LYNNFIELD — The School Committee met Thursday night for the first time since taking its summer break to discuss the upcoming school year.
Superintendent Tom Geary shared a presentation of his goals — which he’s “not opposed to tweaking here or there” — with the Committee. The presentation discussed four goals: one student learning goal, one professional practice goal and two district improvement goals.
The student learning goal was to “review and assess K-12 social studies and visual arts curricula for alignment with state curriculum frameworks.”
“We’re going to continue to work on reviewing curricula to ensure alignment and publicly display the work that’s been done by our educators, continuing also to develop a three-year review cycle,” Geary said.
“Last year, you’ll remember, we did math, English language arts and performing arts. Those will then move into year two of our cycle, and this year we’re going to review social studies and the visual arts,” he said.
Geary noted that reviewing social studies was timely because this past spring was the first time eighth graders took the civics MCAS. He also noted that this may be the first time the visual arts have been reviewed, at least publicly. He said the School Committee will receive a finalized report on the findings of these reviews by the end of this upcoming school year.
School Committee member Jamie Hayman asked Geary if there were metrics to know if these reviews are successful.
Geary replied that the finalized report will essentially be “an audit” that includes “alignment to rubrics, … presentation slides, engagement logs from the stakeholders as they’ve gone along and then finally the summary report with — if we have action steps, then there will be action steps.”
The professional practice goal was to “prioritize a shared educational vision of furthering positive culture in the district, making citizenship central to school ethos.”
Geary said, to him, this goal centers character building and ingraining core values into students.
A key action in how to accomplish this was to “ensure communications offer opportunities to connect with families regarding their students and illustrate citizenship within the discussion.”
“It sounds simple, but we want to be inviting to our families,” Geary said. “We want to give them another avenue to communicate with us as leaders.”
Hayman noted that he would have liked to see inclusion mentioned as part of this goal, which Geary was very open to.
The third goal, and first of the two district improvement goals, was to “improve the effectiveness of the budget process by increasing communication and understanding.”
The first action item of this goal is to publish a budget guide online as well as a budget calendar so people can understand its intricate timeline.
“There was some discussion last year that the budget process wasn’t fully understood by the community, so I really want to try to address that,” Geary said. “It starts with a guide online when the budget is presented for the first time. Aligning those two events will be so helpful so that people may feel more in the loop.”
Geary added that, in addition to School Committee meetings, he will be providing two opportunities during the budget process to solicit input from the community. He will also be presenting quarterly updates at School Committee meetings.
“This is a great jumping-out point for people to feel more involved in the town at all levels, whether they have children in school or not, and to really be engaged and understand the budget better, so I’m very grateful for this. I feel like that feedback was heard,” School Committee member Kate DePrizio said.
The final goal mentioned, and the other district improvement goal, was to “lead the process of developing a strategic plan for the district.”
Geary called this strategic plan a “longterm road map for the future” that will be completed during the 2025-26 school year. It will determine what’s important to the community and ensure accountability.
“I want to have community input, staff input, family input and really mesh those together,” Geary said. “We want to make sure it defines district priorities (and) want to prepare students in the future.
“We want to engage everyone. We want it to align with who we are. We want the community to have a voice in where our schools are going. I don’t think anybody should be doing this in a vacuum. I don’t think it should be a plan that’s made by three to four people. I really think the more buy in, the more inclusion that we can get in the process, the better – and it’s something that I’m excited for,” he said.
He then emphasized that there will be a strategic planning committee for this plan, and he hopes community members choose to participate. Geary said more information will be revealed about that committee in his opening messages to families next week.
Geary added that he would like for the process to be led by an experienced, independent facilitator “to give an objective point of view.”
Hayman said he loved that this was happening.
“It’s overdue,” he said, “and I do applaud the process.”
