The last scheduled School Committee meeting of 2022 contained a packed agenda, and it began with a lively public comment period. An NPS parent and immigrant to the United States began the session by strongly criticizing what he perceived as the District’s over focus on racial identity at the expense of academics. He was followed by an NPS mother who stated that her first-grade child was not yet meeting Kindergarten reading benchmarks and cited “balanced literacy” instruction as a contributing factor. The next commenter reiterated concerns about the NPS inclusion of balanced literacy, widely understood to mean the Fontas & Pinnell reading curriculum.
During the Superintendent’s update, Dr. Kathy Smith discussed her visit to a third-grade classroom at Memorial-Spaulding elementary school, where students shared with her their concerns about mixed-level mathematics instruction. Following this, Assistant Superintendent Toby Romer corrected a statistic from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey — discussed and reported by Fig City News — that 21% of NPS students reported having carried a weapon to school. Mr. Romer clarified that the report should have said that of the students who reported carrying a weapon at some point, 21% replied in the survey that they had brought it to school. While the corrected number is a much lower figure than 21% of all students, it is equal to approximately 22 students.
Dr. Smith also began a presentation discussing this year’s Superintendent’s goals and shared that one of her key goals was for the District to recommend a new reading curriculum to implement beginning in academic year 2023-2024. Dr. Smith then ceded the presentation to Renee McCall, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning, to discuss this year’s evaluation of the NPS reading curriculum. Dr. McCall’s comments cited the multi-faceted approach that NPS presently employs in its reading instruction, which includes both phonetic-based and whole-language-based components. Dr. McCall also said the District’s pilot program is operating in seven NPS classrooms this year, and her team will meet with two other “high performing” districts, as well as conduct monthly meetings with a group of parents, in this year’s research. The group of parents, including literacy experts, have given extensive public comment regarding the reading curriculum.
Additional topics in the nearly three-hour meeting included:
- A vote to approve the Cabot-split feeder pattern to Bigelow and Day Middle Schools,
- A presentation regarding the Countryside Elementary School rebuilding process through the MSBA,
- An update on the District’s collective bargaining with the Newton Teachers Association, the Newton Educational Secretaries Association, and the Newton Custodians Association, and
- A presentation focused on English Language Learners (“ELL”) curriculum.
NewTV has the video of the meeting. The discussion of the reading curriculum begins at 21:00.
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