SAUGUS — With school right around the corner for Saugus students, the School Committee reviewed the District Improvement Plan for 2025-2026, aligned with the Five-Year Strategic Plan (2023-2028) on Monday, Aug. 18.
“We’re fortunate now that we have a five-year strategic plan, so our District Improvement Plan doesn’t meander at all. We have objectives that we have from year to year. We have, over the last couple of years, picked three objectives from the strategic plan and made those the district focus,” Superintendent Michael Hashem said.
Hashem said there were also secondary areas of focus to go with the three objectives. “They’re something we’ve worked on (for) the last two years,” he said.
Hashem said the new areas of focus include the development of a work culture and environment to ensure Saugus is a district where educators are valued, appreciated, and motivated. He said this was their growth.
The next area is building and maintaining a self-welcoming, supportive learning environment based on understanding each student’s individual needs, assets, opportunities and challenges. This section would focus on the students’ sense of belonging.
The third area is rapidly identifying and addressing academic needs to ensure all students accelerate their learning.
Each objective had categories of action steps and individual action steps the schools will try and implement to reach their goals.
“I’ll change the draft version to (the) School Committee adopted version. Then what we’ll do is I’ll send it to my principals. The principals will then set their school improvement plans around these three big buckets and make sure they adapt them for what their individual school needs and how that looks in their building,” Hashem said.
He noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, students lost the Social Emotional Learning aspect of school, and that enrichment programs play a big part in boosting that.
“I’ve read this several times. I think it hits everything. It hits all the points we need as far as even going into the maintenance and care of the buildings,” School Committee Chair Vincent Serino said.
Committee member John Hatch said he was happy with how extensive the plan is, with it even going in-depth on the physical environment of the facilities.
The Committee voted 3-0, with two members being absent, in favor of the plan.
