School Committee Goals: Fix IT System, Improve Middle School Retention

Lisa Butler, chairman of the School Committee, laid out her goals for the coming year at Tuesday night’s meeting, the first of which is to establish a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the School Committee and the Board of Selectmen for the operation, administration and financing of consolidating the town and school’s information technology department.

The school’s IT department has been after a and failures, Butler wants the School Committee and the town to find a solution by Sept. 1, in time for the start of school, and she assigned vice chairman Tom Markham, III to work towards that goal.

There were 12 goals in all, which ranged from investigating problems within the schools, to checking the feasibility of a school district wide recycling policy.

“It’s a bit of a long list but I think it’s doable,” Butler said.

Her second goal was along similar lines: Conduct a complete review of the Wakefield Community Education program to determine its financial viability and programmatic merits.

Committee members Chris Callanan and Anne Danehy will work with Superintendent Joan Landers and a full update, complete with research, will be due no later than April 10, 2012.

Another highlight on Butler’s list was a study into the retention of middle school students, specifically, why students are leaving the school system in middle school.

“During the period from the time the enter middle school to the time they leave middle school, between five and eight, you hear talk that we’re losing students to private schools,” Butler said. “Well that’s what we’re looking at because around sixth, seventh grade, I know parents who have taken their children out for private schools for various reasons, I mean some are going to go to private schools no matter what, but some are doing it because of curriculum reasons and some for building reasons.”

Butler, Markham and Danehy will lead the investigation, though Danehy brought up a point as to why the entire school system wasn’t being looked at as a whole.

“First I’d like to start with the middle school, and then try to branch out.” Butler said, pointing out that the middle school would be the best starting point due to the building issues, and also that starting with the whole school system would be a lot do deal with right away.

A full update on the matter will be due by March 27, 2012.

Butler also seeks to implement a comprehensive policy on recycling throughout the school district.

“I’d like to look at each building, cause I know some schools do the bottles, some don’t, and I’d like to look into seeing if it’s actually feasible to make it a policy,” Butler said. “If we have, for instance, field days, we’d want to make sure that there are bins in all the schools, make sure that the bins are out, and we’re recycling as much as we can because it does save money.”

Butler will work with business administrator Michael Connelly, the school principals, the PTOs and student councils. A recommendation will be due by Feb. 28, 2012.

Among the remaining goals, wants to better Wakefield’s schools by partnering with non-profit education groups and corporations to bring budget neutral programs into the schools, in addition to taking a more proactive approach to publicizing the successes of the school’s students and staff.

In terms of administrative goals, Butler wants a new Superintendent evaluation tool to be designed by next spring, regular meetings to be held in order to support the committee’s strategic plans, more effective ways of negotiating contracts between the school committee and the school department labor unions to be found, all school committee policies to be reviewed and, if necessary, updated.

Finally, Butler hopes to foster a more collaborative relationship between the school committee and the WEA, and to review the process and procedures between the school department and the town regarding facilities, maintenance and management.