedicated to serving students. The district also aims to establish a culture of belonging for all students, and create the conditions necessary for them to learn, thrive, and succeed academically.
The mission statement reads “the Saugus Public Schools offers a safe, supportive, and inclusive environment where educators are supported and valued, the community is engaged and welcome, and students are inspired and thrive.”
The specific areas of focus cited in the plan are supporting teachers through coaching and professional development to create the learning environment needed to effectively support all students; strengthening communication and engagement efforts so that students, staff, parents, and caregivers are seen, heard, and feel connected to the Saugus Public Schools; and providing all students with standards-aligned, consistently outstanding instruction in supportive learning environments. During the committee’s meeting, Hashem said 2023-24 marks the first year of implementation of the strategic plan, which identified those three areas as key targets for the district.
In drafting the plan, Hashem said he felt no need to “reinvent the wheel.” And, he said, the similarity between each tenet of the plan is intentional.
“The best way of going about it is to pick some targets that will really give us the best impact on the students and student learning and that’s what we get,” he said.
The plan also includes objectives and action steps to get toward the specific goals laid out in the plan and vision statement. Among those are aligning professional-development days and time to the district’s areas of focus, providing coaching support in English language arts and math at both elementary and secondary levels, and giving teachers structured common planning time to “analyze student data, internalize lessons, and review student work to ensure that students are learning and progressing,” among numerous other things
The plan references the development of a district-wide plan for communication and engagement within the district and the community. The district’s communications manager, Jen Lefferts, hired by McMahon under a grant, departed this summer.
Toward that goal, the plan also cites setting up a quarterly forum for stakeholder input at the district level with a set agenda. And, the district seeks to launch “multiple outreach tools” to enable regular and reliable two-way communication between students, staff, parents, and caregivers, including presenting information to the School Committee.
Finally, the plan cites two key action items toward the instruction goal.
One of those steps is adopting and preparing teachers to consistently use high-quality instructional materials in all core subjects, and the plan cites the implementation of new ELA curriculum and continued expanded implementation of various other curriculum programs, including OpenSciEd, Carnegie Mathematics, and World of Wonders. The plan also calls for supporting the implementation and expansion of grade-level enrichment and innovation programs, including Project Lead the Way and the Early College Program at the Middle/High School.
The School Committee voted unanimously to approve the plan.
